Virginia Mega Thread: The Youngkin Administration

[ChiefFireWaterMike]

Safe D before this poll, and Safe D after.




Nuff said

Not falling for the Virginia game

this

[ChiefFireWaterMike]

After going thru exit polls in 2017 and 2020 and the recent polls, what is sticking out to me specificially is Males and 18-44 year olds.

Gillepsie won males by 2, while Biden won them by 1. Most recent polls have Youngkin up 10-15% with Men, so interested to see if that bares out. Biden and Northam also won females by about the same % as well (22-23%), while most polls have T-Mac up 15-20% with them.

18-44 year olds when for Northam by 30, and Biden by about 25. Recent polls show T-Mac in the single digits with that group.

Subsamples aside, I'm interested to see if what more than a few polls are seeing is true, or if we just got bad samples with these groups. Males would not surprise me if Youngkin did better than Gillepsie/Trump, but the 18-44 category would be more surprising if it was that low.

Finally some interesting conversation in this thread. Does someone smarter than me know if these numbers make sense for a close statewide race? Like have they been attainable before, etc?

[ChiefFireWaterMike]

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.

Just want to say I love your posts and appreciate your insights.

Has the private polling you've seen lined up with what we're seeing in the public polls?

Indeed, truly a gift to have a pollster among us.

[ChiefFireWaterMike]

Before their terms expire, can the House or Senate Democrats quickly impeach Youngkin. That could buy valuable time for Democrats to regroup.

wtf