2nd Congressional District (OH) GOP Primary: Schmidt’s Victory By The Numbers

A quick digest of the numbers:

(click “more” to see the rest of “By the Numbers”)

• Schmidt just trounced everyone in Clermont County by a 3,500-vote margin. McEwen’s heavy support in Scioto and Brown, and presumably Adams and Pike (but I don’t know where to find segregated numbers for those two counties) made up part of the difference, and he did very well in Warren County too.
• With the Clermont County margin, it really appears to have come down to Hamilton County (but again, I’m not seeing numbers for Hamco only–if someone can point me to them, I’d appreciate it). It would appear that the Enquirer endorsement and intense dissatisfaction with DeWine worked to her advantage and enabled her to stay even with or maybe even beat McEwen in Hamco, which is all she needed to do given the other counties’ results. (UPDATE–The Enquirer [about 1/3 of the way down] reported that Schmidt DID win Hamco–“McEwen won five of the district’s seven counties, but it was Schmidt’s victories in the two largest - Hamilton and Clermont - that made the difference.”)
• It may be that the Club for Growth hits mobilized those who are most familiar with Schmidt to SUPPORT her. I didn’t hear their second ad until yesterday, and I thought they did not have to be so harsh and condescending to make their points. I can imagine many listeners essentially thought “Who are you calling MY baby ugly?” We may find that the turnout in Clermont was not only heavily Schmidt, but it was also higher as a percentage of registered Republicans than in other counties. WOW–I just realized that over half of Schmidt’s votes came from Clermont County. (UPDATE: More like 40%, thanks to Clerco screwup noted in June 16 Enquirer–See the 10PM section of the live-blog post for more) I should also note something that may be unpopular to say, which is that it is hard to successfully attack a female politician–ask Rick Lazio.
• Brinkman ran well. I believe, as I mentioned yesterday, that the two late-in-the-game ads attacking Brinkman by DeWine and McEwen further legitimized him and actually took votes away from the two attackers. The “values” conservatives who abandoned him because he was supposedly unelectable should be very ashamed of themselves tonight.
• DeWine? I suspect a lot of people are going to hit him while he’s down, so I’ll only do it this one time: Each vote cost him over $100 $190 (if the $1 million raised figure is true); each Schmidt vote, assuming her campaign spent $150,000 (which I think is right) cost her about $10. Wow.
• As you might expect, I’m going to talk about the McEwen defeat separately (see “Winners and Losers” Post 1 and Post 2), because a lot of people around here, and a lot of people “out there,” have a lot to answer for.