Republican Glenn Youngkin’s victory in the Virginia gubernatorial race shows the advantages of a Reaganesque campaign, upbeat and welcoming, over the snarling sociopathy of former President Donald Trump.
Republicans should learn from Youngkin that they can win “swing” states only when they are competitive in suburbia and exurbia, and that to be competitive among the “soccer moms” of suburbia, they need to attract and unify, not divide and demonize.
Granted, this week’s election was determined by significant factors in addition to non-Trumpiness, most notably backlash against the leftist takeover of public schools and the Biden administration’s radical turn. Still, the numbers are striking: Trump was absolutely wiped out in suburban Virginia, while Youngkin performed respectably there.
As data site FiveThirtyEight notes, Youngkin beat Trump’s performance “in every locality in the state.” But he outperformed Trumpian “benchmarks” the most in big-city suburbs and within and around the smaller-but-significant cities. In the Northern Virginia suburbs and far exurbs of Washington, D.C., strongly Democratic-leaning counties Fairfax, Prince William, and Loudoun, as well as the city of Alexandria, together represent 25.47% of the state’s voters. Youngkin made up no ground in Prince William but beat the benchmarks in the other three places by 2.6%, 4.7%, and 2.5%, respectively.
Youngkin did even better relative to Trump around the second-tier cities that Trump barely carried: by 5% in Rockingham County, around Harrisonburg, and by 6.2% in Chesterfield County, which is the Richmond suburbs. And around other mini-population centers such as Blacksburg (home to Virginia Tech), the town of Radford jumped 9.8 points for Youngkin. And Charles City County, a heavy Biden area, broke nearly even in the governor’s race — an 8.9% improvement for Youngkin over Trump.
These are the areas where working families striving for better things, including duly naturalized Hispanics, hold to old-style values while sending their children to public schools. It is especially the women in these families, not necessarily college-educated but with the determined mindset of the upwardly mobile, who recoil at Trump’s behavior and corruption but who want their children to imbibe the American creed of liberty and self-reliance. Without Trump on the ballot to turn them away from Republicans and with Democrats embracing a school culture that indoctrinates children in racial obsessions, victimhood, and disdain for this good nation that the mothers want them to love, these suburban mothers moved heavily for the Republican candidate.
Exit polls showed white women narrowly favoring Biden over Trump, 50%-49%, but favoring Youngkin over Democrat Terry McAuliffe, 57%-43% — a massive swing of 15 points (net). But it was the non-college graduates among white women who really made the difference, swinging by a monumental 38 points (net). Again, these are the striving suburbanites and exurbanites, the first-generation soccer moms, who swarmed overwhelmingly to a non-Trump Republican.
Notably, Youngkin also appears to have won 55%-43% among Hispanic voters, a result that should send shockwaves through ranks of Democratic strategists who just a half-decade ago thought Hispanics were a Democratic captive constituency. Again, without Trump on the ballot, winsome Republicans such as Youngkin will appeal to all those who think at least some version of the American dream is not just a cliché but a still-valuable ideal.
Despite cries of anguish from a few (too few) of us conservatives, too many Republican strategists spent 15 years trying to win with appeals to upper-class suburbanites without regard to upwardly mobile blue-collar workers. Alas, Trump basically spat on the former while embracing only the worst instincts of the latter. The way conservatives can win, though, is to appeal to both simultaneously — a skill (and natural inclination) Reagan had and one that Youngkin is reviving.
We win not by division but by addition. That’s the political race theory to remember.
