The most recent polls looking at the Governor’s race in Virginia have been very friendly for Republican Glenn Youngkin. So friendly, in fact, that Democrats watching the race around the country, looking for implications for the 2022 midterms, are in a panic mode watching this trainwreck occur in slow-motion. Nothing that Terry McAuliffe has done in the past thirty days has stopped the bleeding from his campaign. His grave misstatement, telling parents they have no rights in their children’s schooling, could be the point that observers decide McAuliffe may have lost the race.
With polls opening in Virginia at 6 am Tuesday morning, we’re just hours away from Election Day with Youngkin leading the three most recently released public polls.
Final Trafalgar Group Poll
First, the final Trafalgar Group poll numbers looking at the Virginia race. If you recall, Trafalgar was one of the first to detect a Youngkin surge, which we covered two weeks ago. Today, the margin is similar, but Youngkin’s support has improved as late-deciders lock in their votes:
Youngkin has 2.3% lead which could grow by capturing most late deciders.
49.4% Glenn Youngkin
47.1% Terry McAuliffe
1.9% Third Party/Write-In
1.6% UndecidedConducted 10/29-31 #vapol
Being the early one to detect Youngkin’s surge drew criticism, yet just days after Trafalger’s Oct. 15 poll, other pollsters also found a dramatic shift in Youngkin’s direction.
FOX 5 DC/InsiderAdvantage Poll
A new poll out just today, sponsored by FOX 5 DC, the local Fox affiliate covering northern Virginia, also found Youngkin leading. The poll was conducted by InsiderAdvantage, a respected name in the industry that has been performing political polling for years. The numbers show a tight race, within the margin of error, but Youngkin is benefitting from late-deciders and a pull by third-party candidate Princess Blanding, running to the left of McAuliffe:
In an exclusive new FOX 5 poll, Republican Glenn Youngkin has a two-point advantage over Democrat Terry McAuliffe in Virginia’s gubernatorial race.
The Insider Advantage poll shows Youngkin at 47% with McAuliffe at 45%. Princess BlandinG has 2% of the vote with 6% undecided and with a 4.4% margin of error.
The FOX 5 DC numbers are within the margin of error, but that has been the story of this race since early October when Youngkin began nipping at McAuliffe’s heels.
Echelon Insights Poll
Echelon Insights, a data firm in northern Virginia, released a poll on Friday that gave Youngkin a slim 3-point lead and leads for the GOP candidates on down-ballot races as well:
The Echelon numbers line up with the Trafalgar numbers and all of them track generally with the Fox News poll released on Friday giving Youngkin an 8-point lead, though not quite as generous.
RealClearPolitics Average
With the addition of several new polls, Glenn Youngkin now leads the RealClearPolitics average of by 1.7 percent:
The trend line for Youngkin has been a slow but steady rise since early October, while McAuliffe has stayed largely static, failing to hit much higher than 48 percent in any poll.
Independent Voters Abandon McAuliffe
The main driver behind Youngkin’s rise has been independent voters switching sides. Once backing McAuliffe by 10 points, the numbers have flipped, and now Youngkin is leading independents by even wider margins. Numbers from the Echelon poll mentioned above offer some insight into this reality:
The swing by independents, and some moderate Democrats, has created a scenario where McAuliffe simply doesn’t have much more room to grow. The result has been McAuliffe going back to a base election, trying to drive out progressives with an anti-Trump message against Youngkin. So far, that message has fallen flat, as evidenced by the poll numbers above.
Joe Biden won Virginia by 10 points in 2020, and Hillary Clinton last won before that by 5 points in 2016. The state has been trending blue in federal elections, with two Democratic senators and voting blue in every presidential race since 2008.
If Glenn Youngkin picks up the governorship on Tuesday, it’ll be a shockwave for Democrats hoping for the best in 2022. If Republicans sweep all three statewide GOP races, which looks possible, it will amount to a political earthquake among Democrats hoping to run against Donald Trump in every election until the end of time.
The final vote tally could be closer than the opinion polls expect, perhaps within 30,000 votes by the end of the night, but we should have a pretty good idea early on after the actual polls close Tuesday night as to which side might want to break out the champagne.
