Every poll leading up to the race showed Democrat Jack Conway in the lead, and he ended up losing by nine points. This in itself is not terribly remarkable, until you look at the down ballot races. How could lower level democratic candidates, like state auditor, attorney general, and secretary of state get more votes than the democratic candidate for governor?

The voting machines used by Kentucky have been shown to be easily hackable, and votes for a Democrat could easily be changed to votes for a republican.

But these claims are commonly made by activists in both parties when they lose an election they felt they should have won.

Every Poll Showed Conway Ahead

Vox Populi put out a poll just days before the election which showed Bevin ahead. Polls have suffered from a bad stretch of inaccuracy. More than half of all homes no longer use a landline phone, and polls have gotten into trouble calling cell phones in the past.

Even when they call cell phones legally, area codes are no longer useful. Cell phones move with people now, in and out of Kentucky. It is also a problem for pollsters to reach many deeply conservative voters.

This political crowd does not trust the media, and often refuse to take place in the poll, leaving a large portion of potential voters unaccounted for in the polls.

Down Ballot Democrats Got More Votes Than Conway

It is unrealistic to say this never happens; except when it does. Down ballot Republicans also got more votes than Matt Bevin. Newly elected Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles got 50,000 more votes than Bevin, and Allison Ball, the Treasurer-elect, got 60,000 more.

A few major factors contributed to this outcome. Independent Drew Curtis candidate got 35,000. None of the down ballot races had independents run, so this was 35,000 less votes for Conway or Bevin than the down ballot candidates.

The second big factor was that neither Bevin nor Conway are very likable people. Each of their favorability ratings hovered around 35 percent. Neither party was excited about voting for their own candidate, which was reflected in part by each receiving less votes than their down ballot comrades.

The Issues Were Complicated

Often in elections the choice between Republican and Democrat is clear and definitive. That is not the case in Kentucky, where even Democrats are conservative.

This race saw many Democrats vote for Bevin because of his support for Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis, and religious liberty. Bevin has always been strongly anti-abortion, and the heavily doctored videos claiming to show, falsely, Planned Parenthood harvesting organs from live babies also pushed many Democrats to vote for Bevin.

Negative Advertising Works

It didn’t matter that Conway was the only Attorney General from the president’s own party to join a lawsuit against his coal regulations, or that Obama would have only one year in office at the same time as the new governor. Obama-anything is a political death sentence in Kentucky.

Many voters who had benefitted from the Medicaid expansion and Kynect, both Obamacare programs, voted against Conway, who supported these programs.

All of these factors added up to a legitimate Matt Bevin victory. Neither candidate was very well liked, but the combination of Kim Davis, abortion and Obama brought more democrats in to vote for Bevin than the combination of trustworthiness, Kynect and the Medicaid expansion brought for Conway.