Primary Night Takeaways

WNPR Newsroom spread on Primary night. Luna's Pizza, Dunkin' Donuts, indigestion and massive food remorse. Photo by Jonathan McNicol

by John Dankosky –

1.  I work with some pretty amazing people.  Great reporting throughout the night from WNPR staff, Lucy Nalpathanchil, Ray Hardman, Jeff Cohen and Harriet Jones (hear/see their stories at yourpublicmedia.org).  Remarkable production team led by Catie Talarski, with Josie Holtzman, Patrick Skahill, Tucker Ives and Jonathan McNicol.  The steady engineering hand of Eugene Amatruda.  And, analysts Bill Curry and Ben Davol, who took us through the twists and turns of a surprising evening.  And, thanks to partner contributors like the brilliant Paul Bass and Keith Phaneuf.

2. Colin McEnroe is a singular talent.  I’m not quite sure how he’s able to balance announcing and analysis, news and opinion while always being funny and exactly on point.  Doing election night coverage with him as a co-host makes my job incredibly easy.  All I can say is, “thank you WTIC.“

3. It’s easy to say that polls don’t really matter leading up to primary.  And nobody, including the oft-cited (and oft-criticized) Quinnipiac poll predicted the kind of landslide victory enjoyed by Dan Malloy.  But, these polls did signal huge momentum shifts in the closing weeks, with Malloy drawing closer to Ned Lamont by the day, and Mike Fedele cutting into the massive lead of Tom Foley (although, it was not enough in the end).

4.   As we heard over and over, negative ads really do turn people off – although probably not enough to stave off more ugly campaigning in the fall. One commenter on this blog summed it up:

Just listening on primary day to your program and your acknowledgment of all the negative advertising by candidates , a comment was made that “It must work or they wouldn’t do it.” ……. How do we know that it works?

Those of us who were so disenchanted by the current negative circulars by both democratic candidates for governor in Connecticut (and I am definitely one of them) that they decided not to vote will not be counted, but that doesn’t mean we’re not there. I hope the candidates will focus on what they have done and will do if elected because that is really what voters want to hear.

5.  Now, like the winning candidates last night, we turn toward November.  My other talented co-host during this campaign, Channel 3′s Dennis House, writes about our pending plans for more debates in the Fall. Here’s my guess – we won’t have as much of a problem getting people to agree to debate this time around.

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