Virginia Gubernatorial Election Points to 2022 Red Wave

On Tuesday, off-year elections were held in various states, with the most notable races being the Virginia gubernatorial election and the New Jersey gubernatorial election. A number of other special elections were also held to fill congressional vacancies, and multiple cities also held mayoral elections. Notably, Republicans swept into power in Virginia, and New Jersey’s incumbent Democratic governor was just a hair’s smidge away from losing to a Republican. Yet, in what seemed like a great year for Republicans, a number of progressive Democrats won races in local elections.

The most closely-watched election on Tuesday night was the Virginia gubernatorial election. Once thought to be somewhat solid for Democrats, Republican Glenn Youngkin eked out a surprise victory over former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe by just over 2 percent, a rightward shift of about 12 points from 2020. Polls showed consistent leads for McAuliffe until about a week until the election, when Youngkin began surging. Virginia prohibits incumbents from running for election, so Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam is ineligible to run in this election.

What was interesting is that this was the highest-ever turnout to a Virginia gubernatorial election, exceeding the number of votes cast in 2017 by 650,000 and all other elections by at least 1 million votes. McAuliffe won over 175,000 more votes than Northam did in 2017 (the last time a gubernatorial election was held in Virginia). However, Youngkin won over 484,000 votes more than the Republican candidate in the 2017 election. The results of this election prove that making it easier to vote, which is what Democrats did over the past two years when they enjoyed full control over the state government by repealing voter ID laws, expanding vote-by-mail, and so on, does not necessarily help Democrats, contrary to popular belief.

Virginia Republicans also flipped the Virginia House of Delegates, flipping seven seats. The party now holds a 52-48 majority in that chamber.

While McAuliffe tried to nationalize this race, trying to closely tie Youngkin with former President Donald Trump — who lost the state by over 10 points in 2020 — and used that as his central campaign message, Youngkin focused more on local issues such as various local taxes, education (most notably critical race theory), and other economic and culture war issues. Youngkin’s campaign, which notably involved shying away from Trump, might serve as a backbone for the Republicans’ campaigns next November.

In New Jersey, a gubernatorial election in which Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy was expected to cruise to victory came down to the wire, with The Associated Press only calling the race for Murphy Wednesday night. Whereas Murphy won by 14 points in his last election and President Joe Biden won the state 16 points last year, as of writing, Murphy is only leading his opponent, Republican Jack Ciattarelli, by 2.3 percent. This is a rightward shift of 14 points from 2020.

Though the results of these elections might seem extremely surprising, they aren’t. Since Jimmy Carter was president in 1977, all but one Virginia gubernatorial election (2012) has seen the opposing party win control over the state’s governorship, and there has consistently been a shift away from the incumbent president’s party, and often by double-digits. This election simply continued that trend.

The off-year elections held immediately after presidential elections often foreshadow the midterm elections that come the year after, in that the incumbent president’s party always oversees substantial losses. Since President Franklin D. Roosevelt managed to oversee gains for his party in both chambers of Congress in 1934, to date, only one other president has managed to pull the same feat off. That was George W. Bush in the 2002 midterms, mostly because of the 9/11 attacks that occurred just a year earlier. (Bill Clinton oversaw a gain of four seats for his party in 1998, but no net change in the Senate.)

Parties often also manage to make surprising gains in off-year and midterm elections. In 2018, Democrats won a governorship in ruby-red Kansas, and the party won governorships in the ruby-red states of Louisiana and Kentucky the year after. Thus, this win for the Republicans in Virginia should not be surprising in the slightest, nor should the major shift in New Jersey.

However, these results definitely point toward a red wave in 2022. With the Democrats still failing to pass any substantial legislation in Congress, mainly because of reservations from conservative Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and a myriad of other issues, a Republican takeover of Congress next November is quite probable. If the Democrats are to have any hope of winning next year, they must get their act together and pass substantial legislation — something that might actually happen in the next couple of weeks.

The party must also figure out new messaging. Closely tying candidates to Trump does not seem to be winning anymore, and with COVID-19 no longer being the key issue in many voters’ eyes, running on those two issues is no longer going to work. Democrats must also figure out how to get more of their base to turn out — though McAuliffe got a record number of votes, he still ran short in many Democratic strongholds throughout Virginia, while Youngkin was able to massively boost Republican turnout statewide.

The progressive versus centrist divide also comes back to haunt the party (just as it does every time the Democrats lose). Should the party veer to the left to galvanize more of its base to come out and vote in full force, or move to the center and try to attract moderate voters?

The answer to that question is mixed. In Boston, uberprogressive candidate Michelle Wu, who ran on a platform of free transit, a Boston Green New Deal, demilitarizing the Boston Police Department, and zoning reform, swept into power, winning over moderate Annissa Essaibi George by 29 percent. Other progressives also won in various other city races. However, voters in Minneapolis rejected a progressive-backed ballot question to reform the police department (created in wake of the Black Lives Matter protests), and progressive candidates lost in mayoral elections in Seattle and Buffalo, N.Y. (the latter of which was lost to a moderate running a write-in campaign).

The last point of note is that the suburbs swung back toward the GOP slightly. After Trump caused many white women to ditch the Republican Party, Youngkin’s new messaging might have helped win some of them back, with Republican support from white women with no college degrees increasing from 67 percent in 2017 to 74 percent this election, based on exit polling data. This indicates that the suburbs are still a major battleground for both parties, and are far from a lost cause for the Republicans.

Though it might seem like a Republican wave is incoming next year, we are still over a year away from it, and anything could happen. Make sure to follow this blog to receive updates as those elections draw closer.