Scrimshaw Spotlight: Can The GOP Win Virginia?
On The Governor's Race In Virginia
The identity of the Virginia GOP Gubernatorial nominee has been the source of commentary and discourse, but even more so, the source of many takes about What It All Means for the general election in November. The current expectation is that the Virginia GOP will get their most electable nominee, Glenn Youngkin, out of the convention process (did I write Primary at first? Of course I did), and therefore this race is some level of competitive. The main source of my anger comes from Dave Wasserman, who has pegged the Virginia GOP's chances of victory in the Lean category - less than 50% and more than 25%, an analysis I have not seen pushed back upon by certain Virginia based analysts. The problem is, it's rubbish.
Let's start with a map from a different Virginia-based analyst, J Miles Coleman of Sabato's Crystal Ball (and UVA's School of Politics), which shows the scale of Democratic victory last time by Congressional District. An impressive 10% victory for Joe Biden, the CD breakdown makes it clear why Joe Biden won. He won the trio of Northern Virginia seats by huge margins - including a nearly 20% win in the GOP-at-the-House-level-until-2018 Virginia 10th, which swung wildly even from Hillary's very good 2016 result in the district this year - and then won the plurality Black 3rd and the Richmond-based 4th by sizable margins. Biden would also end up winning the suburban Richmond (and other areas) 7th and the Virginia Beach and some Norfolk and some adjacent territory 2nd, although small losses in those seats, as opposed to his slight wins, would not have cost him the state on a uniform swing basis.
The way the GOP would win Virginia this way is Democratic turnout drops in their 5 strong districts more than GOP turnout in their areas falls off without Trump on the ballot, and then you throw in some large amount of suburban reversion in NoVa, at least as far as I can figure this out from Wasserman's tweets. He also mentioned that in 2009, the GOP won the Governorship in Obama's first term by nearly 20 points, as if that matters. Let's dismantle these arguments, why don't we.
I guess we'll start with the idea that Democratic turnout will fall because Democrats are in office, which used to be true, but isn't anymore. Yes, in 2009 Democratic turnout cratered, but that was after Democrats won the state by needing huge turnout amongst African Americans and mediocre-to-good results in Ancestrally Democratic areas of the state. Now, given the Democratic coalition is whiter, and more specifically, educated whites, the ability of the GOP to ride a wave of low Democratic turnout is lower, because they traded high propensity, well-off white social liberals for low-propensity cultural conservatives who live in the southwest of the state. That trade is amazing for Ohio and Iowa, and it's terrible for Virginia.
This trade is why Jennifer Wexton's seat has moved from being a marginally Romney seat to being safely Democratic in 8 years. There are more places like the Virginia 10th in Virginia than there are places like the southwest, and this will remain true for a long time. The GOP's propensity trade matters, because the realignment explains everything that has happened in the US in the last decade. As for the notion that in 2009 a whole lot of people split their tickets, that's true, but in 2009 I was telling people I was straight. Shit changes, life moves on.
You cannot look at the changes in partisanship, polarization, and ticket splitting and conclude a 2009 example is meaningful in 2021 if you're operating in good faith. Also in the "not good faith" department is the contention that Kansas being represented by a Democrat means that Virginia could vote for the GOP. I'm sorry, when did Terry McAuliffe suddenly become Kris Kobach-levels of unpopular? Did I miss a memo? Was there a meeting I skipped, an invite overlooked?
Anyone who thinks that Virginia is winnable with Youngkin on the ballot fundamentally misunderstands that it is a Global Fucking Realignment, and that you can't put the genie back in the bottle if you're the GOP. The NoVa suburbanites weren't just anti-Trump, because if the trend of suburbanites left was just about Trump, why on earth did UK Labour win Putney in 2019, or Canadian Liberals get a 20% swing against the Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party in 2019, or why did Labour flip Cambridgeshire this past weekend in the English local elections? If it's all about Trump, why did Australian Labor surge in the white, rich suburbs in 2019?
Also, the assumption that you can get Trump-style margins and turnout and get suburban reversion is a myth international elections dispels, because in Australia, the right tried to pivot to win back the suburbs and ended up getting huge swings against them in the parts of Queensland and Tasmania that could be best compared to southwest Virginia, so it doesn't even work on that level, as I've written about before. You cannot believe that the half of the realignment that goes against Democrats - ie, the collapse of Democratic fortunes in white, culturally conservative areas - will continue forever more but think the suburbs will come back. It's idiotic at best and intellectually dishonest at worst, and I have no time for fools or mendacious people.
Maybe Wasserman will be correct in the end and I will look a fool again. But I don't think that's very likely. Terry McAuliffe will be the next Governor of Virginia, it won't be close, and the only distinction that matters is whether you have the race Safe like me or just very, very Likely.