House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's team is scrambling to identify why the Virginia Republican got trounced in a primary race no one thought he was going to lose. And in an interview with National Journal, Cantor's pollster, John McLaughlin, offered an interesting theory:
Then McLaughlin cited the "Cooter" factor — the fact that former Rep. Ben Jones, a Georgia Democrat who played Cooter in The Dukes of Hazzard, had written an open letter urging Democrats to vote for Brat to help beat Cantor.
"Over the weekend Democrats like Ben Jones and liberal media were driving their Democratic voters on the internet into the open primary," McLaughlin wrote. "Eric got hit from right and left. In our polls two weeks out Eric was stronger with Republicans at 70 percent of the vote, but running under 50 percent among non Republicans." [National Journal]
There is little evidence to support the idea that Democrats crossed over en masse to down Cantor. More realistically, snap polling from PPP on Tuesday found that Republicans in the district despised Cantor and the GOP leadership.