Democrats spent much of this year pouring attention and money into Kentucky, believing that Senator Mitch McConnell was vulnerable to defeat. That decision was almost certainly a strategic mistake — and not just in hindsight.
Mr. McConnell easily defeated Alison Lundergan Grimes, his Democratic challenger, on Tuesday, and ascended to Senate majority leader.
His victory was entirely foreseeable, and by showering so much attention on Kentucky, Democrats distracted themselves from races where they had better chances, including in Georgia, Colorado, Iowa and Alaska.
The thing to remember is that a McConnell defeat would have been all but unprecedented. Mr. McConnell is not only an incumbent senator who represents the party opposed to the White House in a midterm election, but he also comes from a state that strongly opposes the president.
In the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, Kentucky voted for the Republican candidate for president by an average of 25 points more than the rest of the country. Over the last 60 years, no senator has lost in a state as favorable as Kentucky when the president represents the other party. And the margins are not even close.
Democrats became excited about Kentucky because of Mr. McConnell’s status as the Republican minority leader and because his approval ratings were stuck below 50 percent. Early head-to-head polls showed a very tight race.
Throughout much of the summer and fall, spending by the Grimes campaign was the third-highest among Democratic Senate campaigns. At various points, it trailed the Democratic candidates in that category in a combination of Colorado, Iowa and North Carolina.
All those states are far less Republican than Kentucky, and all had Senate races that remained close until the end. So did Georgia, an especially notable contrast with Kentucky. In 2012, Mitt Romney won only one state more narrowly than Georgia (North Carolina). He won Kentucky by 23 points, more than in all but six states.
Undaunted, “super PACs” financed by labor unions and individuals spent hundreds of thousands of dollars supporting Ms. Grimes. The United Food and Commercial Workers union’s super PAC spent 94 percent of its $461,933 on the Kentucky race.
But Mr. McConnell’s weak approval numbers gave false hope to Democrats and their allies. Campaigns tend to move partisans toward their respective corners, as The Upshot noted when analyzing the Kentucky race in March. Campaign advertisements and messages emphasize the ideological differences between the candidates and polarize voters along party lines.
In Kentucky, Mr. McConnell was able to remind voters, over and over, that he opposed the president, whereas Ms. Grimes was in the same party as President Obama. In the race’s final weeks, Ms. Grimes repeatedly — and awkwardly — refused to answer whether she had voted for Mr. Obama.
In a debate, she defended her refusal to answer by saying it was “a matter of principle,” citing the constitutional right to a secret ballot. Mr. McConnell was ready with the easy reply, saying that he had voted for Mr. Romney in 2012 and John McCain in 2008, “and did so proudly.”
By September, polls were consistently showing Mr. McConnell ahead, by at least four points. By the race’s final days, polls showed him ahead by six to nine points.
Knott County, in the heart of unionized coal country, was symbolic of his victory. In the eastern part of the state, not far from the West Virginia and Virginia borders, Knott was one of the most reliably Democratic counties of the 20th century, and even today, 92 percent of voters are registered Democrats.
But those Democrats have been increasingly voting Republican. President Bill Clinton won 78 percent of the county in his 1996 re-election. Mr. Obama won 45 percent in 2008. Since then, the so-called war on coal — the Democratic Party’s effort to reduce carbon emissions — has caused the share to drop even further, hurting the party in Appalachia. This year, Ms. Grimes won 38 percent in Knott, to Mr. McConnell’s 58 percent.
