Man, ol’ Larry Sabato is losing his touch; that, or he was just tailoring his thinking on a recent bad Abigail Spanberger poll number to the audience, in the case of ABC7 in DC, the MAGA-adjacent Sinclair Broadcasting.
“A drop of that margin is stunning, and it should be greatly disturbing to the governor and the governor’s staff, if it’s repeated in other surveys,” Sabato, he of “politics is a good thing” fame, told the folks at ABC7, in reference to a poll from the MAGA-adjacent Washington Post and George Mason University, which named put the name of Antonin Scalia on its law school, if you want to know where the folks at Mason stand on things.
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The “drop”: Spanberger was elected in November with 57 percent of the vote.
Note: favorable/unfavorable isn’t a choice between one candidate vs. another.
To wit there: the Post/Mason poll has Spanberger polling somewhat meekly among Democrats (80 percent favorable in 2026; 99 percent vote pull, per exit polling in 2025) and independents (45 percent favorable in 2026; 59 percent vote pull, per exit polling in 2025).
Speaking here as a left-of-center person who voted for Spanberger in November, I don’t approve of her job performance to date.
Among the things I don’t approve of: she had her appointees to the UVA Board of Visitors confirm the selection of a MAGA as the new UVA president.
I also haven’t seen any movement on doing more to provide more affordable housing, to put more money into mental healthcare, to do more for our K-12 public schools.
She’s governing as a Republican-lite.
But if there was a snap election next month, and she was the D, I’d hold my nose and vote for her over anybody on the R side who would be running to do the bidding of the Trump regime.
I’d also hope, though, that I’d have another D to vote for.
Enough attacking the messengers: the poll numbers weren’t good, even if there were thumbs on the scales from the Post and from Mason.
Spanberger, per the polling, if we take the data as being on the up and up, is viewed favorably by 47 percent of Virginians, and unfavorably by 46 percent.
This compares to the 50 percent favorable/46 percent unfavorable split in the last Post/Mason poll of the Glenn Youngkin era, conducted last fall.
The internals on this poll reveal an interesting slice of Virginia being those who answered, with pluralities opposing protections for renters against eviction and paid family medical leave.
A full 31 percent self-reported not having voted in the 2024 presidential election or having voted for “other.”
Virginia went 51.8 percent/46.0 percent for Kamala Harris, with 4.5 million votes cast – those 4.5 million representing 70 percent of the state’s registered voter base.
So, actually, the number of folks polled not voting squares up, but also, if you don’t vote, does your opinion really matter?
Another question for another day.
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Chris Graham
