Why McAuliffe wins the VA governor's race.
Legacy Media and Democrats latest hoax is that the Virginia Governor's race is a toss up. It isn't. Expect McAuliffe to pull it out.
Later tonight, or in the next couple of days once mail in votes straggle in, McAuliffe will be pronounced the winner the Virginia Governor’s race over Youngkin. This is about as certain as things can be if you look at the underlying metrics of the State.
Why then is the “news” abuzz with how close the race is? There are lots of reasons why the traditional Media outlets have put this spin on the race, but let us look at the metrics first.
Virginia now is a reliably blue State at the State and Federal level. In the 2020 Presidential Election, Biden defeated Trump by 10.11%. In 2016, Clinton took the State by 5.32% over Trump. In 2012, Obama bested Romney by 3.88%. So you have seen a consistent shift towards the Democrat Party at the Federal level. Federal Senate races paint a similar picture.
The Statewide elections have shown the same pattern. In the last Governor’s election in 2017, the Democrat Northam defeated Gillespie 53.9% to 45.0%, or 8.9%. In 2013, Democrat McAuliffe won 47.8% to 45.2% for Republican Cuccinelli. In 2009, the Republican McDonnell won the office over his Democrat challenger Deeds 58.6% to 41.3%. Just as with elections at the Federal level, Statewide elections have seen a steady drift towards the Democrat Party.
Since there is no reason to expect this momentum toward the Democrat Party to subside, one would expect to see McAuliffe as the clear favorite in an ordinary year. Thus, you might expect to see him improve on Northam’s 8.9% victory and come close to matching Biden’s performance of a 10.11% margin of victory last November. Of course, this is not an ordinary year because, among other things, Biden has lost a tremendous amount of popularity since taking office. Moreover, McAuliffe, by all accounts, is not a great candidate; fundraiser yes, but candidate, no. Notwithstanding this, overcoming an approximately 8-10% built-in advantage is no small feat. It would be a tremendous upset for McAuliffe to lose.
Before we look further at the numbers, let us now consider what might be motivating traditional media outlets (and even quite a few alternative ones) to suggest that Youngkin will be Virginia’s next governor. There are many such reasons, but the main driver is that a close race drives ratings. You are not going to get many clicks or views if you are reporting that McAuliffe is cruising to a certain victory. Similarly, Democrats, the Media’s erstwhile allies, do not want it reported that a McAuliffe victory is certain. Otherwise, donors are likely to open their checkbooks. Understanding this dynamic, it should not surprise you to learn that this year’s race has generated approximately $115 million in campaign contributions for both candidates. This number, not coincidentally, nearly doubles the approximately $60 million of fundraising in the 2017 campaign. “Selling” a close race is good business for all involved and, let us face it, telling people the truth has not been what the “news” has been about for quite some time. Everyone relishes the story of a “close” race, regardless of whether it is true or not.
So now that we have accepted that the stories we are hearing likely are not telling the true story, let us take a look at what the data predicts in terms of who prevails. Starting with fundraising, if the Republican truly had a good chance of prevailing, you would expect he or she to enjoy a fundraising advantage. That is not the case as McAuliffe has outraged Youngkin by around $5 million. So, in addition to the built-in demographic advantages, McAuliffe also enjoys a monetary advantage.
But McAuliffe’s advantages do not stop there. Virginia, which elected a Democrat State Legislature in its last election, swiftly made permanent its COVID era changes to voting laws, all of which favor Democrat constituents. Before the 2020 Election, Virginia early voting lasted only seven days and voters had to provide an excuse to receive an absentee ballot to vote by mail. Under the current law, voters may request an absentee ballot for any reason and early voting lasts a full forty-five days. Not only do these changes favor Democrat candidates, McAuliffe has used them to his advantage this go around. As of the last reporting of early votes by demographic, Democrats have a 64.5% to 30.0% advantage over Republicans in the approximately 1.1 million early votes casts (early voting ended Saturday). This represents a six fold increase in early voting over the 2017 Election. It is estimated that McAullife has banked an approximately 200,000 to 225,000 vote advantage before the polls opened today. While overcoming this margin is not impossible, it is far from likely.
Much has been made of the late breaking polls showing Youngkin with leads of 8%, 2%, and 2% respectively. However, even assuming the polls are accurate, this would provide Youngkin with only a slight advantage for in person voting, something that surely he will win and by higher margins since Republicans tend to be in person, day of, voters. The problem for Youngkin, however, is that, even assuming these polls are accurate, much of the momentum is lost because people cast their ballot before they knew the facts—he cannot expect to translate ALL of this good polling into actual votes.
The final nail in the coffin likely comes from the fact that while the news for McAuliffe has not been great, it is extremely difficult for a Republican to break through the Media bubble and get his or her message heard. So, if you listen to Traditional outlets, you are told that critical race theory is not being taught in the schools or that while school boards may not be a model of good education, parents likely just as much part of the problem as the solution. In summary, if you were going to see an upset, you would see the Legacy Media’s reporting be much more negative about McAuliffe personally or the lives of Virginians generally. While their coverage has hyped Youngkin’s chances, there has not been the type of cascading negative coverage for McAuliffe personally or the Democrat Party generally if the public were getting ready to cast their ballots in a manner inconsistent with the last few cycles.
In fact, the only thing that suggest a Youngkin victory have been some late breaking polls. Based on a more thorough analysis of Virginia’s voting habits, this likely is not going to be enough.
That is why the GreatAmericanMail is predicting a McAuliffe victory in the Virginia Governor’s race.