by James A. Bacon
Virginia voters disagree with Governor Glenn Youngkin on major issues such as his crusade against Critical Race Theory and masks in schools. Furthermore, only 41% of voters say they approve of his job performance compared to 43% who disapprove. That’s what The Washington Post extracted from a poll just released by Christopher Newport University’s Wason Center.
The WaPo offered no explanation of Youngkin’s sudden reversal in popularity since his election in November, other than to note that his executive orders “generated strong feelings” and “stoked divisive issues.”
The Post regurgitates the Wason poll results uncritically, even repeating the numbers for a question that clearly biased the outcome: asking voters whether or not the commonwealth should spend surplus revenues on “underfunded government services” like education, public safety, and social services. Nice job, guys!
There’s another reason to suspect the poll findings.
Of the 701 Virginians surveyed, 20% identified as conservative and 4% very conservative compared to 26% liberal and 9% very liberal, with 34% classifying themselves as moderate. That’s a 11-percentage point tilt in favor of liberals.
Compare that to a May 2021 poll which asked Virginia voters to place themselves on a 1 to 10 scale of liberal to conservative. Virginia voters’ average score was 5.83, tilting significantly to the conservative side. Partisan affiliations can be fickle, but ideological leanings are fairly stable over time. Sorry, Wason, but your voter sample looks as biased as your question about the budget surplus.
If we give credence to the Post, after Youngkin has been in office less than two months, we‘re expected to believe that voters disagree with him on almost every major issue he campaigned on (or allegedly campaigned on) — the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, not teaching the history of racism (a phony issue I debunked yesterday), Critical Race Theory in schools, masks in schools, and vaccine mandates. (Poll respondents did favor two Youngkin initiatives: putting resource officers in schools and repealing the sales tax on groceries.)
“The honeymoon is over,” Delegate Don L. Scott Jr., D-Portsmouth, declared Monday in speech on the House floor that the Post described as “blistering.” Said Scott: “It’s hard to be this bad, this fast.… He’s too extreme, too divisive.”
Youngkin spokesperson Macaulay Porter blew off the poll, telling the Post that polling has been consistently off the mark. “Governor Youngkin,” she said, “looks forward to delivering on more promises that he made during the campaign.”
She’s right about one thing: Wason did get it wrong in its Oct. 27, 2021, pre-election poll. That showed Democrat Terry McAuliffe leading Youngkin 49% to 47%, Attorney General Mark Herring ahead of Jason Miyares by 48% to 47%, and Hala Ayala with a one-point lead over Winsome Sears in the race for lieutenant governor.
We know how that turned out.
The one thing useful about the WaPo story is that it has expressed its anti-Youngkin narrative in the starkest of terms: the Governor is polarizing the electorate by stoking “divisive issues.” Expect the Democrats’ media allies to hammer that theme relentlessly — Youngkin the extremist, Youngkin the divider. Will the tactic prove effective? I am not bold enough to predict. We’ll see in due time.
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