Ed Gillespie’s strong showing in Virginia’s Senate election is heartening for republicans

In the run up to this year’s midterm elections in Virginia, the contest between the incumbent Senator Mark Warner, and his Republican challenger, Ed Gillespie, was widely expected to be a relatively easy win for the incumbent. Why then, did Mark Warner win the election by less than 1 percent of votes cast? Toni Michelle-Travis looks at Virginia’s surprising result, writing that a combination of Gillespie’s attacks against Warner over his links to President Obama and Warner’s lack of strategies to account for an expected fall in turnout were key in making the election much more favorable to Gillespie than had been previously predicted.