Meanwhile, During the Election...

This is Morgan Griffith, Republican candidate for the 9th District of Virginia, campaigning in Pulaski, deep in the Southwest of the state. It's the Saturday before election day, and I was filming the rally -- which seems a rather grand term for what it was, truly, a gathering of about 30 or 40 people at a landscaping company, standing about amidst bins of gravel and mulch -- for WDBJ. My reporter, Chris Hurst, can just be seen behind Griffith, between him and the garden shed. He's holding a radio microphone, so we can get better audio of the speech.

Griffith was a long shot. Although he was the majority leader in Virginia's legislature, his opponent, Rick Boucher, was a 20-plus-year veteran of the US House of Representatives. As anyone with a passing knowledge of American politics takes for granted, an incumbent is difficult to dislodge. A 20-plus-year incumbent is all but undefeatable. It's a "safe seat."

However, this year, the tide was turning, and Griffith sensed the flow. As he said during this speech, if others in Virginia -- like Tom Periello in the nearby 5th District, a one-termer -- lost their races, pundits could say that the seat was traditionally Republican, and thus the election just a readjustment to the norm. (Periello defeated longtime veteran Virgil Goode, riding on the coattails of President Obama.) But, Griffith said, urging his followers to action -- specifically the action of voting -- if Boucher lost, then it would be a real sign, a symbol that the recent liberal actions really were rejected by all the voters.

This is Rick Boucher that same day, just a few miles away and a an hour or so later, being interviewed by the competition after a rally. The chairs were all full when he and Sen. Mark Warner spoke, and the followers enthusiastic. As I left, I overheard one say, as he walked out the door with a friend in front of me, that he couldn't understand the polls. From what he saw, Boucher should win by a landslide.

However, the polls -- especially WDBJ's Survey USA poll -- showed a dead heat. Our most recent results actually had Griffith ahead by a point. Boucher was adamant, in his speech (when he pointed out our camera) and in an interview afterwards, that his poll results showed him ahead. It was just bad methodology.

That was Saturday. On Tuesday, as the results came in, the "shellacking" -- as the President would later term it -- became clear. And in the 9th District, there was a double surprise: Griffith not only won, he won by a margin large enough to have that election called before the long doomed Periello race in the 5th. As Griffith predicted, I think, his race is symbolic. There was more than a pendulum swinging back to the center here.

and that's how election day went. Welcome to my world...