Virginia’s Republican gubernatorial nominee Glenn Youngkin is two points below former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe in a new WPA Intelligence poll.
The poll said Youngkin had 46 percent while McAuliffe had 48 percent.
Youngkin leads by a point among voters who do not identify as Republican or Democrat. The Republican also leads in every major media market except Washington, D.C., according to WPA.
“Any pundit not taking the Governor’s race in Virginia seriously could be open to a rude awakening come this fall,” WPA Intelligence said in a memo dated Wednesday.
“Despite having been a candidate for only 20 weeks, recent survey results have Glenn Youngkin within the margin of error in the upcoming election against Terry McAuliffe.”
The Republican Standard’s Shaun Kenney analyzed the poll in an article Thursday:
This having all been said, one gets the strong opinion that the days of Ralph Northam bowling guys like Ed Gillespie are over. Instead, we are in Warner-Gillespie ‘14 territory where victory — while tangible — is going to be held in the margins. Every constituency and special interest group with 10,000 supporters is going to be key, which means relationships are going to be key.
Of course, most prognosticators are going to say this is because of Donald J. Trump not being in the White House. Fair enough… but the dramatic shift from a D+11 environment to a D+2 (or better) for Republicans? Given the state of affairs in Washington with Joe Biden, Republican voter enthusiasm right now is looking at the Trump era with 5 percent GDP growth as pretty darned good.
The website also said that Virginia’s black vote “is now entirely up for grabs.”
The website elaborated on the Trump factor.
“In short, if you hold the premise that Trump had an impact in 2017, then rest assured that a Trump enthusiasm element is definitely in the background in 2021,” Kenney wrote.
“With crowds fighting in Loudoun County and elsewhere against VEA-led school boards run amok with anti-racism (sic) and state-enforced gender pronouns, you can bet that the fight you see out of Republicans now is in no small part due to the Trump effect linked to BLM/Antifa misbehavior last summer.”
In their memo, WPA Intelligence described their methodology for gathering poll results. Pollsters studied likely voters throughout Virginia:
WPA selected a random sample of registered voters from the Virginia voter file using Probability Proportionate to Size sampling (PPS) using a 2021 general election turnout model. The sample for this survey was stratified based on geography, age, gender, ethnicity, modeled party, and cells. This methodology allows us to avoid post-survey weighting which can reduce the reliability of survey results.
Respondents were contacted by phone via live telephone operators June 2-6, 2021. The study has a sample size of n=506 Likely Voters, a margin of error of ±4.4%, with 50% contacted via cell phones.
– – –
Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
Background Photo “Virginia Capitol” by Martin Kraft. CC BY-SA 3.0.
