What the heck is going on?
Last week we saw a slew of new polls in the governor’s race and they were all over the place, ranging from Democrat Ralph Northam with a lead of 14 percentage points in the Quinnipiac Poll to Republican Ed Gillespie with a lead of 1 percentage point in the Monmouth Poll. Lots of others were in between.
How can the polls be so different?
The answer is they are all based on different assumptions about what the electorate who shows up at the polls on Nov. 7 will look like.
Quinnipiac assumes that Democrats will outnumber Republicans by 10 percent, which naturally leads to a double-digit lead. Monmouth assumes Republicans will outnumber Democrats by 2 percent, which inevitably leads to the slight Gillespie lead.
So what will the electorate look like? The only honest answer is nobody knows until we have an actual election. However, history provides some guidance, and that guidance gives better news for Republicans than for Democrats.
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In the last three presidential elections, Democrats have outnumbered Republicans on election day in Virginia by 6 to7 percentage points. That gives the party a built-in advantage even if independents break sharply the other way. However, this isn’t a presidential year. In off-year elections, turnout is down, and down in ways that help Republicans and hurt Democrats. The off-year electorate in Virginia tends to be older and whiter — and therefore more conservative. Democrats had an advantage four years ago, but that was out of the ordinary. Typically, off-year turnout in Virginia tends to be pretty split, or trend slightly Republican.
Quinnipiac is betting that Donald Trump will provoke a big Democratic turnout. Monmouth is betting we’ll have a more normal turnout. There have been Democratic trends across the country in special elections — although many of those were in such Republican areas that Republicans won anyway. So maybe we will have a big Democratic wave on Nov. 7. Monmouth, though, is making the safer bet.
We know this: When Democrats have won in off-year Virginia races, they’ve barely won. Terry McAuliffe didn’t break 50 percent in a three-way race last time. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine topped out at 52 percent in their victories in 2001 and 2005. By contrast, when Republican Bob McDonnell won in 2009, he won big —with 59 percent. To find a big Democratic win in a Virginia governor’s race, you have to go back more than three decades, to Jerry Baliles pulling in 55 percent in 1985. Maybe we’re in a new era but until that’s clear, it seems wiser to assume that this will be a nail-biter of an election.
Some other observations:
n Gillespie has a clearer message than Northam does. That message — tax cuts — may or may not be good policy, but it’s easy to visualize what Gillespie would try to do as governor. Northam doesn’t have a particularly concise message, other than he would continue McAuliffe’s policies and oppose Trump’s. Perhaps the most astonishing thing to happen in the race came when The Washington Post’s editorial board, normally friendly toward Democratic candidates, slammed Northam for saying he’d replace the state’s Standards of Learning tests but was then “utterly unable to explain” what he’d replace them with.
n Northam has some interesting ideas that he hasn’t pushed very well. The model for messaging is Jim Gilmore’s “No Car Tax!” campaign of 1997. Simple, clear, easy to fit on a bumper sticker. (Again, let’s set aside whether it was good fiscal policy). Northam has a proposal that isn’t quite free community college, but would lead the state in that direction. However, he hasn’t distilled that into a simple message of Gilmoresque clarity. Likewise, Northam has proposed to cut the state’s tax on food. This was the kind of thing that Henry Howell built an entire campaign around in the 1970s, but Northam hasn’t.
n Democrats have missed an opportunity to make a play for rural votes. Once again, Northam has made some fascinating policy initiatives. He was the first to propose expanding the University of Virginia’s College at Wise; something Gillespie liked so much he endorsed, as well. Northam also proposed waiving certain taxes for start-ups in rural areas. A Democrat proposing tax cuts! Yet there’s been no real campaign follow-through to talk that up and cut into Republican margins in rural areas. This seems campaign malpractice.
n Neither candidate scares the other side. Four years ago, Ken Cuccinelli terrified Democrats and Republicans were repulsed by McAuliffe. Even then turnout was 43 percent — in contrast to presidential years where turnout typically tops 70 percent. Neither Gillespie nor Northam seem likely to provoke a backlash from the other side. Maybe Trump will drive the turnout (Democrats hope so), but the candidates themselves probably won’t.
n In fact, neither candidate excites a key segment of his party’s base. Some so-called “progressives” aren’t particularly thrilled by the centrist, low-key Northam. And environmental voters are especially unhappy that he’s refused to oppose natural gas pipelines. Northam has an “enthusiasm gap” on his left.
Meanwhile, Gillespie faces a potential “enthusiasm gap” on his right among Trump supporters. He’s done a better job of addressing that, though, by calling attention to Northam’s position on Confederate statues (the Democrat wants them taken down) and the MS-13 gang.
Both of those issues may excite the Trump base, but risk tainting Gillespie’s good name. The statue issue is mostly contrived; the state apparently owns just two Confederate statues. The rest are owned by local governments. A governor can’t take them down. There’s a legitimate issue with gang violence. But it’s an ugly move to the extent that the focus on MS-13, whose members are primarily of Central American origin, really inflames anti-immigrant feelings. Demographically speaking, rural Virginia needs more immigrants to help reverse population declines. Gillespie’s not helping us have a thoughtful conversation there.
Ultimately, most of things the candidates are talking about — Trump for Democrats, statues for Republicans — are distractions designed to excite certain voters. If candidates spent their time talking about the issues a governor actually deals with, we’d be seeing television commercials focused on the minutiae of economic policy.
Sadly, that would probably give us an even lower turnout than the one we’ll likely get.