The Virginia governor’s race has always been treated as a referendum on the White House incumbent. The result this time — with Democrat Terry McAuliffe losing to his Republican opponent, Glenn Youngkin, a year after Biden swept the state by 10 percentage points — amounts to a referendum squared. US politics is considerably more nationalised than it has ever been, which makes this a terrible result for the president. The message to him from Virginia is to turn things around before it is too late.
Youngkin’s victory will serve as the template for the Republican campaign to retake Congress a year from now. It boiled down to two things. First, keep the Trumpian base onside by giving them just enough red meat. Youngkin’s attack on the alleged teaching of “critical race theory” in Virginia’s schools and his critique of mask mandates was sufficiently Trumpian to raise turnout in rural and small town Virginia. Youngkin showed great skill in securing Donald Trump’s endorsement while ensuring the former president stayed far away from the state.
That made his second plank — targeting the more pragmatic suburban vote that had swung to Biden in 2020 — easier to pull off. If central casting were to confect a hologram of a moderate suburban Dad, Youngkin would fit the bill. His relatively moderate demeanour gave him scope to reassure white-collar voters that he was not whistling nativist tunes while doing precisely that. This enabled him to say things that would have sounded dangerously polarising coming from another politician, like Trump. When Youngkin echoed blatantly false conspiracy theories that the FBI were infiltrating school board meetings to harass conservatives, he sounded concerned rather than incendiary. Had Trump said that same thing it would have set off alarm bells.