Mystery Pollster on Connecticut Turnout

The Mystery Pollster has a wonderful post on some important points relating to the Lamont win in Connecticut, particularly relating to turnout which may have some implications for Democrats nationally, as well as the supposed influence of the liberal netroots.

First and foremost, I will admit that Lamont's candidacy got a great boost from the Netroots. I believe, however, that Lamont just happened to be the guy willing to step up and challenge Lieberman and so by being in the right place at the right time helped him. Had it been anyone else in that place at that time, I think they would have gotten the same level of support. In other words, the netroots were not Pro-Lamont--they were anti-Lieberman. As I have said, time and time again, "anti-" campaigns rarely work. Don't believe me, ask John Kerry.

Second, as MP points out, either the polling earlier in the campaign was faulty, those showing Lamont with 10 and 13 point leads in July, only to have the final difference being less than 4 percent. MP then has two questions:

This leaves a few open questions, at least from my perspective:

• Did Lieberman narrow the gap in the campaign's final ten days, as suggested but not quite confirmed by the last two Quinnipiac polls?
• Or was Lieberman consistently closer in Lamont's rear view mirror during the final weeks than the public polls made it appear? Did the sampling methodologies and likely voter models of the public polls consistently exaggerate Lamont's during the campaign's final weeks?

MP goes on to answer them in a rather lengthy fashion.

But MP does spend some time on the turnout question, which I always find fascinating.

Charles Franklin has already posted an amazingly thorough (and graphical) turnout analysis of the turnout showing that Lieberman did better in the larger towns and cities, while Lamont did better in less urban areas. He also confirms the so-called "Volvo/donut" turnout pattern suggested yesterday by Hotline On-Call, that turnout was higher in the smaller towns where Lamont had an advantage, lower in the larger towns where Lieberman did better. (Links in original)

This, for me poses and interesting question. What about the less urban areas makes a canddiate like Lamont more appealing? Conversely, why did urban voters support Lieberman more and why, in a primary with a whopping 41% turnout (I know still small, but very big for a primary) did more urban voters not turnout? Ineteresting questions, with some real implications for national Democrats in 2008, but not necessarily this fall since elections are more local. With so many of the Democratic strongholds in urban areas, does the lack of turnout in urban areas affect the the prospects of candidates like Hillary Clinton, those with a certain amount fo appeal in urban areas?

Finally, what is the role of the netroots in all of this? If the netroots is supposedly this new power center in Democratic circles, a proposition I don't agree with, can they positively influence turnout? There is some indication that they can get bodies to the polls, but there are also some indications that their effectiveness is more about getting a candidate some attention and less about influencing decision making as election day approaches. More on that to come.