He ran as a democrat in a republican stronghold against a former member of trumps White House. For him to win would mean both changing the minds of hundreds of thousands of people as well as inspiring hundreds of thousands more to actually show up and vote (note 50% turnout). Their state house also has overwhelming republican control (72-29) as well as state senate (27-8) and state Supreme Court (9-0)

His loss was guaranteed before he started but it’s nice that he gave it serious effort. Elections in states like this are essentially theater to piss away shitloads of money. Welcome to America. Maybe in 30-50 years you can chip away some of that and get a tiny foothold, only to have fucked over by the fact that the judiciary is overwhelmingly controlled by republicans with no balance whatsoever.

Most Republican dominated southern states will always vote R.

Let's use Oklahoma as an example. A state that has been run by Republicans for almost 2 decades, and they still blame democrats for everything. Most people in Oklahoma are highly religious team players. They will ALWAYS vote R, no matter who is on the ticket. Could be the neighbors dog vs. constitutional scholar.

Neighbors Dog - R

Scholar- D

Dog winning 10/10 everytime.

Skin color

Name recognition is king.

Plus there seems to be an anti-intellectual, anti-education trend.

So a lot of low information voters weren’t aware of his qualifications. However all too many consider those qualifications detrimental