Ever since his statement expressing his view that parents shouldn’t have a say in their child’s education when it comes to the public school system, former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) has been fighting for his political life. A product of the Clinton years, and former head of the Democratic National Committee, McAuliffe is a political dinosaur that has no business running to once again govern a state he’s not even from.
The polls, since late September, have all been tightening, sometimes within one point. The most recent newsworthy poll, however, comes courtesy of the Trafalgar Group, a pollster known for accuracy over the past two cycles and predicting Donald Trump’s upset 2016 victory.
The latest results, from Oct. 11-13, of 1,095 likely Virginia voters?
Youngkin 48.4, McAuliffe 47.5, a statistical tie in a state Joe Biden won by 10 points in 2020:
Some models, like FiveThirtyEight, are calling this result a tie at 48% each, which is not an unreasonable way to do your rounding. However, the real headline of this poll comes from Youngkin’s ability to claw back from being down 7 to 10 points in August and September to a statistical tie heading into the final days of the campaign. That’s how poorly McAuliffe has squandered his lead.
McAuliffe is trying the “kitchen sink” strategy right now, bringing in Barack Obama, Stacey Abrams, Jill Biden, and yes, even deeply unpopular Joe Biden to campaign for him in the final days. That does not sound like a confident candidate.
The election might hinge on one issue that usually favors Democrats, but this time is tipping squarely in Glenn Youngkin’s direction, education:
As Terry McAuliffe famously said last month, parents have zero business thinking they should have input on how their tax dollars are being used in the classroom:
Youngkin seized on this misstep and has successfully used it to drum up support in the wealthy northern Virginia suburbs outside Washington, DC, a place where parents have been growing more and more disgruntled with school board decisions on Covid-19 policies and Critical Race Theory, among other issues.
The race for Governor in Virginia also ties into the scandal breaking right now in the Loudoun County school district where the school board has now admitted as much that it helped cover up an incident of sexual assault back in May and did nothing to prevent the student assailant from committing a second act of assault on another girl at another school in the same district.
Parents in Loudoun, a wealthy DC bedroom county, are livid, as are parents in surrounding counties watching this local story blow up into national news. It’s abundantly clear that woke policies of pushing transgender bathrooms took precedence over the safety of students, especially when it came to reporting and disclosing the fact that a student that considers himself gender-fluid entered a girls bathroom and committed a heinous assault on a female student.
The Loudoun County Public Schools Superintendent Scott Ziegler distinctly withheld and lied about this information to protect the school board’s agenda.
All of this ties directly back to the race for governor which pits Terry McAuliffe, a washed-up politician who thinks parents should have no input or rights within their schools, against Glenn Youngkin, a candidate standing up for the rights of parents and children to be heard and have a voice in their public school system.
The political world will be watching Virginia to see whether Youngkin can pull off the upset and send McAuliffe and the Democrats packing from Richmond. Election Day is on Tuesday, November 2.
