After studying the exit polls and reviewing commentary on the election, I have come to the following conclusions:

1) Most pollsters stopped doing polls in Virginia a month before the election. They thought that it was unnecessary since Warner was so far ahead at that time. Much happened in the month before the election including the Ebola scare and Obama's fumbling response. (In a national Washington Post-ABC poll taken shortly before the election, 60 percent said they were concerned about a widespread Ebola epidemic.)

2) I don't know how good the Warner ground game was, but I do know that the Republicans put on a full court press throughout the country starting over a year ago with the recruitment of people who would make excellent candidates, training them, and then fielding an effective get- out-the vote campaign. Good old party methods used by the Grand Old Party!

3) The election was not about policy and principles, it was about poor presidential leadership,* a do-nothing Congress, worries about the economy and a possible terrorist attack, and the Ebola scare. In general, people were very unhappy with the status quo but they had only one other choice-the Republicans. We know how irrational that choice was since we know that the cause of the stalemate in Washington has been Republican obstructionism, and the cause of our economic woes was a Republican administration (Bush) that did not believe in regulation and let Wall Street take monumental risks. But the public apparently forgot or were never informed. A President should be "educator in chief" and Obama should have constantly reminded the public that Republicans caused these problems. He never used the bully pulpit (a fireside chat) to point out what was going on and explain the policies he was proposing. (The bully pulpit is a president sitting in the White House and talking directly to every American eye-to-eye. It is not a president at a rally or giving a speech from a podium.)

4) This election was not a positive move toward Republicans. On the contrary, the exit poll showed that 78 percent disapproved of the way Congress was handling its job, 59 percent had negative feelings about Republican leaders in Congress, and 54 percent had an unfavorable opinion of the Republican party. This is not a wave, it is an undertow. Remember that people vote, in part, for the person--the candidate--and these elections were state and local elections in which each candidate was running as a separate entity. Republicans fielded attractive candidates in most of the these states. This probably also accounts in large measure for their gubernatorial wins in Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland.

5) Votes on referenda show that liberalism is alive and well, even among an off-year electorate that was heavy skewed toward older white males. Personhood amendments were rejected in Colorado and North Dakota and there was a majority against a personhood referendum in Tennessee. Minimum wage referenda passed in Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota. The exit poll showed that 57 percent agreed that illegal immigrants should be offered a chance to apply for legal status, 52 percent believed that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, 57 percent thought that global warming is a serious problem, and opinion on same-sex marriage was split--48 percent thought it should be legally recognized and 48 percent thought it should not. There is no indication that the Democratic party should modify its beliefs, rather it must have leaders like Elizabeth Warren who can explain those beliefs to the American people in plain language. And the party must improve its ground game.

David RePass (Electronic mail, November 8, 2014)

* The Obama administration has had a series of administrative foul-ups such as the computer breakdown at the rollout of the Affordable Care Act, long waits for medical care at Veterans Administration hospitals, failure to see the impending development of ISIS, unprepared for Ebola coming to the United States, etc.