Doug Hoffman Costs Republicans a Pick-Up in U.S. House Race

New York Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman had suspended his campaign before the election, but that didn’t stop people from voting for him. In fact, Hoffman polled about 3 times the margin of victory for Democratic Congressman Bill Owens.

Hoffman’s 9,500 votes or 6% is very likely the cause of Republican Matthew Doheny’s defeat.

Here are the nearly complete numbers from that race…

Owens , Bill (i) — Dem – 76,124 (48%)
Doheny , Matthew — GOP – 72,372 (46%)
Hoffman , Doug — Con – 9,550 (6%)

A little background on Hoffman’s history with this District…

With the Democratic candidate Bill Owens and Republican Dierdre Scozzafava already campaigning for the 23rd congressional district special election of 2009, on August 7, 2009, the Conservative Party of New York opted to nominate Hoffman to run on the Conservative Party ticket.

The race drew significant national attention because of the relatively large amount of support for a third-party candidate from the national conservative base. Fiscal and social conservative groups backed Hoffman’s candidacy, including the Club for Growth, the Susan B. Anthony List, the National Organization for Marriage, Concerned Women for America PAC, Citizens of the Republic, the American Conservative Union, Eagle Forum, and Family Research Council PAC. Many notable Republicans, including former Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin, Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and former U.S. Senator Fred Thompson, endorsed Hoffman rather than the Republican candidate because they deemed Scozzafava insufficiently conservative and ideologically indistinguishable from the Democrat. To illustrate this point, the Hoffman campaign ran television advertisements depicting Scozzafava and Owens as “two peas in a liberal pod.”

After an October 31 poll showed Scozzafava trailing both Hoffman and Owens by 15% and 16% respectively, with her poll numbers collapsing, Scozzafava suspended her campaign on October 31 and endorsed the Democrat Bill Owens.

On Election Day, Bill Owens prevailed over Hoffman by a margin of 48.3% to 46%.

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