The News Journal is reporting that Mike Castle is not ruling out a write-in run. He has until Sept 30th to decide. How will this change the US Senate race?
Our own Charlie Copeland has correctly observed that this race will probably be decided in New Castle County:
If Ms. O’Donnell comes out of the two southern counties with a 65% vote, she’ll need about 42% of New Castle County to win. She might get 70% of the two southern counties — then she just needs 40% of New Castle County.
Castle has much support in northern NCCo and all of those “I Like Mike” moderates who feel they need to vote for Coons now would have their first choice back. It could easily take 15 to 20 points from Coons.
Logistically a write-in campaign is a nightmare, but Castle should have the funds to convey the voting instructions to the public. It could be the most successful write-in campaign in Delaware history (anyone know the highest write-in percentage?). But it would not result in a Castle victory – more likely it could be O’Donnell 41%, Coons 39%, Castle 18%, Others 2%.
This might just be his way of helping O’Donnell without endorsing her?
I’m told he will not do it.
This is good. She won. Move on.
Nate Silver at the NY Times puts the Castle write-in percentage higher (at 34%), but I think he underestimates the difficulty of getting people to do the write-in.
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/24/calculating-the-potential-castle-write-in-bid/
I agree that a Castle write-in campaign would help COD- which is precisely why Castle won’t run.