What do we think about the Democratic Primaries?
The 2021 Democratic Primaries are finally behind us. Now it's time to decompress and analyze the results. This time we're joined by Mark Rozell, Dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government, as well as Kyle Kondik at the UVA Center for Politics. What do we think about the Democratic statewide nominees? What about the results in the House races? Listen and find out.
Michael Pope
Welcome to Transition Virginia, the podcast that examines the ongoing transition of power in Virginia. I'm Michael Pope.
Thomas Bowman
And I'm Thomas Bowman. Today on the podcast, the Democratic Primary. What does the election say about the direction of the party? And what does it mean for the fall campaign season?
Michael Pope
And we have a dynamite panel here to walk us through the election results and explain what we can learn from the numbers. We're joined by the Dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. Mark Rozell. Thanks for joining us.
Mark Rozell
Thank you for having me.
Thomas Bowman
We're also joined by the managing editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. Kyle Kondik, thanks for joining us.
Kyle Kondik
Thanks for having me.
Michael Pope
Okay, so let's get right into it. The primary is finally over. We've got the election results. What is our top line takeaway? Mark Rozell, I'll start with you.
Mark Rozell
Well, the top line takeaway is pretty much as expected. The results, Terry McAuliffe, nominated for Governor, and Mark Herring renominated for Attorney General. And then the candidate who had largely the leading endorsements, Ayala, ends up the nominee as Lieutenant Governor. So Terry McAuliffe, winning by over 60% of the vote, winning every single county and city in the state, that was a hugely impressive achievement by him. At a time when many were saying it's maybe time to move on and have a different face for the Democratic Party, the Democrats voting at the grassroots decided to go with a known quantity, a former Governor, and to reward experience in this particular case, I think, more than the idea of change.
Michael Pope
Kyle Kondik, what did we learn from this primary?
Kyle Kondik
You know, I think that the Virginia Democratic Electorate is, I guess, maybe a little risk averse in that I think this is the second straight, Democratic Gubernatorial Primary where, you know, four years ago, the voters pick Ralph Northam over Tom Perriello, who I think was kind of more of an insurgent candidate, ran to Northam's left in some ways, although on certain cultural issues, Northam was able to get to Perriello's left. But then four years later, faced with, I guess, a somewhat similar choice, although with a much more fractured field, Democratic primary voters decided to, again, go with a safer choice, a more proven commodity. Northam, of course, was the sitting Lieutenant Governor when he got nominated four years ago, and McAuliffe is the is a former Governor and you know, incumbents can't run again in Virginia, but McAuliffe's about the closest thing you could get to an incumbent in a gubernatorial race, given that he just held the job himself four years ago. There was a lot of talk about turnout, whether it was good, or bad, or whatever, for Democrats. In terms of raw numbers, it was not as large as the kind of blockbuster 2017 turnout, in which it was about 540,000 Democrats voted in that Northam versus Perriello primary. Looks like total turnouts going to about 485,000, which is still on the higher side historically in Virginia. And I think that, you know, I think that there were some Democrats who were worried that it would be significantly lower than that. So I think it shows that there's still a level of engagement that maybe wasn't present prior to Donald Trump winning in 2016. Although the white hot intensity probably isn't burning quite as hot as it was four years ago. And of course, part of how Glenn Youngkin could try to win this Governor's race is make sure that his side is more motivated than the Democrats are. You know, we'll see how that comes to pass. And of course, Youngkin won his nomination in a kind of a hybrid convention. And so you can't really compare the turnout in a convention to a primary.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah. You know, what's interesting about the results, with Terry McAuliffe getting over 60%, it's a big repudiation of the anti establishment coalition that had been starting to form in the Democratic Party. I'd said in previous podcasts that the best progressives typically get to do in Virginia is around 30%. And if you add up everybody who's not Terry McAuliffe, it's a little bit over 30%. And so past is prologue, often in these elections. And so one thing that I learned is don't run statewide when you're not ready.
Kyle Kondik
Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, sometimes I feel like you know, Fortune favors the bold in some of these races, that maybe you should jump in, when you have a chance. But the problem for the non McAuliffe candidates is that there simply were too many of them. And none of them were ever able to kind of outshine the others, necessarily, and to make a clear case against against McAuliffe.
Mark Rozell
Right. Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think if the Democratic left, wanted to challenge the old guard, and wanted the point the Virginia Democratic Party into the future in a different direction, they needed to unify behind one of those four candidates who are running to the left of Terry McAuliffe. And of course, candidates, their egos being what they are, every single one looks in the mirror and thinks, "I can be the next Governor," it's hard to get any of them to step back for what they might, others might consider the greater good of the cause, or try to unify around one person who can put up a viable challenge against the presumed front runner. So you had four more liberal candidates running in this campaign, splitting up the progressive vote, which made it really likely all along. And I, you know, there was no surprise that Terry McAuliffe was going to be able to easily win in the primary.
Michael Pope
Kyle, you were talking about the turnout a second ago. So the turnout this year was higher than in 2009, but lower than in 2017. Beyond that, you have to go all the way back to 1977 to compare the turnout, and you know, back then it was totally different era, you had 24% of voters voting in that 1977 Democratic primary. A time when Democrats lost the primary, even with that huge turnout. So I mean, that's kind of the ancient past. But like, if you think about modern elections, in 2009, there was like a 6% turnout. And that's a year that Democrats lost to Bob McDonald. So I mean, that's not a particularly good sign. And, you know, 2017, the turnout was around 10%, and that's a year Democrats won with Ralph Northam. So, I mean, the fact that it was, it's below the, you know, winning year with Ralph Northam, but above the sort of losing year with McDonald, I mean, doesn't that indicate there, this level of turnout, might in fact, indicate some kind of lack of enthusiasm or problem for the Democrats?
Kyle Kondik
You know, look, I mean, it certainly could. I mean, look, I think a party, you know, in a primary setting, probably wants as many people to participate as possible, just the sort of a sign of enthusiasm. Of course, in Virginia, you know, it changes year to year whether parties decide to have a primary or a convention or whatnot. And, you know, the Republicans decided to have this type of convention. And in a normal convention, you'd have all the delegates gather in a single location, and cast ballots, and, you know, actually have several rounds of voting. This time, because of the pandemic, Republicans held what was called, "an unassembled convention," which essentially means that you had delegates meeting at casting rank choice ballots at about 40 locations across the state. About 30,000 votes were cast in the first round of voting. You know, if we had actually had a primary in on the Republican side, and I think the Republican primary turnout in 2017 was something like 365,000 or so, if the Republican primary turnout had been like, 450, and the Democrats had only been 485, I think you could look at that and say, "Oh, well, you know, Republicans are sort of catching up in terms of enthusiasm," but we don't have we don't we don't actually have that data point. And you know, you mentioned the 1977 Democratic primary, which was the previous record holder for Democratic primary turnout in a gubernatorial race in Virginia. You know, that was Henry Howell, who is a progressive liberal firebrand against the Andy Miller, the kind of conservative Democratic Attorney General. Howell won the primary, but then got got blown out in the general election. And so it wasn't that that high turnout was necessarily predictive of anything. I don't know if there's great research that suggests that high primary turnout is all that meaningful. You could look at 2017 and say that it was, and maybe if the Democrats lose the governorship this time in 2021, they'll, you know, we'll see a Democratic base that maybe was less engaged, but I don't think it was bad turnout. I mean, it was less than 2017. But 2017 was really pretty high.
Michael Pope
So we get your point that there's not necessarily data that shows that's a problem. But I will say Democrats are uneasy about what they view as a low turnout and potentially lack of enthusiasm. Mark Rozell, do you think that might be a problem for Democrats heading into the fall election season?
Mark Rozell
Right, it's a potential problem. Kyle is right. Clearly, there are occasions where high turnout does not correspond to electoral victory in the fall. I know some Democrats, though, are concerned that the turnout was somewhat down from the previous election cycle four years ago. Part of that is just the federalism effect, right, that Democrats have the White House, they have Congress, and so for many Democratic Party base voters, everything's okay in the world right now, Donald Trump is out of the picture. That was a huge motivating factor four years ago that drove Democrats in droves to the polls, and Donald Trump is not a factor. He's not in the game anymore. And so that with that factor gone, there's a little bit less intensity there for the base Democratic Party voters, for many of them. And the fact that the Democrats have the White House and have Congress, I think gives a sense of assurance to many Democrats that they control the government right now. And they're not as interested, perhaps, in sort of the lower ticket type races that happened in these off election years, as we have in Virginia, than they would be otherwise, if there were a Donald Trump like figure in the picture right now.
Thomas Bowman
You know, my sense of the voter turnout question is that most voters, one, are not primary voters anyway. And they just really wanted the Democratic Party to nominate people that they can vote for in November, people who aren't crazy. And you know, for those voters, this election was a solid outcome, in my opinion.
Mark Rozell
Yeah, that's right, you could say it's the grown up party right now that the voters were really looking toward who has the best chance of winning an election, of holding power, as opposed to who is a statement candidate who stands for certain issues, who's pure on all of the ideological issues that in this case, the progressive wing of the party really cares about. You have a strong majority of the primary voters coming out and voting for, I think what most would say is a more pragmatic choice than going with a liberal activist, instead, to be the party nominee. To pick somebody who's a well known party centrist, who has held the Office of Governor previously, who has the ability to raise and spend large sums of money and to compete with, by the way, a Republican nominee, who's going to spend an unprecedented amount of money in this campaign. So although much of the professional literature in my field says that primary voters are not very pragmatic, and they tend to go more for ideological statement type candidates, that is clearly not what happened here in Virginia's primary.
Kyle Kondik
You know, just to piggyback on Mark's point, I think it's also probably fair to say that Republican convention goers also did not pick the kind of maximally ideological candidate that probably would have been state Senator Amanda Chase, and she, you know, she ended up finishing, effectively, third in the convention. And so I think that both McAuliffe and Yougnkin, I wouldn't call either of them really moderate. But I think it's fair to say that the voters in both parties had more ideological options that they decided not to go with. And so they went with kind of a, what I think of as a mainstream Republican and a mainstream Democrat.
Thomas Bowman
You know, this is a good pivot to talking about the Lieutenant Governor's race, because that was the best opportunity for progressives, or the left wing, or whatever you want to call them, to get a win statewide. They had all backed Rasoul, for the most part, and Rasoul ended up coming in at 25 ish percent, just under, and it wasn't enough to best Ayala, who got some VIP endorsements toward the end of the race. And that ended up pushing her over the top from being a candidate who in the last reporting period, wasn't even that viable, to now the nominee for Lieutenant Governor. What do we make of the Lieutenant Governor race, which had confused a lot of primary voters?
Mark Rozell
Yeah, so I think both parties actually got their more ideological type candidate in the Lieutenant Governor nomination. The Republicans, an arch conservative for Lieutenant Governor and the Democrats, a strong progressive for Lieutenant Governor. So for those who are looking for the party to put on the ticket, somebody who is going to appeal to the activist core, the party that tends to be a bit more ideological than the regular rank and file voter in a general election, the Lieutenant Governor race ended up working out quite well for both of the political parties in this case.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah, Hala is certainly a progressive. That's for sure. Kyle, what did you think?
Kyle Kondik
You know, I think, first of all, it's probably better as just for, from a geographical perspective, to be a Northern Virginia candidate than it is to be from Roanoke, because you saw a, amongst the two leading candidates, you saw a real kind of geographical split in that Sam Rasoul did very well in kind of the Western part of the state, and Ayala did really well in the Eastern part of the state. It's just a lot more people in the Eastern part of the state. I also think that, and I'm stealing this point from the Washington Post Dave Weigel, he tweeted out, in some ways, the results from the primary were kind of a vindication of outgoing governor Ralph Northam, who, of course, had a huge problem with the blackface scandal that emerged in early 2019. And he decided to basically just try to weather the storm. And it turned out that his endorsement was, I think, valuable to some candidates. And Ayala is one of those candidates who ended up winning with Northam's endorsement. You know, I think probably for a lot of voters, it was hard to kind of sift through the many choices in the in the Lieutenant Governor's race. And maybe the Northam endorsement was helpful to Ayala, and also just, you know, having kind of a geographical advantages to being from a more populous part of the state.
Michael Pope
You know, one thing that Ayala is going to have to deal with, is this money from Dominion. She was one of the many members of the General Assembly to take this pledge that she would not take money from Dominion. Then she went back and ended up taking $100,000, from Dominion, despite having taken this pledge. And so I saw that House Republican Leader Todd Gilbert said that, you know, she made news in the last days of her campaign for being a liar. How is she going to deal with this? So far, she has done a little more than having a written statement about this, which was totally non responsive. The day that the campaign contributions were public, I was hitting up her campaign staff for a written statement, and they sent one, and it was non responsive to the question, it didn't explain at all why she she took the money. How is she going to deal with this issue on the campaign trail? Kyle, we'll start with you, then we'll go to Mark.
Kyle Kondik
Well, I just don't necessarily know if beyond kind of the activist crowd, if there are going to be a lot of voters who really care about it. I mean, maybe there were primary voters who cared about it. But I mean, I think she turned in a pretty impressive performance in a splintered field. And, you know, I mean, I think that the attack you just mentioned on her as being you know, is not being truthful about this, is probably a fair one. But um, substance of the matter, is this something that a lot of voters, statewide, who otherwise would vote for Ayala are going to are going to care about, I just don't necessarily know if that's if that's going to be the case.
Mark Rozell
I think that says it all, really. It's not an issue that is going to drive voting decisions predominantly, in this election cycle. Voters are going to be much more focused on the big pocketbook issues, the state of the economy, education, the environment, health care, and the like. And some of this issue just seems a little bit inside baseball to many voters who are not really going to comprehend it fully. So I don't see a lot of political gain there for Republicans to use against her. And also, just keep in mind, the vast majority of voters don't pay a lot of attention to the down ticket races, particularly Lieutenant Governor, until you get very close to election day itself, in Virginia campaigns. So if this is a typical Virginia election campaign, the down ticket races are probably going to track pretty consistently with how the top of the ticket does, unless the opposition party is capable of differentiating one of those down ticket candidates from the top of the ticket in a way that gets voters to think very seriously about splitting their ballots.
Kyle Kondik
Yeah, just to Mark's point, I wrote something about this in our Crystal Ball newsletter about just looking at the kind of the modern history of statewide elections in Virginia, which goes back to 1969, which is the first year that Republicans won the governorship since reconstruction. And, you know, it used to be that you you would see, you know, huge differences between how people voted for Governor versus Attorney General, Lieutenant Governor. There are certain years where, you know, incumbents can't run for another term in the Governor's race, but they can do that and for Lieutenant Governor and for Attorney General, and sometimes you see a big incumbency advantage for some of these candidates. But in more recent history, you know, in the 2017 race, you know, the difference among the three statewide races, you know, Northam won by about nine points, Justin Fairfax was the the weakest performing Democrat, he won by about five and a half. Also, in the last three election cycles, the same party has won all three of the statewide races. There is going to be some variation in these races among the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, but you probably would expect them all to vote the same way, unless we're talking about, you know, a year in which maybe all the races are really close. And so that the, you know, the differences among the races might, you know, tip one, one race to one party and the others maybe to the other party, but you're not going to see I don't think a dramatic difference in the Governor resolve versus Lieutenant Governor or Attorney General, I don't think.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah. And when it comes to Hala having to answer for breaking a pledge or whatever, and taking money from Dominion, one, voters don't like candidates who take pledges because they don't like having their politicians hands tied. They just look at what the Republicans did with the no tax pledge, and we have to reform taxes. If you want to look at how the civil war between Dominion and Michael Bills played out, look at Kandy King who reveled, she was doing laps on Twitter, punching Michael Bills over and again, being in your face about taking the Dominion money or being willing to take the Dominion money. And she won 2 to 1. So if you're, if you're an outsider looking in, or somebody who's trying to make hay over the Dominion money, it's not going to work because voters don't care. But also because we already have a proven track record. Hala is a national security candidate. Nobody knows where Michael Bills is getting his money from for for hedge fund investments. That Bluestem Asset Management employs 10 people. Dominion employs 17,000 people, and their money is bundled into an employees pack. It's not all one guy or one family, as is the case with Clean Virginia and Michael Bills' money. So from that perspective, Dominion's gonna win the day, the establishment Democrats are going to win the day, and my guess is that nobody's going to be signing pledges in the future.
Mark Rozell
Right. I agree with you. Pledges are generally bad politics. And they're also, quite frankly, bad leadership. You know, political leaders should not simply eliminate the ability to maneuver depending upon changing circumstances over time. And what a pledge says to the voters is that the candidate has nailed himself or herself down to an issue position with no flexibility in the future, even if circumstances change. And that's just not leadership. So I just I just think these pledges are silly, and they're they're a tactic sometimes to try to nail down an opponent to be able to say something that the person making the pledge wants the other person to make a commitment to, but I rarely have seen it work very well on a political campaign.
Michael Pope
Okay, well, let's take a break. When we come back, we'll talk about the geographic imbalance to the Democratic ticket. Mark Herring, winning the primary for Attorney General and the five House incumbents who were unseated. We're joined by Mark Rozell and Kyle Kondik. We'll be right back.
And we're back on Transition Virginia. We're talking about the Democratic primary. And there's one outcome of this election that might cause some trouble for Democrats. All three of the Democrats elected statewide are from Northern Virginia. There's no geographic balance at all on the ticket. Meanwhile, the Republicans are boasting they have the most diverse ticket in Virginia history. Kyle Kondik, is that lack of geographic diversity going to be a problem for Democrats in this election cycle?
Kyle Kondik
I think that probably where our candidates from probably matters a little bit less now than it did maybe a few decades ago. Just because I think people's partisanship is sort of harder baked in and I don't know if in general elections you're going to see as much of that kind of, maybe like regional pride. I will say maybe it matters slightly on the margins. All three of the Republican candidates have at least some some connection to the Hampton Roads area. Glenn Youngkin, spent a little time as a teenager in Tidewater. Winsome Sears, while she lives in Winchester now, when she was served her term in the State House of Delegates, her district was covered part of Hampton Roads and Jason Miyares is the Attorney General candidate. He, his district represents part of Virginia Beach. And look, if if the Republicans are going to win statewide, they need to do way better in Hampton Roads than certainly than Donald Trump did in 2020. You know, specifically, the cities of Chesapeake and Virginia Beach, voted for Trump in 2016. They flipped to Biden in 2020. At the very least, the Republican ticket needs to need to win those places, and not just by a few points. And look, if there's if there's a little bit of a home field advantage that the ticket gets in Hampton Roads, that's potentially helpful, you know, obviously, for Northern Virginia, that is the engine now for Democratic statewide victories. But also, you know, I don't know if people in Northern Virginia feel any sort of, you know, regional pride about having regional candidates. I mean, there's so many transplants who live in Northern Virginia, in particular, in the state that that again, I don't think it matters. So I agree with you that the regional thing is going to come up and that it's a Northern Virginia heavy ticket for Democrats. I don't necessarily know if it matters all that much.
Mark Rozell
Yeah, I think Kyle has a right. Regionalism is not as important as it used to be. There's not a lot of Virginians who are saying, you know, "Wow, I'm gonna vote for, you know, my regional candidate here." And because of the polarization of the electorate, which has just taken hold so strongly, having an all Northern Virginia ticket, you know, if regional identity means anything at all, well, that's a great place to be from, because that's where the votes are these days. If you look at the electoral map of Virginia, and where the votes are coming from, it's quite remarkable the heavy concentration in the Northern Virginia suburbs and along the urban corridor, which is, of course, why the Republicans are so challenged right now to win statewide and trying to appeal to the suburbs more than anything, the election is going to come down to the suburban regions of the state throughout.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah, I actually think it's a good thing that Northern Virginia is finally in charge of a ticket, because that's where the center of gravity is, politically, and it has been there for quite some time. Fairfax County, for example, has 30 members of the House of Delegates alone. So it makes more sense that Northern Virginia should be getting more representation. And then the other thing to consider is that Northern Virginia, and its voters care a lot, about national security. And right now, unfortunately, the Republican Party is a threat to national security, and the FBI is gonna have to figure out why, but it is what it is. And so it's good to have Northern Virginia in the driver's seat, finally.
Michael Pope
You know, on the issue of law and order, this is something that Republicans are putting at the center of their campaign. They're the party of law and order. And you know, this is particularly important for the Attorney General race where, well, I think we're going to see Jason Miyares say that, "he's running on a platform of keeping the streets safe and the criminals behind bars," and attacking Attorney General Herring for the criminal justice reform efforts, for legalizing marijuana, for all of the things that he's done as Attorney General. What do we make of this dynamic here between the law and order party, versus the criminal justice reform party, in the Attorney General race? Mark Rozell, I'll start with you.
Mark Rozell
The Republicans are counting on, they believe, the Democrats having lurched too far to the political left on a variety of issues, particularly in the area of criminal justice reform. And if there is at all an upswing, for example, in criminal activity that is documented, the Republicans certainly will make a lot of that in this campaign in suggesting that under Democratic Party leadership, taking away the focus from law and order type issues, has made people in their suburban homes, for example, a lot less safe than they would be under a Republican administration. So you can understand that's going to be a major appeal by the Republicans in this election cycle. But a lot of that's going to come down to really what happens over the next several months, not only in Virginia, but nationally on these issues, because so much of the framework that voters are operating under is really a part of a national political discussion, not a state, local, regional one, and how these issues play out on the national stage I think are going to have a big impact in how they work for each of the parties on this election cycle this year in Virginia.
Kyle Kondik
You know, there's a lot to unpack here. And I think Mark's right, that sort of the reality on the ground is going to matter and how people feel about issues of public safety. I think there's probably no, I think there probably a lot of voters who maybe look at both parties and say, "Yeah, I think immigration is kind of a related issue to this kind of larger kind of law and order, so called law and order umbrella." And they probably look at the, you know, the Trump Republican party and say, on issues of immigration or issues of so called law and order, "That maybe the Republicans are kind of too hard on those sorts of issues." And then maybe they'll look at the Democrats and say, "Well, hey, maybe the Democrats are too soft." You know, there was a long history of the presidential party in a Virginia gubernatorial setting, performing worse in the gubernatorial race than then the party did in the Presidential race that happens a year before the Governor's race. That's a pretty common trend, the Presidential Party often loses the Virginia Governorship, although one modern exception, of course, is that Terry McAuliffe himself bucked that trend in 2013. He won even though Barack Obama was in the White House and actually was not very popular in November of, of 2013. But one of the things that I think helps explain why the President's party often struggles, not just in the Virginia gubernatorial race, but also more broadly in midterm elections, you know, the we'll have the midterm and coming up in 2022, in Virginia, across the country, is that, you know, public opinion sometimes changes when there's a presidential administration change, that we there's a kind of a fancy political science term for this called, "thermostatic public opinion," which is that, basically, that when there's a liberal administration, in the White House, the public maybe starts to voice more conservative opinions on things. And vice versa. If there's a conservative administration, the public maybe expresses a little bit more liberal opinions on things. And so the question then becomes, does the public get a little more conservative, a little bit more open to Republicans? Are there problems in Virginia, or in Democratic controlled Washington, that turns some people against the Democratic Party. You know, those are all things that are important for this election. And I think, frankly, that, you know, Youngkin on the Republican ticket needs a little bit of help from circumstances, you know, if they need the Democrats to make some mistakes, they need some issues to pop up that that are helpful to Republicans and may be hurtful to Democrats. And certainly, when Ed Gillespie, ran for Governor in 2017, he focused a lot on you know, he was running ads about gang activity and Ms. 13, and other things, and it just kind of fell flat in the environment of 2017. But maybe that sort of messaging won't fall flat for various reasons in 2021, although it's also not guaranteed to work.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah, you know, the more Republicans want to talk about law and order, and the the more they use dog whistles to talk about it, the less votes they're gonna win, especially in the suburbs.
Mark Rozell
I think you know, what, I think the gubernatorial nominee largely understands that for the Republicans right now, Glenn Youngkin, although he made overtures to the Trump wing of the Republican Party in order to get the nomination, and Terry McAuliffe will never let that be forgotten, in this election campaign. Youngkin has certainly tried to pivot toward a more mainstream conservative message for the purpose of the general election campaign. So in the pre Trump era, they always said to the Republicans, "Run right to get the nomination. Move toward the middle to win the general election." It's not so easy these days, because how do you run with Trump and then kind of disown him after getting the nomination because you risk losing a lot of those core Trump voters, who the nominee needs in order to win the election. So I think Youngkin has a very big challenge ahead of him as the nominee of the Republican Party. He wants to get away, I believe, from the Trump faction to the extent that he can hold their votes without continually making overtures to them on issues that most appeal to those voters. And he wants to expand his base of support by reaching out to more mainstream conservatives and moderate Republicans and moderate to conservative Democrats as well. The big question is, will he be able to do that effectively, I think it's going to be very difficult to do.
Thomas Bowman
You know, the other thing that Youngkin's got going for him or against him, I should say, is that he fed into The Big Lie. And he called into question the results of the election, which were unquestionable, and by doing that, he committed sedition. He played with people who were trying to cause insurrection at the Capitol. And so therefore, Virginia being the home of Langley, the home of you know, Dulles National Airport, the home of Quantico, the home of countless three letter agencies that do and don't exist, the Republican Party is a national security risk. And it's just that simple. You don't need to know anything else about the politics or the positions that they've got.
Mark Rozell
Okay, so here, so here's the challenge, right? Youngkin try to nuance it by saying, "He was concerned about election integrity," right, which is different than, strictly speaking, saying that he believes that Joe Biden is not the legitimately elected President of the United States. Clearly, I think he made a big mistake in not earlier acknowledging the legitimacy of the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. And he made his pivot, of course, after having won the Republican nomination, and openly acknowledged that Joe Biden as the legitimate president of the United States story over. And again, that's, you know, that's the challenge for Youngkin, right, that he needed to do and say certain things to get the nomination in order to have a chance to become Governor. And I think he compromised on a lot of things in order to do that, which he would not certainly be the first candidate running for a party nomination to do that, right? But it's a lot harder to pivot from reaching out to the Trump faction, and then moving away from it, than it is to run right, and then run center by nuancing differences of policy issues. So I think you're right, he's got a big challenge ahead of him in order to be credible to mainstream voters, that he's not simply a Trump packaway. And some of the things he said, "Well, that was just to get the nomination. But wink wink, nod nod. here's here's what he really thinks."
Kyle Kondik
I mentioned Hampton Roads earlier as being really electorally important. And I really thought that that in, if you look at the 2020 results, that Democrats really did, I was sort of surprised at how well they did in Hampton Roads, you know, flipping Virginia Beach, flipping Chesapeake from Trump who won in 2016. And of course, you know, Hampton Roads is a is a pretty military heavy area. And, you know, I think you could sort of infer that whatever, however, well, Donald Trump did with, you know, the combination of military personnel and veterans in 2016, that he probably did worse than in 2020. And, you know, those are folks that Youngkin is going to have to win back and the Republican ticket is going to have to win back. And, you know, there may be ways that they can do that. But if in fact, there's still some sort of lingering problem with those kinds of voters for the Republican ticket, you know, that's potentially still a problem in in 2021. And, you know, the House of Delegates, you know, there are a number of competitive races across the map. But a lot of people feel like Hampton Roads is not just important for the statewides, but there are also some districts in that part of the state that are really important for for majority control of the House of Delegates this year.
Michael Pope
You know, one issue that we're going to hear Republicans talk about this election cycle is the politics of the past. I think Tommy Norman probably put this the best when he said, "Democrats have taken their enthusiasm for recycling to the extreme, recycling two thirds of the 2013 ticket." Mark Rozell, is this going to be a problem for Democrats, that they've got candidates who are the politics of the past, that's the argument Republicans are going to make. Is that going to stick?
Mark Rozell
For the voters who believe that experience matters, it's not a problem, clearly. Having an incumbent and a previous occupier of the Governor's Mansion showcases that the Democratic Party ticket has a great deal of governing experience. Put that up against the Republican ticket, of course, which is led by a gubernatorial nominee who has never held elective office before. So there's a good case there for Democratic Party voters, and Democratic Party leaning voters, to argue that they have the superior ticket based on experience. But for those who are looking for change, who believe that the Democratic Party needs to move in a different direction, and all these old white guys coming back? Well, maybe there's a lack of enthusiasm there. And that's part of the turnout problem that Kyle was talking about before, that might exist on the Democratic Party side, given that the turnout was down a bit, this time from where it was four years ago. Maybe that somewhat suggests that the intensity factor among the base of the Democratic Party is not quite there as much as it was four years ago, when everybody just wanted to send a message to the electorate regarding Donald Trump as President, the United States, they had something to vote against in that campaign. They're not going to have that this time around.
Kyle Kondik
Yeah, I mean, I mean, I think I think it's if in fact, the Republicans do well in November, it may be in part because this Democratic ticket doesn't gin up the kind of enthusiasm particularly in a world where Donald Trump is no longer the occupant of the White House, although he continues to be a very much a public figure more so than previous former presidents have been public figures. And look, I think McAuliffe recognizes that, you know, keeping Trump front of mind is an important motivational tool. I mean, he was supposed to he was on MSNBC, you know, soon after winning the nomination and basically challenged Donald Trump to come to Virginia. And of course, McAuliffe wants Trump to come to Virginia, because he wants to remind voters that that Trump supports Glenn Youngkin, and whatnot. And, you know, this is a race in which I think during the Obama years, we kind of got used to Republicans trying to nationalize races in Virginia, in you know, years like 2013 and 2014, when, you know, Democrats were held to pretty close to competitive statewide margins. And, you know, Democrats were trying to figure out their own identities and try to localize the races. You know, this time, it's the Republicans were going to be trying to like localize, and Democrats are the ones trying to nationalize. And I think that speaks to, one, it speaks to Trump and how poorly he did in Virginia, relative to past Republican presidential candidates. But I think it also speaks to how Virginia is sort of on the road to becoming more and more of a clearly Democratic state as opposed to used to being a red state at the federal level, and then then was sort of a swing state for a little while. And really, this Governor's race will help kind of confirm whether Virginia still is a swing state or whether it's become kind of more of a safely Democratic state.
Thomas Bowman
Okay, well, we're running out of time. So real quick, we need to talk about the House of Delegates and all the incumbents who lost. Kyle, this is something that you've been paying close attention to. What do you have to tell us and our our listeners on this issue?
Kyle Kondik
So yeah, you did have five incumbents lose, lose primaries, which is a relatively high number, historically speaking. More incumbents lost than in the past several primary years in in Virginia. You had one Republican lose, Charles Poindexter, who basically was primaried from the right, which is, you know, a, an easy story and a familiar story in the in the Republican Party, and then you had four Democrats lose, two of whom ended up losing one of them, in fact was was Lee Carter, who also ran for Governor and didn't do particularly well, and ended up losing his primary as well. He was basically tweeting about how he was, it seems like he was kind of happy to leave so and happy to be out of out of politics. But Carter is a self described socialist, he was probably the most liberal or progressive member of the House of Delegates. And so he he lost to a less liberal challenger. That also happened in another race. But then you also had two instances of members losing two candidates who kind of ran to their left. So it's kind of a mixed bag. In terms of the overall fight for control of the House of Delegates, Democrats have a 55 to 45 advantage right now, in the House of Delegates. I don't necessarily know if the primary really changed all that much. I think that, you know, Democrats are probably in better shape to win the majority. But it seems like there's a world in which, you know, Youngkin comes close, but doesn't win the Governorship. But that there are enough voters who split their tickets that, you know, maybe Republicans could win a narrow majority in the House of Delegates, even if Democrats maintain control of the statewide executive offices. And, you know, this is just maybe the first part of a three part story in that because the redistricting was delayed, and the data that's needed from the census to do redistricting, it seems likely that Virginia is going to have House of Delegates races in 2021, then we're going to have a new map drawn in 2022. And so do sort of a special round of House of Delegates races in 2022. And then another regular election on the new map in 2023. So whatever happens in the House of Delegates, we could be right back at it in 2022.
Mark Rozell
Yeah, let me make one last point here. I think that was a great way to pull it all together. You had several candidates who ran simultaneously for different offices, right, who held state legislative seats, but were running for a statewide nomination and ended up losing both. Let that be a lesson. It sure sends a signal to the voters within a legislative district that the incumbent really doesn't care about that position quite so much, would rather have a higher position and is using it to leverage an opportunity for higher level office. Well guess what happened? They ended up losing both.
Thomas Bowman
So that's all for this episode.
Michael Pope
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Thomas Bowman
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Michael Pope
Read the transcripts at TransitionVirginia.com and special thanks to Emily Cottrell for figuring out what the heck we're saying.
Thomas Bowman
Thanks for being on the Transition Team. We're your hosts, Thomas Bowman.
Michael Pope
And I'm Michael Pope.
