Why the time is right for the “blue-ish” state to go red.
Virginia Republicans haven’t won a statewide election since 2009. No races for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, senator, or president. There are a couple of different ways to interpret this information. One is to assume that Virginia is a comfortably blue state, the once-supreme Virginia Republican Party irrevocably damaged by extreme candidates incapable of winning elections. The other interpretation is that Virginia Republicans are due for one. The only reason to be surprised that the governor’s race, between Democratic former Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Republican businessman Glenn Youngkin, is so close would be to have believed the first interpretation, which is false. Virginia Republicans may not be “due” anything on Nov.2, but the fundamentals of the race point toward a tight contest. The FiveThirtyEight public polling average shows McAuliffe with a 3.3 percentage point lead over Youngkin, one that’s narrowed from higher single digits earlier this summer. Democratic groups working the race say that trend is roughly in line with their private polling. The Cook Political Report last week moved the race to “toss-up” status, while Sabato’s Crystal Ball still has the race as “Leans Democratic.” “We haven’t seen any reason to change it yet—and I emphasize yet,” Larry Sabato, the eponymous publisher of Sabato’s Crystal Ball and director of the UVA Center for Politics, told me late last week. “Because the trends aren’t necessarily good for the Democrats, but the Republicans have to find the votes.” The Virginia governor’s race has, historically, been one of the easiest races to forecast: The candidate from the party not controlling the White House would win. For 36 years beginning in 1977, the party that had lost the presidential race in the previous year won the governor’s mansion. That streak broke in 2013, when McAuliffe defeated Ken Cuccinelli during Obama’s second term in office, cementing the change in the commonwealth’s perceived political character. The fast-growing Northern Virginia suburbs had turned strongly blue, overwhelming the Republican shift in rural parts of the state.
