On Tuesday, November 2nd Virginia had its 2021 gubernatorial election with former Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe against political newcomer Glenn Youngkin. Despite the fact that no Republican had won statewide since 2009 and that Biden won the state by 10 percentage points last November, the tight race ultimately went to Youngking. Prior to this election, Youngkin worked for 25 years at a private-equity firm, the Carlyle Group, and later became its CEO. Through his own wealth, he was able to initially self-fund his campaign. His game plan focused on cutting taxes, eliminating critical race theory from their educational curriculum, removing all mask mandates and vaccine requirements, and restricting abortion.
If Virgina has been blue for over 10 years, what could have possibly precipitated this election result? One possible speculation is that the Democratic party did not have clear strategies of attack. McAuliffe’s campaign used negative Trump-focused scare tactics to represent Youngkin as a new Trump incarnate–which is not immediately refutable due to the fact that Youngkin, just like Trump, had no political experience before running for office. However, despite these facts as well as Donald Trump’s endorsement of Youngkin, the upcoming governor foresaw the potential of this tactic and distanced himself from Trump enough during the election to not appear as a direct parallel. He even publicly stated that Biden’s election into the presidency was legitimate after fence-sitting on the topic at the beginning of the race. McAuliffe’s advertisement team also discussed external issues that were not exactly pertaining to the electoral race–such as Youngkin’s role in the controversial 2019 purchase of Taylor Swift’s master recordings. The public wanted McAuliffe to address the reasons for societal decline such as grocery and gas inflation. These external topics distracted the public from his own political agenda such as increasing teacher salary, quality and affordable health care while lowering prescription drug costs, tackling the climate crisis by using clean energy, and increasing Virginian vaccination rates.
The outcome of this election is now a wakeup call for Democrats of their weakening support of the public which is especially threatening due to next year’s midterm elections. Alongside this threat, the state of New Jersey, which is considered a Democratic stronghold and has consistently voted Democrat in the presidential elections since 1992, nearly went red in their gubernatorial election this past week as well. These shifts in political demographics suggest dissatisfaction with the current state of our country and its governance. In the week before Election Day, potential voters in Virginia disapproved of Biden’s job performance by 53% – 46%. Being anti-Trump is not going to be enough for the Democratic party to regain its strength.
They need to listen to what the holistic population wants and drive their campaigns on such. If they want to keep their voters, they need to give their voters not just something to vote against but also something to vote for.