Analysis: Why Democrats are in a lot of trouble in Virginia
If the polls are to be believed, Republicans are going to do very well in Virginia given the political baseline in the state. Traditionally, this would foretell a strong Republican performance in next year’s midterms. In fact, given Virginia is more blue than the nation as a whole on the presidential level, a tie in this year’s gubernatorial election would essentially be in line with Republicans winning the national House vote by 5 points next year.
Still, the most likely outcome is a close margin between McAuliffe and Youngkin. That’s bad for Democrats given that President Joe Biden won the state by 10 points last year.
Looking over the last two presidential elections, Virginia has been about 5 points to the left of the nation.
A close result would be — and the tightening of the polls already is — a sign that Biden’s slagging popularity is having an impact on down-ballot Democrats. McAuliffe’s lead has disappeared as Biden went from having a positive net approval rating (approve – disapprove) in the state to a -7 net approval rating on average during October.
Among the pollsters who have recently provided a result among registered voters, McAuliffe is ahead by 3 points on average. That’s 4 points worse for the Democrat than among likely voters (a 1 point Youngkin lead).
Still, this shouldn’t be too surprising because Biden is the incumbent, even if Trump is more present than usual for a former president.
In an unfortunate sign for Democrats, this presidential unpopularity translated into his party losing seats in US House elections nationally the following year (2010, 2014 and 2018).
Looking to the House of Delegates
Of course, the gubernatorial race in Virginia is just one race. It’s better to look at a slew of elections, if we can, to understand if the results signify broader trends.
Fortunately for political analysts, we can examine the state’s 100 House of Delegate races that are up for grabs on Tuesday.
Specifically, check out the difference between the aggregated statewide Delegates’ vote share margin in both 2013 and 2017 compared with the margin in the presidential election the year before. It turns out that this swing is correlated well with the swing from the presidential vote margin nationally to the national House vote in the next year’s midterms.
The 2013 example is particularly notable because McAuliffe won that year, even as Democrats would suffer big losses the following year in the US House. McAuliffe’s victory that cycle had more to do with his unpopular GOP opponent (Ken Cuccinelli) than the national environment.
Democrats and Republicans were tied on the generic House of Delegates ballot in the average October poll. If that holds in this week’s election, it would be quite the turnaround from 2017, when Democrats won the aggregated House of Delegates by nearly 10 points.
In other words, the gubernatorial polling does not seem to be an outlier in any way. Rather, it is reflective of a real mood shift among Virginia voters.
And that is what matters for those interested in what the Virginia result portends nationally. While who wins and loses will certainly matter for Virginia residents, the polling will have to be quite off for the result to suggest a good environment for Democrats nationally.
This means Democrats will likely have to hope for a major shift in the political winds over the next year to have any real shot of holding onto the House of Representatives in 2022.
