Virginia Mega Thread: The Youngkin Administration

[Sir Mohamed]

He would be the 1st VA gov who served non-consecutive term ever? Their one term limit is kind of ridiculous anyway.

Anyway, endorsed.

[Sir Mohamed]

I wouldn't be surprised if some of the other candidates are start dropping out soon. And this Carter dude isn't going anywhere, lol.

[Sir Mohamed]

I agree, McAuliffe stating he has more experience is objectively correct and for sure not racist whatsoever. That said, it's fair to point he ran in 2009 and 2013 without experience in statewide or other elected office. But complaining about racist dog whistles is not fair game here and would make me less likely to support her candidacy. I would most likely end up voting for McAuliffe if I were in VA. He did a fair job last time and the 1 term limit is outdated, if not kind of ridiculous.

[Sir Mohamed]

Ugh. What are his chances in the primary? I assume next to nothing since McAuliffe is in?

[Sir Mohamed]

So, Herring's bid is pretty much done, right? I remember that he had extremely weak fundraising numbers posted some pages back. The blackface stuff seems to have finished him off, while Northam has recovered because his performance in office is solid. If he was able to run again, he'd probably win reelection (while McAuliffe doesn't challenge him).

[Sir Mohamed]

Ugh, how is this dude even running? He's likely guilty of rape.

[Sir Mohamed]

Northam endorses McAuliffe:

https://twitter.com/RalphNortham/status/1380093875629527042

[Sir Mohamed]

Northam endorses McAuliffe:

https://twitter.com/RalphNortham/status/1380093875629527042

Well, McAuliffe endorsed Northam all the way back in 2016, so it makes sense that he's now returned the favor.

Yup, but if my memory is correct, McAuliffe was among the calls for Northam's resignation during the blackface scandal. But seems like that is over and by objective measures, Northam is a decent gov.

[Sir Mohamed]

When mostly unknown businesspeople get a nomination 4 gov instead of well established politicians, isn't that an obvious sign no serious officeholder wants him/herself get embarrassed in an inevitable loss?

[Sir Mohamed]

A lot of Dems who usually vote in Presidential elections will sit this race out.

Combined with a financial edge from Youngkin, this will be a 50-49 race in either direction.

McAuliffe will certainly not win by 2% or more (you can quote me after the election).

No, no, no, 1000x no.  Virginia is a state where the educated population skews heavily democratic relative to the overall electorate.  Educated voters vote in off off years.  Advantage dems and they won't be sitting this out.  Turnout will be higher in NOVA as a percentage of the state than it was in 2020. 

This means for Youngkin (they are already calling him "Trumpkin") to win he will have to win over a significant chunk of fairly reliable Democratic voters in NOVA.  Highly unlikely unless he can completely focus the election on taxes, schools, and maybe a few other issues.  His main problem, aside from the tilt of the state is that Terry (who will likely be the D candidate) is a moderate on a lot of those issues.  So all he needs to do is tie Youngkin to the GOP and Trump (hence "Trumpkin") to win.

Yup. It may not be a double digit win for McAuliffe, by he'll win by at very least 5 pts. If I had to make a bet, I'd say he wins by 7.5 pts.

[Sir Mohamed]

Seems like Herring has fought his way back to renomination since he rentered the race for AG. The gov-primary is obviously Safe McAuliffe while lt. gov. is a total wildcard.

[Sir Mohamed]

I wish we soon get a bunch of GE polls. There haven't been any in recent weeks or even in months.

[Sir Mohamed]

Glad to see the early takes by some about low turnout (Dave Wasserman to be specific) were very, very wrong.

Pretty dam impressive for the primary to hit about 500K in the end which is just under 2017 and incredibly less competitive.

Also LOL @ Justin Fairfax's horrific and devastating performance. Satisfying

Excatly my thoughts. The turnout for sure is very encouraging news for Dems. Btw, McAuliffe almost got the same number of raw votes than Northam in the 2017 primary.

My early prediction would be McAuliffe winning by anything between 6 and 9 pts.

And lol @ Carter, lol @ Fairfax

[Sir Mohamed]

The Commonwealth is in good hands with Daddy Mac at the helm.   Hopefully he runs for president one day.   We need more Clintonian efficiency at all levels of government. 

He'd more govern like Biden I assume. That said, the timeline to become prez seems against him. Even if Biden is not running again, Harris has a shoe in the nomination. And if not her, it'll be someone more progressive. 2028 is too far down the road and McAuliffe is already 64. Anyways, if Trump were the GOP nominee, I'd have more confidence in McAuliffe to win the GE than Harris. And I'm saying this as strong Harris supporter.

[Sir Mohamed]

Well, Mr. Ojeda said the same in 2018/19.

[Sir Mohamed]

Lol, this non-answer might actually lose the dude more voters on the right than it wins him in the center.

[Sir Mohamed]

https://twitter.com/JessicaTaylor/status/1441374272602218496

Because of course.

Here we go again.  Dems are going to lose a state that Biden won by 10 points.  Of course this is happening. 

Seems like an over-reaction

Seems more like doomerism to me. These ratings don't mean much, they also said AL-Sen 2020 is a tossup or just Lean R.

[Sir Mohamed]

https://twitter.com/christinafreund/status/1443343610838142980?s=20

Big Youngkin momentum!

Ugh... that won't change a single vote. Nobody cares about these kind of endorsements.

[Sir Mohamed]

Who's still taking Politico serious? Their lame "Dems in disarray" narrative gets kind of tiresome.

[Sir Mohamed]

It will be so funny when this ends up being a McAuliffe +1-2 victory and both Democratic and Republican hacks on here have egg on their face.

Two posts will inevitably happen:

SnowLabrador Concerned Citizen ★★★★★ Posts: 4,509

Virginia election results « on: November 3, 2021, 06:50:22 pm » Biden won the state by 10, so there's a 9 point GOP shift. Mark my words, we're about to lose 80 seats in the House next year and McConnell will come close to having a filibuster proof majority in the senate. Biden is over and will absolutely not run, leaving the inevitable loss against Trump to Harris.

SirWoodbury Concerned Citizen ★★★★★ Posts: 3,011

Reaction to Trump winning VA in 2024? « on: November 3, 2021, 04:13:21 pm » ?

[Sir Mohamed]

The blue avatars said Youngkin is running an amazing campaign.

If Youngkin loses by the typical VA margin what will the spin be?  You've said he's run a great campaign.  Or will they just ignore the results kind of like they did right after the CA embarrassment?

They will say that VA has been a blue state for at least a few years and therefore it didn't matter what campaign he ran as he was always doomed due to polarization no matter what. Or that TMac just had too high name rec.

[Sir Mohamed]

Polls moved towards the democrats as the CA recall approached, that isn't happening here.

On the hand the polls were acually starting to narrow during the 2017 virigina governer race

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2017/governor/va/virginia_governor_gillespie_vs_northam-6197.html

Northam went from having solid leads over his opponent to polls showing him only having a 1 or 2 point lead at the end

The polls were all over the place in 2017, and while some of them narrowed, there were plenty of them that showed a sizable Northam lead.

That is not the case here. One thing you'll notice is that there's far less of them this year, but also that they're remarkably stable (last 4-5 polls have had ties). That doesn't mean they'll be completely accurate, but they're more likely to be.

Also, common sense in 2017 should've told us that an unpopular Donald Trump would be a drag on Gillespie, especially in a state he lost by 5 points. Why would he do better than Trump in an off-year? Poeple should've asked that question. But people don't want to apply that principle here because they don't want to give up on their ridiculous Safe D proclamations.

I dunno who seriously predicts McAuliffe outperfomring Biden's 2020 10 pt margin. That's not going to happen unless polls are totally off. Most predictions from red avatars seems to be in the 3-7 pts. range.

[Sir Mohamed]

I have a question. If McAuliffe does lose, what do you think will have been the biggest reasons as to why he lost?

Here's my 5 reasons as to why McAuliffe might lose.

#1. Biden's unpopularity.

It can definitely be said that Biden is in a much weaker position in terms of his approval ratings than he was even three short months ago. Biden is underwater in several Virginia polls as well which might indicate Biden's national popularity has carried over to The Old Dominion State. If McAuliffe loses, part of that may very well be because Youngkin was able to tie him to Biden successfully.

#2. Youngkin has been a relatively decent candidate and has run a good campaign for a Republican in Virginia.

If Amanda Chase was the GOP nominee, we would likely not be having discussions about this race being close. Youngkin became the nominee though and he can be stated to have done a relatively decent job at appealing to both Trumpers by advocating for many of Trump's ideas and moderate Republicans/independents by speaking in at least a slightly more reserved tone on the campaign trail.

#3. Youngkin might win out on the education issue.

The issue of education has arguably become the biggest issue of this race and Youngkin has been doing fairly well on the issue of education in most polls. If more voters end up trusting Youngkin more than McAuliffe on election day on the issue of education, that should bode well for his chances.

#4. Turnout

If Youngkin wins, It may be partly so due to having a relatively high rural turnout with McAuliffe having a relatively lackluster turnout in urban areas and suburbs.

#5. McAuliffe might simply be a rather lackluster candidate.

While yes, McAuliffe was previously governor. It can be argued that he doesn't have that much of enthusiastic supporters. The same arguably cannot be said for Youngkin who definitely seems to have a pretty loud and energetic base of support. In this sense, it could be seen as a mini-2016 presidential election. Clinton was leading in most of the polls but suffered from a lackluster turnout while Trump's base was rather energetic for him and if McAuliffe loses, I'm sure these comparisons might well be brought up.

If McAuliffe does lose, I think it will have been due to a combination of these five factors.

Good take.

#4 is the most important point in my opinion. If McAuliffe actually ends up losing this race, it will be due to low turnout from Dem and D-leaning voters across the board. That would continue the pattern that voters of the sitting prez become far less motivated to vote, while voters of the opposition are out there to vote against the current admin. We also saw this at the beginning of the Obama and Trump tenures.

That said, it says nothing about the next presidential election. Obama still got reelected and Trump came closer than polls and previous election returns suggested. I still expect Atlas to completely freak out over a Youngkin victory and declare Biden and/or Harris 2024 completely DOA.

[Sir Mohamed]

Limoliberal posting that guy is giving me 2017 flashbacks

Aw, I miss King Lear. LOL.

[Sir Mohamed]

Ugh, this is kind of shocking even if not fully surprising after the past few weeks. The writings were on the wall.

Looking at things unfolding, I think we have to confess that Youngkin run a pretty good campaign and I congratulate him for this feat. At the same time T-Mac run a horrible one. Just saying "orange man bad" isn't a winning message. That said, we need to look at the larger picture here. Yup, T-Mac didn't campaign the way he should have, BUT the fact NJ isn't called yet and so close shows you there are more difficult than one man's (T-Mac) apparent failures. It's also spelling trouble that key demographics like suburban voters and Hispanics have rejected the Dem candidate. Biden's 2020 winning coalition is fragile and looking at how close deciding states were last year, Dems have a lot of work to do. Particularly with regard to messaging, something the party really sucks at.

While this isn't saying much about 2022 since a year is a lifetime in politics, for Dems to turn it around conditions need to change. And I'm much more skeptical of that now than I were just back in summer. It's very reasonable to assume Biden will be a lame duck after the midterms and we're not getting another trifecta for the rest of the decade, regardless of what happens in 2024.