A tightening race in Virginia is giving Republicans hope that they may be able to escape a blue beating in next year’s midterm elections in the age of Trump.
While Democrat Ralph Northam, the state’s current lieutenant governor, is still ahead in the race for Virginia’s governor’s mansion, Republican hopeful Ed Gillespie has been making gains.
In New Jersey, however – the other state that picks a new governor tomorrow – the Democratic candidate is 14.4 points ahead, according to the Real Clear Politics polling average.
President Trump woke up early Tuesday morning in Tokyo – Monday afternoon in the states – reminding his own supporters in Virginia to get out and vote, as voters head to the polls Tuesday for the most significant set of elections since the Republican businessman won the White House a year ago Wednesday.
‘The state of Virginia economy, under Democrat rule, has been terrible,’ Trump said. ‘If you vote Ed Gillespie tomorrow, it will come roaring back!’
President Trump (left) while in Asia this week still tweeted out support for Virginia governor hopeful Ed Gillespie (right), a former D.C. lobbyist and ex-chair of the Republican National Committee
President Trump woke up in Japan Tuesday morning and sent out a tweet showing his support for Republican hopeful for Virginia Gov. Ed Gillespie
Tomorrow’s race in Virginia looks like Democrat Ralph Northam’s to lose, as he’s competing in a state that has a Democratic governor and two senators and went for Hillary Clinton last year by five points
Repubican Lt. Gov. of New Jersey Kim Guadagno will likely be clobbered by her Democratic opponent tomorrow in New Jersey, as Republican Gov. Chris Christie leaves office with low poll numbers
Democratic candidate for New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (left), seen campaigning with former President Bill Clinton (right), looks to be on track to win the blue state’s state house tomorrow
Virginia is the one state in the union that bars its governor from running for re-election, and so the popular current executive, Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe, has to sit out.
In New Jersey, term limits are pushing Republican Gov. Chris Christie out too, though he’s suffered from record low approval ratings all summer.
This has helped Democrat Phil Murphy in his race again Republican Kim Guadagno, who’s had trouble attracting independent voters – a must-win for Republicans running in the blue state.
For the political world, Virginia – a true purple state – has become higher stakes.
In many ways, it should be the Democrats’ to lose.
Northam is a doctor and an Army veteran, the lieutenant to a popular Democratic governor, whose state is represented in the Senate by two Democrats and where Hillary Clinton beat Trump by five points last year.
But Gillespie’s a known quantity around Washington, D.C., including the city’s Virginia suburbs, from his time at the helm of Quinn Gillespie and Associates, the bipartisan lobbying shop he ran with Democrat Jack Quinn, Al Gore’s former counsel.
As the polls have tightened and election day has neared, the race has taken a nasty turn.
In an effort to win Trump voters – who an establishment-type Republican like Gillespie may not naturally attract – the former lobbyist has run ads suggesting Northam’s decisions led to an increase in the gang MS-13, nailing the Democrat for supporting sanctuary cities.
FactCheck.org has called the claim misleading.
An outside group, Latino Victory Fund, ran an ad suggesting Gillespie and Trump stand with racists, showing a confederate flag-waving, Gillespie and Tea Party-supporting white pick-up truck driver bearing down on a group of Latino and Muslim kids.
That ad was pulled from online after last week’s terror attack in New York.
Democrats in the state, too, sent out a mailer that linked Gillespie to the Charlottesville white supremacists.
Northam, this week, ran spots that called Gillespie ‘despicable’ after the Republican ran an ad pointing to the Democrat’s support for restoring felons’ voting rights, which included a suspected child pornographer.
‘I’m a pediatrician, and for Ed Gillespie to say I would tolerate anyone hurting a child is despicable,’ Northam said.
Ugliness aside, Gillespie came in striking distance of taking out Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, in the 2014 Senate race, perplexing pollsters, some of whom believe he could do it again.
The Real Clear Politics polling average has him trailing Northam by 3.3 points.
Elections Analyst Sean Trende for Real Clear Politics explained that the Northam-Gillespie race is within the ‘Margie Margin,’ a nickname based off of an experiment done last year using pollsters and polling data from Florida.
The New York Times’ Upshot blog gave five pollsters, including Democratic pollster Maggie Omero – hence the moniker – the same data and the results were between Clinton being up four points to Trump being up by one in the Sunshine State last year.
He won the state by 1.3 points.
The point of the exercise was that not only will polling different people get a different result – what margin of error measures – but pollsters’ make-up of the electorate can produce different results too.
In looking at the Virginia race, Trende wrote that Northam is still probably the safe choice, but the polls seem to suggest that tomorrow there could be ‘a narrow Gillespie win, or a surprisingly comfortable Northam win’ – or somewhere in between.