Jeff Ward: The Anatomy of a 40-Point Defeat

Though it's difficult to lose an election by a 70-30 vote, here's how you do it.

The late great Detroit Tigers manager Sparky Anderson said something that’s always stuck with me. He said a baseball team wins one-third of their games and loses one-third – it’s what they do with the rest that makes a winner. Replace the word “baseball” with “elections,” and “games” with “votes,” and it still works because it’s those on-the-fence third of voters who always decide an election. So on the rare occasion a high profile candidate doesn’t manage pick up that minimum in a hotly contested incumbent-less primary battle, it begs the question as to how Anderson’s axiom broke down. To that end, in ascending order of importance, here are the 10 factors that played a role in the Kane County Republican Chairman race turning into a 70-30 …

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