Public disgust with Obamacare brought Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli closer to a win in the Virgina gubernatorial race than anyone expected, says Republican pollster John McLaughlin.
Cuccinelli "was able to close [in] on Obamacare, on the issue" in "what everybody thought was going to be a landslide," McLaughlin, of John McLaughlin Associates, told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.
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"It was an amazing thing because he was focused on Obamacare," he said of Cuccinelli.
"[Democratic Gov.-elect Terry] McAuliffe was trying to do a rerun of Obama's race where he was doing war on women, he was trying to run on these social issues, on the liberal social issues on abortion and other things, and, really, what people really care about is they're trying to make their lives just get by every day," McLaughlin said Monday.
He said polls on election night, "before the media could pollute them," showed that of 600 voters, "41 percent were conservatives. Only 23 percent were liberals."
"So, there's a real clear path that we've seen before where if Republicans can unite our base and win a plurality of the moderates, we can beat them," he said.
McLaughlin
said that election polling showed 53 percent of Virginia voters "said they oppose Obamacare," and that even races in New York's suburban Nassau County were an important lesson for the GOP.
"It was all about taxes, it was about Obamacare was hurting people, they're being dropped and they're being forced to pay high premiums," he said. "The middle class has had enough."
McLaughlin said Cuccinelli got "derailed" in the race in part because of the government shutdown, "because Virginia's unique in that a lot of people in northern Virginia work for the federal government or work for businesses that do business with the federal government."
"If he had more time, plus . . . the shutdown tactic . . . was wrong," McLaughlin said.
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