… In truth, when an election result hits “10 on the political Richter scale” of shock value, there usually isn’t just one reason for the outcome, but lots of them acting in concert. While surveying the wreckage, Cantor adviser John Murray acknowledged his boss’s loss amounted to “death by a thousand cuts.” None of these reasons alone would be sufficient to cause an upset, and some of them aren’t neatly quantifiable. But there are plenty of ways to dissect what happened in Virginia’s 7th district, as well as some lessons we political forecasters would be wise to keep in mind in the future. Here are just a few. CONT.
David Wasserman (Cook Political Report), FiveThirtyEight