Abigail Spanberger might wish she could hit the reset button on the first few months of her gubernatorial term, after getting a look at the numbers from a new poll conducted by L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at VCU, which represent a ringing indictment of the first six months of her four-year term as governor.
Forty-seven percent of registered voters disapprove of Spanberger’s job performance, and 47 percent also believe the Commonwealth is headed in the wrong direction.
This, for a governor who was swept into office in an actual landslide win – not a Trumpian “landslide” in which he got less than half the popular vote and won by a point and a half, but one in which Spanberger got more than 57 percent, which helped her also run up the score in the House of Delegates elections.
Wilder, himself a former governor of Virginia, noted in a release on Wednesday that “it is uncommon for a new administration to receive such a negative public assessment so early in its tenure.”
“These findings suggest that Virginians are paying attention to the issues that matter most in their daily lives,” Wilder said. “The message from the people is unmistakable: public trust is earned through leadership that listens, governance that delivers and results that improve the lives of all Virginians.”
Sick burn there.
Inside the numbers
Spanberger’s approval/disapproval split in the poll is 44 percent/47 percent, leaving her underwater by 3 percent.
Looking back, a VCU poll taken in 2022 at the six-month mark of the Glenn Youngkin gubernatorial term, his approval/disapproval split was 49 percent/38 percent, so, +11 percent.
I can’t find a summer 2018 poll from VCU on Ralph Northam, but a summer poll from Morning Consult six months into his term had his approval/disapproval split at 47 percent/26 percent, +21 percent.
Similarly, I’m having trouble finding six-months-in poll numbers for Terry McAuliffe in 2014, but he was at a 44 percent approve/27 percent disapprove split in a Quinnipiac poll in March 2014, two months in, and a year in, early February 2015, the split in a Christopher Newport University poll was 49 percent approve/25 percent disapprove.
One thing to note here: the approval numbers aren’t all that much different – 44 percent for Spanberger and McAuliffe, 47 percent for Northam, 49 percent for Youngkin.
It’s the disapproval numbers for Spanberger that are off the charts.
What’s going on here?
Looking at the VCU poll internals, I think it’s data centers.
The data shows strong bipartisan support for the new paid family and medical leave law (Democrats: 97 percent, independents: 76 percent, Republicans: 63 percent) and strong overall support for the move to have Virginia rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the multistate program that requires power plants to pay for carbon emissions (58 percent support overall, Democrats: 83 percent, independents: 51 percent).
The other major policy issue polled was data centers, which was the focal point of the months-long budget standoff between Spanberger and the Virginia General Assembly.
Eighty-one percent said they support requiring data centers to pay additional fees to offset increased electricity demand associated with their operations – Democrats: 88 percent, independents: 75 percent, Republicans: 69 percent.
Seventy-two percent oppose allowing data centers to receive a sales tax exemption as an incentive for locating in Virginia – Democrats: 73 percent, independents: 61 percent, Republicans: 69 percent.
Which gets us to the bottom line
It’s not even newsworthy that Republicans are nearly unified in their disapproval of Spanberger’s job performance to date (6 percent approval/88 percent disapproval).
What’s particularly not good is her rating among independents (20 percent approval/50 percent disapproval), and her relatively soft approval from Democrats (77 percent approval/14 percent disapproval).
I’d advise anybody in the Spanberger inner circle who’s willing to listen – and there’s no indication that those folks exist, but anyway – that these hurt feelings over data centers aren’t going to go away.
I wouldn’t foresee an impact from the data center disaster on our 2026 congressional midterms in Virginia, but a continuation of the status quo in the 2027 General Assembly session could make for a difficult November 2027 for Democrats running for seats in the House of Delegates and the State Senate.
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Chris Graham
