THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 24, 1996 TAG: 9607240373
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: 56 lines
To whet our interest is a just-published analysis by political scientist Larry Sabato of the 1996 Republican primary race for the Senate.
Yes, we all know that U.S. Sen. John Warner beat former Reagan budget director Jim Miller by nearly 2 to 1 to win the GOP nomination to face Democrat Mark Warner in the November election.
But Sabato gives us a dispassionate account of irony-honed details as to why it happened. The overall turnout of 16.1 percent of registered voters, while light, was still the highest of the three most recent statewide primaries. But counting all Virginians of voting age, only in one in 10 voted. Shame!
The primary's ``most compelling demographic story was the rural vote that wasn't,'' says Sabato. Only 16 percent of the vote was cast in rural areas, far less than usual.
The suburbs provided almost two-thirds of the statewide vote, the highest proportion ever for a Virginia primary or general election. Warner won 65 percent of the suburban vote, compared with 75 percent in the central cities and 57 percent in rural areas.
Turnout of black voters was 5.4 percent of registered voters. Warner won nearly 85 percent of them, close to the Democratic share in general elections.
In a partisan breakdown, Sabato estimates that two-thirds of the June 13 electorate was Republican, a quarter Independent, and 8 percent Democrat. Warner won 59 percent of the Republicans, 75 percent of the Independents and 85 percent of the Democrats.
The power of the Christian Coalition, Oliver North and other Miller backers to sway the GOP was proved somewhat overrated, Sabato notes. ``They are not paper tigers, to be sure, but neither do they control the outcome of broad-based primaries or general elections.''
In fact, he writes, the general election failures of Michael Farris in 1993 and Oliver North in 1994, combined with Jim Miller's defeat in the 1996 primary, ``strongly suggests that only in the narrow universe of Republican caucus and convention participants can the Christian Coalition and its ideological allies dominate. It will be interesting in future years to see what lesson the Republican Party learns from the election results of 1993, 1994 and 1996.
``Will the GOP seek to broaden its base . . . to win more general elections? Or will it insist on the caucus/convention nominating method to enhance the influence of its conservative interest groups, even at the expenses of capturing some November prizes?''
Since the early 1980s, a Warner coalition has clustered around the philosophical center of the Old Dominion's politics, Sabato observed, ``and in June 1996, the center - so often denounced . . . by both the right and the left - held and prevailed.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
Warner
Miller by CNB