If it wasn't for the Loudoun County stuff going on now (which I wasn't aware of before), I wouldn't be even remotely nervous about this race. But that might be the kind of thing that could really give the GOP a boost in a state like VA (lots of suburban voters concerned about their kids). And it doesn't help that T-Mac and then Obama while campaigning for him basically just wrote off the rape of a girl because it wasn't convenient to the narrative that something like that NEVER could happen. Not a good look. Guess we'll find out, if the race is closer than it should be or if Youngkin even manages to pull it off somehow, just how powerful that kind of culture war stuff can really be. This is our first real test of that and our first glimpse into whether or not the GOP strategy they have set up for the midterms will be a success.
Anyway, no longer sure this is much of a safe lock as I thought, I'm walking that back. I still think T-Mac is a bigger favorite than the polls suggest, but not completely safe due to the potential for these factors to affect the race and an unclear picture of who will turn out. In CA, predictions that Rs would vote in massively greater numbers turned out to be totally wrong, but that might have been at least partly because they literally mailed ballots to everyone. VA doesn't do that.
How is the Loudon County thing automatically something negative for Ds? Nothing about that situation is political, so why would it help the GOP?
You have political insticts of Hillary Clinton.
