Virginia Mega Thread: The Youngkin Administration

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Democrats should just pass a "No Critical Race Theory in Public Schools Act" and spend a few million highlighting it in white suburban battleground districts honestly. It wouldn't actually do anything policy-wise, takes the issue off the table politically, and is not something the Democratic base cares about en masse.

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Exit polls of course should be taken with a massive grain of salt (especially the Edison Research ones), but they show Youngkin doing 15 points better than Trump with White Evangelical voters. Democrats' heavy focus on abortion/right to choose likely contributed to this.

Such a shift would easily and clearly explain Youngkin overperforming Trump's SWVA margins, and is a strong sign - especially in such a high turnout election - that Republican margins in rural America (especially in the deep south/great plains) are not yet maxed out.

The rural margins in the deep south are maxed out. They are consistently 70-85% R in the exurban and rural counties in most southern states from South Carolina to TX. The only real exceptions are heavily black rural areas. The evangelicals that swung back R are suburban evangelicals which are a huge block of voters in southern suburbs, especially in GA in TX. In GA, Democrats can at least take solace in the fact that a lot of the gains were thanks to the mobilization of African Americans who are at no risk of swinging GOP. TX Democrats however should be terrified of this result. If this continues, I don't see Abbott winning by less than 13 points and it wouldn't surprise me at all if he ends up over 15.

Deleted this post shortly after posting it because the numbers were a bit messed up. Regardless, definitely need more research into suburban evangelicals - their population numbers are waning quickly, many are moving further south/towards the coast for retirement, and any reversion among them politically is not going to be sustainable. Certainly no reason to rule out further GOP gains among rurals.

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https://twitter.com/Booker4KY/status/1455712865063776261?s=20

lol

THAT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE WHEN THE YOUNGKIN ACTUALLY SEEMS TO HAVE UNDERPERFORMED WITH WHITE VOTERS AND DID BETTER WITH MINORITIES!!

That being said, I want to see the full demographics.

Do keep in mind that, with Black voters in particular (which is who I assume Booker is referring to), over/underperformance by Republicans is typically driven by turnout differentials rather than vote changing.

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Spent a bit of time with all the polling I could get my hands on (both public and private) and reconciled it with early voting indicators, some voter file analysis, roughshod modeling, and general observations of fundamentals. Came down with the takeaway that Youngkin can win, but he'll need one/both of a) a Democratic turnout collapse that early voting indicates is not happening and b) a sizeable improvement with independent and softer Democratic voters that polling indicates is possible but a tall order.

One thing that struck me is that Youngkin's best polls aren't actually showing this improvement. Rather, they're showing him gaining among Black voters and non-college whites. Its easy to dismiss this (Black voters being historically inelastic and non-college whites already supporting Republicans in massive numbers) and I certainly think it's much more likely that these polls are flawed, but there are also some explanations that are quite plausible:
     

• The increasing educational/religious polarization is starting to take hold of Black voters in a manner similar to Hispanic voters last cycle.
• Educational polarization is superseding urban/rural polarization among white voters, and non-college whites in urban areas (there are quite a few in VA) are abandoning Democrats.
• The remaining Democratic non-college white voters are planning to sit this election out.

Again, think it's much more likely these polls are just highly flawed and that McAuliffe/Youngkin's coalitions will be par for the course and unremarkable. But on the off chance they're actually just ahead of the curve and picking up on a burgeoning realignment, think it could have fascinating implications for the rest of the decade and could certainly lead to some hilarious dummymanders down the line.

Quoting my own post to point out that it looks like Youngkin got B here: sizeable improvement with independent and softer Democratic voters. This election certainly disproved the proponents of the base-is-everything/"there are no swing voters" strategy.

Doesn't rule out the possibility of the realignment I theorized, but there weren't many if any signs of it here. Exit polls seem to indicate McAuliffe held his own among the voters of color who turned out.

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New ad dropped by Younkin's super PAC, hinting at a presidential run to "pursue Reagan's legacy".

Do Resign-to-Run rules apply to VA?

https://twitter.com/GlennYoungkin/status/1659167200316407808?cxt=HHwWgIC23eXxxYY...

Supposedly this ad is "only" for Youngkin's PAC which is focusing on the November legislative elections. But it's blatantly a presidential campaign ad.

Odd timing given how he very recently said he won't be running.

It just occurred to me how Glenn Youngkin is really the only new Republican Governor or Senator from the Biden era that seems like a plausible presidential candidate. 2022 really stifled a lot of the would-be future candidates. Maybe JD Vance, but he’s a mess.

Youngkin is extremely unique among modern elected officials in that he didn't have to go thru a primary campaign. Virginia's GOP chose to have a convention instead of a primary in order to prevent Amanda Chase from being the nominee. Youngkin ran on a campaign meant to appeal to convention delegates, who were more akin to the Virginia GOP pre-Trump than the primary electorate of 2021. This meant he didn't have to become quite as vocally/verbally MAGA as others.

"Youngkin didn't have to win a primary" was massive Democratic/liberal cope.....that wound up being 100% correct and prescient.

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The Youngkin 15-week ban proposal is revealingly stupid (not necessarily about him, moreso about the party's approach to abortion in general) because it assumes that a majority of voters want a compromise on abortion to begin with.

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I have seen no polling in this state this cycle yet, but just a friendly reminder that Virginia is one of the few states (maybe the only) where aggressive "Dems are blowing it!" beltway media coverage can actually galvanize Democratic voters.