Virginia Mega Thread: The Youngkin Administration

[Associate Justice PiT]

https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1455688205227941894?s=20

     Had never heard of Radford before. Turns out it only has ~17k people. Makes me wonder what small towns elsewhere could be bellwethers for their states.

[Associate Justice PiT]

CNN just said that only about 23% of the current vote is early vote, that is expected to increase to 37% by the end of the night.

Also looking at CNN results, Ayala is running even with Youngkin, Miyares is about half a percent behind him. A sweep seems like the most likely outcome, one way or another.

     Some people I saw seemed to believe Sears and Miyares would run behind Youngkin, but ticket-splitting is not common anymore. Maybe it was just optimism for Youngkin not transferring to other VA Republicans.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Hopefully this will teach Democrats from ever spouting about CRT again.

Republicans are literally the only ones I ever hear talk about it.

And yet it just won them the VA governor's mansion.

Well that and cold, flippant attitudes towards a high school girl getting raped by a boy in a dress.

Maybe these issues don't resonate with you, and maybe the crowd you hang around never discusses them, but alas, you aren't a suburban parent and swing voter in VA, are you?

     Reminds me of an article I read about David Shor and his theory that Dem operatives are terrible at reading what resonates with swing voters and are potentially even sabotaging their candidates by assuming their pet issues resonate with a broader audience. Reading politics with that in mind, it has really struck me how well it pans out.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Loudoun 95% in now with mail votes counted, only same day left. T-Mac only up by 11. Not even close to good enough. That county alone likely blew it for him for highly specific reasons. It's Miami-Dade 2.0.

     For reference, Loudon was 11 points more Dem than the state as a whole in 2017. It will probably tighten a bit as the last votes are counted. Seems to bear out Nate Cohn's tweet that all signs point (modestly) to Youngkin.

[Associate Justice PiT]

https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1455688205227941894?s=20

     Had never heard of Radford before. Turns out it only has ~17k people. Makes me wonder what small towns elsewhere could be bellwethers for their states.

Virginia makes it easy to find the results for (many) towns and cities by having "Independent" cities which are not a part of the surrounding county. No other state allows this, and the only thing somewhat similar are city-counties (Philadelphia and San Francisco).

     That is true, but is Radford an independent city? I haven't looked into the topic much, but I don't think that is the case.

[Associate Justice PiT]

https://twitter.com/PollProjectUSA/status/1455693839109279747?t=nk4qJRyd2D2q0ngk...

     Might as well if you can call Youngkin, but it is still big. If the HoD flips too, it will serve as a powerful lesson to not sink your state party's electoral fortunes with a poor gubernatorial candidate.

[Associate Justice PiT]

In summary, Youngkin ran an excellent campaign while McAuliffe ran an awful one. Dems cannot control the narrative for the life of them... BTW I fully believe if the Dem party in Loudoun had their sh**t together TMAC would have won bc this CRT/anti-trans narrative wouldn't have spun out of control...

If this was just about campaign quality, then why are downballot R's doing close to as well as Youngkin?

Hint: It's because the entire democratic party and Joe Biden is unpopular because of inflation, Afghanistan, COVID, not getting anything done in Washington, and generally extreme social stances.

     It fascinates me when I see Dems who think that running against Trump is the key to a durable, long-term majority. Reality is voters don't care about specific issues for that long; once Trump left office he stopped being a salient bugbear with people outside of diehard Dem partisans. Now they have to answer for the words and actions of President Biden and Congressional Democrats and those things will set the tone of the 2022 midterms.

     The upshot for them is they still have a year until the midterm elections, and for the very reason I specified it is entirely possible for them to turn their fortunes around and do well there. But it will not be easy.

[Associate Justice PiT]

It's noteworthy that both Georgia and Virginia showed a lot of polling momentum for the winners...something to pay attention to.

     That is a good point. I think people just tended to assume that poll numbers are stable unless they have reason to move, but that assumption may be false. If people around you are switching from one candidate to another, it likely creates pressure on you to do the same. Obviously this does not apply in a strict sense or else poll numbers would only ever go in one direction barring major developments, but large late momentum towards one candidate seems to be a strong indicator of victory. I went conservative and guessed McAuliffe by 1.2, but that was mainly because I did not want to believe in momentum just because it was convenient for me to do so.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Something democrats don’t get is : Responding to the CRT debate by saying but it isn’t taught in public schools is ok if it isn’t then why are you guys getting so worked up by opposing candidates saying they will ban it . If it isn’t being taught than that ban shouldn’t change a thing right .

     Yep. Saying it isn't being taught doesn't help when you turn around and try to defend it, even in a small way. Suburban parents see Democrats carrying water for something they heavily dislike and this makes them angry.

[Associate Justice PiT]

https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1455709644324749312?s=20

     Many suburban voters were ok with Trump on the issues, but not his language and tone. This was the correction that was inevitable when Trump left office. Dems should not have imagined they had these people locked down.

[Associate Justice PiT]

The VA AG race is probably the most in-doubt race at this point (87% reporting).

     The difference is really tiny, though. Just 16,389 votes separately the Republican with the least votes (Miyares) from the one with the most (Youngkin). I would have thought undervotes alone would make the gap bigger than that.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Apparently Youngkin won Hispanics by 5

     Impressive, given they were D+35 in the 2017 VA-GOV election. Caveat emptor though that they are a small segment in VA, so the margin of error will be pretty large there.

[Associate Justice PiT]

The story is that Loudon County pulled a Miami-Dade and then Youngkin ran ahead of Trump pretty much everywhere else.

     Based on what's in Loudon has trended D from 2017. That could change, but it does not look like the comparison is not bearing out.

[Associate Justice PiT]

https://twitter.com/tencor_7144/status/1455724276846374915?s=20

     This is a good point. NJ-GOV by all rights should be a comfortable D win. Even though Murphy likely pulls it out, it is a bad sign for it to be close.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Rare for me to not be negetive but what is the alarmist about NJ?

I know 51% is in but almost all of it is GOP. So shouldn’t the remaining 49% be overwhelmingly Dem?

Ciattarelli winning Bergen County.

     The numbers there are quite puzzling. Murphy won Bergen by 15 last time, and now Ciattarelli leads it by 7. I thought maybe he was from there, but he isn't.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Something is wrong with the Washington Post tracker. They have McAuliffe ahead in Frederick County 69% to 30%, when Trump won it with 62%.

NPR is the same.

     CNN has Youngkin ahead 69-30 in Frederick County.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Why do people keep trying to make this about "white voters mad at the Democrats"? Youngkin is overperforming with everyone. That's like saying that Laura Kelly winning in 2018 meant white voters were going D en masse.

     Seems like every surprise Dem loss gets pinned on angry white voters, regardless of what the crosstabs actually show.

[Associate Justice PiT]

I hope NSV is alright. And I don't mean that in a spiteful way.

Why would you feel someone who treated people like sh**t..?

     We should hope for the best for everyone. Even those who would not do the same for us.