Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball on Monday described Virginia’s gubernatorial race as now leaning in favor of Republican Glenn Youngkin, saying there were “indications” it “could be the closest” in 30 years. “This Virginia gubernatorial race is one of the most vexing races we can remember,” Miles Kondik and J. Miles Coleman wrote for Sabato’s University of Virginia election forecasting blog. “Terry McAuliffe retains the advantage of running in a state that is clearly trending Democratic. But Glenn Youngkin has many significant advantages of his own, which may outweigh Virginia’s Democratic lean.”
Sabato’s Crystal Ball, an elections forecaster and newsletter at the University of Virginia, has changed its rating for the Virginia governor race to “Leans Republican” from “Leans Democratic,” which the race had been listed as since March.
(Video) UVA Professor of Politics Jennifer Lawless and UVA Miller Center Senior Fellow Mary Kate Cary joined Chris Jansing live to preview Tuesday’s high-stakes gubernatorial election there. They discuss what the race could signal for the 2022 midterms and how former President Donald Trump’s influence could impact the results.
A Youngkin victory could provide a template for Republicans walking a fine line in next year’s congressional races. “Spending a lot of your time trying to cultivate the middle might be wise because it might be that the Trump electorate is going to be fired up no matter what,” said Kyle Kondik, an analyst at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
Like “soccer moms” of the 1990s, or “security moms” of the 2000s, this year’s “school board moms” have already been dubbed a pivotal swing vote. “These are independent women who live in the suburbs and are concerned about what’s going on in their kids’ schools,” says Jennifer Lawless, an expert on women and politics at the University of Virginia. “They were the ones responsible for providing homeschooling for a year, they are implementing COVID protocols in their home, and in many places, they believe they know better than the government what their kids should be learning.”
Larry Sabato from the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics talked about the Virginia gubernatorial election on Monday and the impact of “white resistance” and “white backlash” in the race between Republican Glenn Youngkin and Democrat Terry McAuliffe. “There’s a lot of — we can call it, white backlash, white resistance, whatever you want to call it,” Sabato said of the education issue. “It has to do with race. And so, we live in a post factual-era anyway, Chris. This is a post-factual era. It doesn’t matter that it isn’t taught in Virginia schools. It’s this generalized attitude that w...
Virginia is the only state in the country in which the governor can’t run for a successive term, making it challenging to secure significant policy shifts. The state also operates on a two-year budget calendar, so the new governor’s first budget will be his predecessor’s, in this case, Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat. “In the time frame available for the next governor, I don’t see huge changes” to Virginia’s energy profile, said William Shobe, director of the Energy Transition Initiative at the University of Virginia.
A new state law means we’ll see results from Virginia’s early and absentee ballots first. Ballots cast on Election Day will be released afterward. “This will enable people to see separately what the in-person and mail ballot vote was, and then, as the Election Day balloting proceeds, I think you’ll see a different total,” University of Virginia Center for Politics Director Larry Sabato said.
(Video) Larry Sabato, founder and director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, says Republican voters are motivated and could help Glenn Youngkin win. Sabato is on “Balance of Power.”
Some question whether this new crop of poll watchers will be impartial witnesses. Many Republicans have started signing up to become poll watchers because they have been motivated by their belief in “the big steal,” says Daniel Ortiz, a law professor at the University of Virginia. While it’s entirely possible for the new recruits to set aside their political beliefs while on the job, Ortiz says he is nevertheless concerned. “You worry that people who seem to be part of almost a cult, who believe things in spite of the facts, might not do their job properly,” he says.
On Monday, the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics shifted its rating of the race from “leans Democratic” to “leans Republican.” “We know based on President Biden’s sagging approval ratings that the environment is, frankly, horrible for Democrats,” wrote the University’s Kyle Kondik and J. Miles Coleman.
McAuliffe points to his record as a leader who brought jobs back to the state after the recession, and he says he’ll do the same post-pandemic. He’s also painting Youngkin as “another Donald Trump” in a bid to lure moderate Republicans in the state who were turned off by the former president, according to Dr. Larry Sabato, the Director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
Glenn Youngkin may be riding a wave of “white backlash” all the way to the Virginia governor’s mansion, a leading polling expert in the state said, as the Republican led the former governor Terry McAuliffe into election day. Asked why education was a key factor in Youngkin’s stronger-than-expected showing in a state recently dominated by Democrats, Larry Sabato of UVA Center for Politics said: “One of the candidates decided it was his ticket to the governor’s mansion and he may well be right.”
(Video) University of Virginia Center for Politics Director Larry Sabato previews the election and discusses whether the results could be a bellwether for the 2022 midterms. He says “there’s simply a lot more Democrats than Republicans in the new Virginia,” but cautions it’s a tight race.
Larry Sabato, a professor of Politics at the University of Virginia, told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow the race turned into a “bloodbath.” “I will tell you somebody high up in the McAuliffe camp that is there with McAuliffe … put it this way to me,” Sabato said soberly, “It’s a bloodbath.”
(Video) University of Virginia’s Larry Sabato joins Shep Smith to discuss the Virginia gubernatorial election and the likelihood of a Youngkin win.
(Video) CNN’s Rosemary Church speaks with Larry Sabato, political scientist and director of UVA’s Center for Politics, on what he thinks of the result of the Virginia’s governor race.
The elections set the winners for two-year terms in the House, but they could face voters again next year if the federal courts agree with longtime Democratic political operative Paul Goldman that the current districts are unconstitutional. Veteran political analyst Larry Sabato said before polls closed that he expects the party that loses the House elections this year to quickly push for new elections in 2022. “The courts have to decide whether having three elections in a row is worth the lack of [proportional] representation,” said Sabato, director of UVA’s Center for Politics. “Is the chaos...
Veteran political scientist Larry Sabato is warning Democrats to take Glenn Youngkin’s win in the Virginia gubernatorial race seriously. Sabato, the founder and director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia says national Democrats need to learn the lessons from Tuesday night’s loss. “If this wasn’t a five-alarm for for Democrats nothing will be,” he says.
(Video) The professor of politics at the University of Virginia talks critical race theory and how he thinks Glenn Youngkin would govern the commonwealth.