Another poll weighted to the 2021 electorate – why do it that way? – has the Virginia lieutenant governor race running tight as a tick.
The Roanoke College poll out today, which has Abigail Spanberger leading Winsome Earle-Sears by 10 points in the governor’s race, has the Democrat running for LG, Ghazala Hashmi, up by just two points on John Reid.
I doubt it would have helped the Hashmi cause much if her campaign had ever responded to my request to have her as a guest on my podcast, but, there is that hanging out there.
In any case, the folks at Roanoke College didn’t share the raw numbers from their poll, so I can’t do what I was able to do with the 2021 weighted VCU poll, and tell you what the numbers said before the pollsters remade the electorate to resemble the 2021 electorate that produced a statewide MAGA sweep.
To borrow from Dennis Hopper: 2025 is going to make 2021 look like 2008.
ICYMI
You ask me, and I’d say that, Spanberger leading by 10 and Hashmi leading by two in an electorate that gave us three MAGAs, hey, the Ds are doing OK.
I want to shed some light – maybe; maybe it’s not light, but let’s see – on the LG race that I don’t think is being picked up on by the pollsters.
As most folks who read us regularly know, I’m based in a very red area – Augusta County went 70 percent-plus for Donald Trump last year, for instance, and Waynesboro was the rare city in Virginia that gave the Trumper a majority.
My neighborhood has more than enough front yards with Republicans campaign signs on the lawns for me to form an educated thought on attitudes toward the candidates.
One thing I keep noticing: not a lot of John Reid signs in the front yards.
I don’t think it takes a lot to figure out what could be going on there.
John Reid is a former MAGA radio talk-show host, but he’s also gay – which, you may remember, the Youngkinistas tried to use against Reid to get him to step down from being the nominee.
I’ve been writing since the spring that Winsome Earle-Sears would struggle with the MAGA base because she’s a woman, she’s Black and she’s an immigrant.
I’m wondering aloud here if we’re not seeing the same expected reluctance from the base toward committing to Reid.
ICYMI
It’s worth noting that, per the Roanoke College poll, Reid is polling at 40 percent in the LG race, and while he’s only down two to Hashmi, Earle-Sears is actually getting 41 percent in the governor race, so, he’s not quite getting what she is at the top of the ticket.
Fourteen percent of those polled, per Roanoke College, are still undecided.
The pollster doesn’t give us crosstabs that tell us the partisan makeup of the undecided, but let’s just assume that there is a fair share of MAGA undecideds, and that they’re not going to just vote for the Democrat to protest their party running a gay man in the LG spot.
There will be undervotes, or maybe just a depressed turnout from the MAGA side because of that side’s displeasure with the top two choices on the ticket.
The latter could have an impact on the AG race between Jason Miyares and Jay Jones.
Roanoke College gives Miyares an eight-point lead there, but there are still 13 percent undecided, per its polling – probably a fair number of those being Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents on the fence on Jones because of the texts scandal.
Those Dems are much, much more likely to come back into the fold just to make sure Miyares doesn’t get another four years, than MAGA voters are to hold their noses and vote for Reid in the face of his sin of being a gay man.
Spanberger is cruising to a double-digit victory at the top of the ticket. I don’t see the LG race being as close as the polls are suggesting, because of what I’m seeing, with my own two eyes.
Jones-Miyares is a toss-up, because Jones texted a close (!) friend on the MAGA side with an “Office” joke.
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Chris Graham
