Glenn Youngkin’s victory in Virginia on Tuesday has supercharged the view that Republicans have big momentum as we head into the midterm elections next year. Everybody loves a winner, and Youngkin, having put the latest “W” on the scoreboard for the GOP, will be the model Republicans will look to replicate over the next year.
Plenty of post-election punditry will try to say what did (or didn’t) give Youngkin the edge. Progressives largely seem to have decided that a combination of the specter of critical race theory paired with congressional Democrats’ inability to “go bold” on Joe Biden’s agenda is what sunk former Gov. Terry McAuliffe and the rest of the Democratic ticket.
But my take on the available data suggests that rather than a single unified theory of “what happened in Virginia,” Youngkin’s victory was fueled by a variety of factors.
Schools mattered — in more ways than you think. Education was a top-tier issue in the Virginia governor’s race.
My polling showed
Youngkin ahead by 15 points among K-12 parents in Virginia. Youngkin’s ads in major media markets hammered McAuliffe saying he didn’t think parents should tell schools what they should teach, while promising to raise education funding.
Yes, “critical race theory” was a concept Youngkin would touch on in statements and on Twitter, though you probably didn’t hear those words in a TV ad in a major market.
But those saying “education” is simply a proxy for racism, and that this result is proof that white or conservative parents really don’t want schools to teach about topics like slavery or give a complete picture of American history, have misread the full picture of parents’ anxieties over what happened in Virginia.
On the race in schools question, I recently did
research for PIE Network
that found most Republican parents are supportive of students being taught about America’s complicated and often ugly past. They are supportive of teaching about a more diverse array of stories and historical figures and favor giving a more complete picture of the good and the bad these figures did in their lives. Some 77% of Republicans and 96% of Democrats alike agreed that “we should acknowledge the terrible things that have happened in our nation’s history regarding race so students can learn from them and make the future better.”
To be sure, parents are divided and alarmed over anything that seems to be deterministic about race, such as telling children their skin color will shape their future. They are uncomfortable with anything that feels like it is separating children by race.
But they are also alarmed by the learning loss that happened during the year that children were kept out of the classroom, worried about the effect of taking school resource officers out of public schools, upset over efforts to gut Gifted & Talented education, and, as a result, want to have more say and choice in their child’s education. That’s not just “critical race theory,” and dismissing all concerns around educational quality as code for a debate over race won’t serve Democrats well.
Youngkin got all the upside of Trump but none of the downside. There’s little doubt Donald Trump will try to take credit for Youngkin’s victory. To be clear, Trump quite literally “phoned it in” at the last minute for Youngkin after enough polls showed victory was in sight. Youngkin and Trump did not donate to each other, and Youngkin said the bare minimum about Trump necessary to survive the primary process.
However, what Trump did do over the last five years was engage many formerly disconnected voters and turn them into more habitual voters — for the GOP. The Republican dominance of rural America, paired with increased turnout in many deep-red areas, is surely in part because many of these voters were brought into the process by Trump and, luckily for Republicans, have turned out even without Trump on the ballot. As Chuck Todd put it in his coverage on election night last night, Republicans got an “A” for turnout.
Youngkin’s savvy move was not to embrace Trump but also not to insult Trump or disavow him. He was not about being pro- or anti-Trump. Youngkin was about being not about Trump. Every time he was asked, he said he was just focused on Virginia. He refused to take the bait.
In the current political environment, the Trump coalition seems primed to turn out and stick it to the Democrats even if Trump isn’t on the ballot himself. But trying to use the fear of Trump to hold on to swing voters doesn’t seem as viable a strategy for Democrats.
Candidates can’t take voters for granted. Take, for instance, black voters in Virginia. Turnout in heavily African American parts of Virginia was down slightly. Even just a small drop-off in black voter enthusiasm can be deadly to Democratic hopes in a state like Virginia. On Tuesday night, former Gov. Doug Wilder, the first African American ever elected governor of a U.S. state,
gave an interview
in which he revealed that McAuliffe had called him briefly to say he was running and never contacted him again. Meanwhile, he said, Youngkin called him repeatedly for advice on how he should handle the issue of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, an issue Youngkin focused on in the race. This is just one example, of course, but in a close race, Republicans putting in a little bit of work to win over voters who Democrats are taking for granted can yield dividends.
The national political environment is a mess for Democrats. A circular firing squad is emerging among Democrats, with some blaming various combinations of: the Biden administration in general, congressional centrists for holding up the Build Back Better plan, congressional progressives for holding up the infrastructure bill, progressive activists for pushing a left-wing agenda that has alienated suburbanites, etc. Frankly, it could be “all of the above,” but what matters most is that voters who had become Democratic voters in the Trump era have been open to snapping back. Even in a moment when unemployment is relatively low, a rising cost of living and a sense that Democrats aren’t able to govern effectively are causing Democrats to lose. Turnout in the Virginia governor’s race was high, but Democrats had a persuasion problem across the state. Historical and structural factors already make the 2022 midterm elections look good for Republicans; the last thing Democrats need is more headwinds.
Focusing on kitchen table issues and channeling the anxieties of parents have opened the suburbs back up to voting Republican. Youngkin deftly navigated his handling of the Trump issue as well, neutralizing it as an attack. Not all states are Virginia, and not all candidates are self-funding outsiders without a voting record to poke at, but Republicans will surely take a lot of pages from the Youngkin playbook.
