DATE: Tuesday, November 18, 1997            TAG: 9711180259

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B7   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: RICHMOND                          LENGTH:   69 lines

IN OFF YEAR, TRADITIONAL GOP BLOC VOTED HEAVILY ENOUGH FOR SWEEP

More than half of the people who voted in the statewide elections on Nov. 4 had college educations and earned more than $50,000 a year.

One in five voters said they had postgraduate training, and 30 percent made more than $75,000 a year.

Only 18 percent of those who voted had only a high school diploma, according to exit and telephone polls conducted on Election Day.

``Those are incredible figures; it just shows how skewed the electorate was,'' said Larry J. Sabato, professor of government at the University of Virginia.

The richer, more educated segment of the electorate was credited with giving the Republicans their first ever sweep of the three statewide offices and left some Democrats wondering what to do about a voter base that stayed home.

Scott Keeter, director of polling at Virginia Commonwealth University, said there was a dramatic correlation between social status, income and education and the likelihood of voting. He compared the election results to the old days in Virginia when a poll tax and literacy tests restricted the electorate.

``You could make the argument that in trying to attract suburban voters and remain competitive among better educated, more affluent people, the Democratic Party has moved away from the concerns of lower-income people,'' Keeter said. ``There was no reason for them to participate.''

Keeter said Republican Gov.-elect James S. Gilmore III might still have won with an expanded electorate, because he also led among those identified as high school graduates, but he thinks the limited electorate is the reason why Democrat L.F. Payne Jr. lost his bid for lieutenant governor.

``More generally, this shows why the Democrats are on the run,'' he said. ``They have a (problem) of constructing a message that mobilizes downscale voters and keeps the more affluent on board.''

William F. Connelly Jr., professor of political science at Washington and Lee University, said voters in off-year elections, such as 1997, tend to lean toward the GOP, so no one should be too surprised by the results.

Gilmore was helped because he couldn't be portrayed as an extremist, as were Mike Farris and Oliver North in the 1993 and 1994 elections, Connelly said.

``Being boring helped Gilmore,'' he said. ``He didn't inspire the Democratic base to come out against him.''

Daniel G. LeBlanc, president of the Virginia State AFL-CIO, said it would be wrong to look at the demographics of those who voted and determine that they were wealthier, white-collar workers. Blue-collar workers can make $50,000 a year and pay high car taxes too, he said.

LeBlanc said Democrat Donald S. Beyer Jr. lost because Gilmore came up with an issue, abolishing the personal property tax on vehicles, that appealed to a broad base.

Paul Goldman, a former Democratic Party chairman who is helping organize a ``Committee for a Democratic Comeback,'' said his party is being viewed as the party of the status quo, while Republicans have been coming up with new ideas.

``We've got to identify ourselves as pro-change, pro middle-class, working families,'' he said.

Goldman also is proposing an anti-tax resolution to the party's state central committee when it meets Dec. 6 in Richmond.

Among those who didn't go to the polls were African Americans, who traditionally vote Democratic. The decision by former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder to endorse neither Gilmore nor Beyer likely played a role in that, Sabato said.

The data were taken from an exit poll conducted for The Associated Press and The Washington Post by the Edison Group and a telephone poll of 2,400 Virginians conducted by Hypotenuse Inc. KEYWORDS: ELECTION

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