Barbara Perry is the director of presidential studies at the UVA’s Miller Center. She says Trump and his former political adviser Steve Bannon have created a new party line. “They have cowed the party regulars. They've cowed the party traditionalists. We have seen it already with the Jeff Flakes in the party who are having to step aside and actually step out of politics. And if that happens – if people who oppose him leave the party, that will be a success for him.”
Beyond the gubernatorial race, political pros are also watching the Virginia House of Delegates races. That's not because Democrats have a chance of capturing the heavily gerrymandered chamber (Republicans now hold 66 of its 100 seats) but for further indications of whether Trump is hurting the GOP in suburbia. UVA's Geoffrey Skelley, associate editor of Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball, says the test of a good night for Democrats is whether they net more than the four delegate seats they gained in 2007, their best recent showing.
“Anger’s such a great motivator,” said Kyle Kondik, referring to the Democratic reaction to last year’s Trump victory. Kondik, managing editor for Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a University of Virginia election forecasting site. “In terms of the competitive suburbs where there are a lot of competitive House races, this is like a flashing red warning sign.”
At the gubernatorial level, Democrat Ralph Northam defeated Republican Ed Gillespie in a hotly contested race in Virginia, which many analysts viewed as a referendum on President Donald Trump. The victory was "a backlash to Trump and Trumpism, pure and simple," wrote Larry Sabato, director of UVA’s Center for Politics.
Larry Sabato, director of UVA’s Center for Politics, said there had been one key factor that had shaped the good night for Democrats in the state: “Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Donald Trump.” “This is a good sign for the Democrats in 2018, as long as Trump continues to be unpopular,” he said.
Larry Sabato, executive3 director of UVA’s Center for Politics, said the results were an open rebellion against the GOP and President Trump. “Dear Pundit Friends, please stop attributing this D landslide in VA to ‘changing demographics’. VA hasn’t changed that much since last Nov. 8 (Hillary [won] by 5%). The bigger explanation is a backlash to Trump and Trumpism, pure and simple,” Sabato tweeted.
“In the electoral outcome, the candidate that raises more money usually wins. Fundraising is important too. In 2013, Terry McAuliffe raised more than Ken Cuccinelli. Donors can also affect the policy positions of the candidates. They use television, radio, and even mailers to get themselves out there,” Geoffrey Skelley, the media relations coordinator for UVA’s Center for Politics, said.
(By Michael Nelson, senior fellow at UVA’s Miller Center) It’s one thing not to understand the challenges of a new position because of lack of experience. It’s another not to learn.
The University of Virginia has seen a spike in the ethnic diversity of its student body. More than 9 percent of UVA’s current first-year students are African-Americans. Back in 2012, just over 7 percent of the University’s youngest students were black.
(Co-written by Christopher Ali, assistant professor of media studies) In telling the story of the changing fortunes of the newspaper industry, the focus has been on large metro and national newspapers. Less attention is given to the small-market newspapers, with a weekly or daily print circulation of under 50,000.
The weeks leading up to Tuesday’s election were in the aftermath of the deadly Aug. 11-12 demonstrations. According to members of the UVA community, these events impacted activism on campus and fueled student-led, bipartisan efforts that have resulted in thousands of new voter registrations.
(Commentary by Angeline Lillard, professor of psychology) About 150 years ago, the Western world, in the midst of a major industrial revolution, began an experiment. It started gathering all children during weekdays into rooms where teachers told them what they should know.
After guiding downtrodden Virginia to bowl eligibility in only his second year on the job, Bronco Mendenhall said during his Monday presser that it is only the first step in turning around the Cavaliers’ football fortunes.
A familiar face will be joining the management team of new UVA athletic director Carla Williams. Williams has chosen Jim Booz as deputy athletics director for administration.
Like much of the South, Virginia was solidly Democratic through the 1940s. At this time, parties in the U.S. were much more geographically than ideologically based, according to Geoffrey Skelley, associate editor of UVA’s Center for Politics. Between the South’s Democratic bent and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s soaring popularity — he fought World War II and crafted the New Deal, which brought the country out of the Great Depression — Virginia was “a one-party state,” Skelley says.
"People sometimes think of Virginia as a blue state or a Democratic-leaning state, and it's true that it's gone from a state that routinely voted Republican on the federal level to one that's a little more Democratic than the rest of the nation, but not overwhelmingly so," Kyle Kondik, the director of communications at the UVA Center for Politics, said last month. "And the off-year electorate is smaller than the presidential electorate, which is true of any state, but it's also an older and less diverse electorate, which demographically tends to be more Republican. So I think this is...
Experts aren’t yet sure if the Libertarian candidate’s vote tallies will be large enough to spawn theories about a "spoiler effect" after the election. “If Northam wins by less than 1 percent and Hyra gets 1 or 2 percent, there’s going to be some talk,” said Geoffrey Skelley of the UVA Center for Politics. “Libertarian voters tend to be more Republican than not,” he said.
Last November, Hillary Clinton won Virginia by five points, mostly by running up sizable margins in metropolitan hubs across the state and in the northern suburbs. The rural parts of the state, which are reliably Republican, voted overwhelmingly for Trump. “Gillespie is counting on lower turnout in northern Virginia, where he has to make sure Northam doesn’t run away with it,” said Geoffrey Skelley of the UVA Center for Politics.
Analysts and campaign strategists might now spend more time trying to woo Michigan voters in 2020 than they had in the past, said Kyle Kondik, managing editor for Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the UVA Center for Politics. “Michigan is going to be a super-important state in 2020,” he said. “Democrats can win the White House without Ohio and Iowa, but a Democrat, I don’t think, can win without Michigan.”
Political scientists are expecting voters to flock to the polls, but not in the same numbers as last year’s presidential election. Turnout and the demographics of voters will help decide the election. Geoffrey Skelley, a political scientist and spokesman for UVA’s Center for Politics, said he is expecting voter turnout in 2017 to be “somewhat higher” than the gubernatorial election in 2013. “Absentee and early voting numbers are higher than they were that year, and had already set a record for a non-presidential year by Saturday,” Skelley said.