If Democrats win the Virginia election, they should thank Donald Trump

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Yet in Virginia, and even nationally on the congressional general ballot, Democrats are holding on to thin-inside-margin-of-error advantages.

Why? This may be in part because former President Donald Trump is unusually present for a politician out of office, and he is as – if not more so – less famous than Biden. You can see Trump’s dynamic in real time on the campaign trail. Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe has repeatedly tried to tie Republican nominee Glenn Youngkin to the former President, both in his speeches and ads. Youngkin walks a good line, leaning on some of Trump’s rhetoric to help boost the Republican turnout, but also distances himself on certain issues and plays on hyperlocal issues to mag appeal among voters.

With a little under two weeks until Election Day, McAuliffe’s plan might just work. McAuliffe holds a nominal advantage of approximately 2 to 3 points over Youngkin in a recent average of polls. If you look at the more than 240 gubernatorial elections on the polls since 1998, the leader of this size in the last three weeks of the campaign ended almost 70% of the time. (Hillary Clinton has a similar probability of winning based on pre -election polls in 2016.)

If the polls are correct, McAuliffe will mostly use Biden’s win last year and Governor Ralph Northam’s current win in the 2017 gubernatorial race. They won by 10 points and 9 points, respectively. The fall in McAuliffe’s position relative to other Democrats shouldn’t be surprising given that Biden’s approval of the state in the current polls averaged nearly -2 points.

However, the lead was in the lead, and McAuliffe surpassed Biden’s popularity rating by a little less than 5 points.

Both polls revealed that Trump remains deeply unpopular in the state. A Fox News poll released last week had its net rating favorable (favorable -unfavorable) at -9 points among potential voters and -18 points among registered voters. Trump is more unpopular than McAuliffe or Youngkin, both of which boosted positive net favor ratings in a Fox News poll among potential voters.

It looks like something.

You can see how close the sentiment is towards Trump and the vote selection is aligned by looking at the crosstabs of the Fox News poll. On a scale of -1 to +1, the correlation among demographic groups between Trump’s unfavorable rating and McAuliffe’s standing in horse racing is more than +0.98. You rarely get this kind of correlation between the popularity of an out-of-office politician and vote choice. This is very similar to Biden’s popularity and vote choice (over +0.99 correlation).

In fact, a CBS News / YouGov poll from Virginia shows how compelling the Trump factor would be if voters voted. The majority of likely voters (51%) said feelings about Trump were highly compelling. That’s usually the same as the 48% who said the same thing about their feelings for Biden. A separate poll from a Monmouth University poll in August showed that about the same portion of Virginia voters indicated that Trump was a key factor in their 2021 vote as they did in 2017.

This is something we also see in the country. Trump continues to cast a shadow in a way that I’m not sure we fully appreciate.

Last week, Trump actually led Biden in the number of people searching for them on Google. In the same week into Trump’s presidency, he led former President Barack Obama by nearly a 9: 1 ratio in searches. And in the same week into Obama’s presidency, Obama led former President George W. Bush by more than 9: 1 ratio in searches. This Trump is in the spotlight that is probably hurting Republicans more with its help. Trump has a -13 point net rating in favor of a Quinnipiac University poll this week. Biden had -12 points in the same poll. Other polls have Biden’s popularity ratings in a somewhat better, albeit still negative, position.

An incumbent president in negative territory in their net popularity rating usually threatens doom for the president’s party in the midterms. I will still bet on that case.

But for now, Democrats maintain a low single digit lead on the overall congressional ballot. That’s not much different than their 3-point win in the House popular vote in 2020.

Of course, we’ll just wait and see what happens in the future. If Youngkin ends up sprouting with a win in Virginia, it would be tough for people to argue that Trump is hurting Republicans.

If, on the other hand, McAuliffe is the winner, it will likely lead to a lot of discussion about whether it is good for Republicans to continue to have this Trump on the political scene.

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