The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Opinion Virginia proves it: Democrats are slipping with the voters who gave them victory in 2020

Associate editor and columnist|
November 3, 2021 at 12:47 a.m. EDT
Supporters of Virginia gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin watch election results come in on Nov. 2 in Chantilly, Va. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)

The big challenge for Democrats coming out of their losses in Virginia on Tuesday is figuring out how to reinvigorate the voters they need most as they move into next year’s challenging midterm elections.

In 2020, now-President Biden breezed to victory in Virginia by 10 percentage points, which seemed to confirm that the state had turned blue. A year later, however, Democrats faced a serious enthusiasm gap. This was increasingly evident in polls and focus groups leading up to Election Day — and crystal-clear in the result.

Turnout on Tuesday was robust. But unlike in recent years in the state, the larger number of voters favored the Republicans, led by their gubernatorial nominee, former private equity executive Glenn Youngkin.

The governor-elect, a nimble political newcomer, achieved the delicate, gravity-defying balance it took to gin up the Trumpian GOP base without alienating moderate and independent Virginians who populate the suburbs. He indulged the corrosive lie that Trump won the 2020 election and rode the wave of culture-war issues animating the right, including critical race theory.

Opinion by the Editorial Board: Glenn Youngkin crafts a winning formula for Virginia Republicans

But he still managed to project an upbeat image in his ads. He pushed a strong message on the economy and jobs, which exit polls indicate were the top concern of Virginia voters. In doing so, Youngkin offered a template for Republicans in battlegrounds across the country going forward.

True, the Democratic nominee, former governor Terry McAuliffe, made his share of mistakes. But he was also dragged down by Biden’s sagging approval rating and the internecine struggles of the closely divided Democratic majority in D.C. that has prevented the party from delivering on its agenda.

The party has other problems, which become clearer after one digs through the numbers.

Key to Biden’s 2020 win in Virginia and elsewhere were “surge” voters — among them, younger people and people of color — whose revulsion toward then-President Donald Trump brought them to the polls, many for the first time, in 2018 and 2020.

Have questions about the elections? Karen Tumulty and other columnists will be available at 12:15 ET on Nov. 4 to answer them.

Trump continues to dominate the GOP and gin it up with the lie that he won in 2020. He also remains deeply unpopular in Virginia.

But without Trump on the ballot, Democrats are struggling to achieve that kind of motivation with their own supporters, many of whom say they are feeling burned out by politics. Some are disillusioned with the party that controls Washington but is unable to deliver results. Others are more preoccupied with concerns such as the coronavirus and inflation.

Preliminary exit polls in Virginia indicate, for instance, that Black voters accounted for around 16 percent of the electorate; in 2018, the most recent off-year election for which polling methods are comparable, and a good year for Democrats in Virginia, they cast 22 percent of the ballots there. About 32 percent of those who voted this year in the state were 44 years old or younger; in 2018, the figure was 36 percent.

Youngkin also vastly outperformed Trump among voters who fueled Democratic gains during the Trump era. He did far better with female voters, coming within single digits of McAuliffe; by comparison, Trump lost women in Virginia by 23 percentage points. About 6 in 10 voters with some college education or less supported Youngkin; less than half of those voters supported Trump.

Youngkin threw McAuliffe off his game plan, which was to tout his experience as governor from 2014 to 2018, and to argue that competence is what the state needs at a time of stress from the coronavirus pandemic and its attendant economic problems.

But as the race moved into its final weeks, McAuliffe switched gears and flailed as he tried — unsuccessfully, the election results would indicate — to tie Youngkin to Trump.

Opinion by Dana Milbank: Democrats let Biden down. McAuliffe — and democracy — paid the price.

And at a time when demagoguing over the teaching of critical race theory in schools is roiling school boards (even though the theory is not part of Virginia’s K-12 curriculum), McAuliffe handed his opponent a gift with a gaffe during a late-September debate. “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” he declared.

So what now for Democrats? No doubt the election result in Virginia — and the shockingly close gubernatorial race in New Jersey, which was still in flux late Tuesday night — will cause massive consternation within the party. It also could deal a crippling blow to ongoing efforts to forge a compromise on Capitol Hill over infrastructure and social spending.

But one thing is clear: The governing party has developed some serious problems over the past year, and denial will not solve them.