I’ve become too much of a cynic not to question whether Republican Virginia gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin can really pull this off. But for the first time in this race, just a couple of days before Election Day, Youngkin is ahead of Democratic opponent Terry McAuliffe, and there seems to be a real chance he can win this state.
A Fox News poll released Thursday showed Youngkin up to 53% of support among likely voters, while McAuliffe earned just 45%. The RealClearPolitics average now has Youngkin at 48.2% and McAuliffe at 47.3%. Considering the race has been at a dead heat for the past couple of weeks, this is a significant change that suggests the political momentum is finally on Youngkin’s side.
Even the Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman thinks there’s a good chance Youngkin comes out on top. As he noted on Twitter, Youngkin only needs 34% of the vote in Fairfax County and 43% of the vote in Loudoun County — two of the state’s most liberal counties — to win statewide. I’m willing to bet that this isn’t just a possible outcome, but a likely one, since Fairfax and Loudoun have been the focus of Virginia voters’ discontent, for reasons I’ll explain in a moment.
A reminder: Youngkin likely only needs to hit 34% in Fairfax and 43% in Loudoun to win statewide. I think that’s doable for him in this political environment. We’ll see soon enough. https://t.co/P4nF29382m
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) October 28, 2021
But even if Youngkin does not win, the fact that this race is as close as it has been proves two things: Culture war issues are winning issues, and President Joe Biden’s administration is a complete and utter failure.
The race between Youngkin and McAuliffe didn’t really begin to narrow until Youngkin began focusing on education and the troubling effects of Democrats’ attempts to hijack Virginia’s public school system, especially in Loudoun and Fairfax counties. In Fairfax, for example, parents discovered that officials had implemented critical race theory into the schools, the result of which was an after-school program that excluded white students on the assumption that they were more “privileged” than others. And in Loudoun, parents learned that school officials tried to cover up the rape of a ninth grade girl because the attacker was a male student wearing a skirt in the girls’ restroom.
As soon as Youngkin began to campaign on behalf of the parents concerned about what was happening in these schools, his numbers began to increase. And that’s because voters on both sides of the political spectrum care a lot about their children and what they’re being taught. They want to make sure their children are getting the best education they can possibly get, and toxic racialism and radical transgenderism are not that.
Republicans should learn from this and lean into culture war issues such as critical race theory and transgenderism rather than avoid them. It worked for Youngkin in a blue state — there’s no reason to believe it wouldn’t work elsewhere, too.
Democrats have a lot to learn from this race, too. If McAuliffe manages to beat Youngkin, he will have done so by only a couple of points. That’s miserable news for Biden, who won Virginia by 10 points in 2020. Less than a year later, Biden’s favored candidate is struggling just to stay afloat. That’s an indictment of this White House and its many policy failures, but it’s also a red flag for all Democrats. If McAuliffe can barely hang on to a state that recently has reliably voted blue, what does that mean for more vulnerable Democratic candidates heading into the 2022 elections?
Despite my best intentions, my hopes for a Youngkin victory are high. I know better than to expect him to win, but I’ve also seen enough to know that his campaign’s success thus far is a good sign of things to come.
