Short of an extraordinary surge with working-class whites in southwest Virginia, I do not see where Glenn Youngkin is getting the votes needed to beat Terry McAuliffe.
Every poll shows him losing college voters by ~20 points. And he's not even trying to cut that margin down.
Every poll shows him losing college voters by ~20 points. And he's not even trying to cut that margin down.
College voters are anywhere between 47-53% of an off-year electorate in Virginia (this stuff is impossible to estimate precisely but we can be decently confident it's in that ballpark). In polls of likely and registered voters both, McAuliffe is keeping that margin near Biden's.
The next lane for Youngkin would be to hope Black turnout craters while his base of rural whites turn out to an extraordinary degree. That's plausible, but it's not really the strategy you want to rely on, especially considering his base isn't exactly reliable with voting.
He's kind of in between a rock and a hard place here.
Try to pivot to the moderate lane in a last-minute bid to win votes and you risk not only being seen as insincere, but alienating your core base of voters.
Try to embrace the far-right and you're underwater in NOVA.
Try to pivot to the moderate lane in a last-minute bid to win votes and you risk not only being seen as insincere, but alienating your core base of voters.
Try to embrace the far-right and you're underwater in NOVA.
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