I skipped to the end, but it is a low turnout, off-off year election in a purplish state which will tend to favor the Republicans, who are also out of power so are more energized which gives them a toss up. Really, it is exactly what is to be expected.
And no, a narrow Republican win doesn’t mean that VA voters “demand” the end of CRT or to put back up confederate statues just like a narrow Dem win doesn’t mean that VA voters have decided to go full socialist.
I know people in that county and apparently Asian-American parents are livid and there’s a risk that they might vote Republican because they feel like their right to places in elite public schools are being taken from them.
Yes, there is no way to counter it, because there’s no real issue to discuss, and, really, engaging on the subject at all just gives the bullshit more air time. It’s very hard to do anything about it, unless you are willing to come up with your own bullshit panic buttons and fight firehose of propaganda with a firehose of propaganda.
With polls closing in a few minutes, think we should open a results thread (for this, and Jersey, and various cities)?
So Republicans in Virginia are against those heathen non-profit fire departments? The Horror!
FWIW FDR largely ran bombastic propaganda campaigns that focused on attacking his “wicked” and “corrupt” enemies, while ignoring any complaints about anything he was proposing or doing. I’m not actually sure, sans some sort of societal climate that undermines the propagandizer, that there is an effective counter to propaganda other than your own propaganda. Like the reason propaganda didn’t save Trump in 2020 is because too many people had been alienated away from supporting his Presidency during the four years he was actually President, and it made many of them simply unreceptive to anything he tried to say or do after a certain point. Glenn Youngkin and most other Republicans don’t suffer from such a deficit.
This is true. And what the candidates said probably won’t be enough explain the current, not so narrow, VA margin, if it holds up. But it will explain some.
Thinking you should be, and are, an anti-racist, is popular. On the other hand — racial preferences are unpopular, no matter what you call them.
I’m sure this is a sincere proposal, but Val Demings isn’t a fool in her timing:
Based on which votes are still outstanding, it seems that it will be impossible for Youngkin to lose the lead when it comes to in person votes. McAuliffe has still got some large gains that will be made, but not large enough. As far as I can tell, the mail in ballots are not being counted yet, which is a whole different ballgame and could very easily swing the other way.
Please please please
I blame Sinema and Manchin for this result. They made the Democrats look ineffective.
It’s not just Youngkin winning, The State Attorney General is down to his Republican challenger by 10%, the Republicans are leading in the state assembly races, The Lieutenant Governor,is also losing by a similar amount.
If the results hold, the only thing left for Democrats will be the Senate - which was not up for voting today.
This whole race changed the day McCauliffe said that parents should have no say in the curriculum in schools.
Youngkin isn’t winning, he has the majority of the votes counted thus far. He’s winning like Trump was winning Pennsylvania on election night. If the absentee ballots are uncounted thus far (and I could be mistaken, but can’t find anything that says otherwise), this contest is far from over.
If McAuliffe wins, does that mean that parents should have no say in what subjects that schools teach?
I (partially) blame the fact that the Dems had a slam dunk bi-partisan infrastructure deal they could have passed two months ago, but for reasons that still escape me, they’ve refused to take the win. McAuliffe knew this and practically begged for Congress to just approve the damn bill and give him something to hang his hat on. But nope. Not gonna do it.
It’s all but over. Youngkin has won.
Excellent. What was the winning vote count?
As a candidate, McAuliffe leaves a lot to be desired. Not sure who is on the blue bench in VA, but it’s time to try someone else.
Pass the Biden bill, get results, economy returns, win in 2022 and 2024.
Sigh……Saying that parents shouldn’t be the sole entity in determining what their children are taught is NOT the same as “parents having no say”? Do you think fundamentalist parents should be able to decide whether the school system teaches creationism or evolution to your child? Do you think such things should be up to a popular vote?
But there is one thing I know for sure.
If Youngkin loses, Trump will beat the election fraud drum.
If Youngkin wins, Trump will take credit for the win, then beat the 2020 election fraud drum, claiming Youngkin’s victory is proof of massive fraud in Virginia in 2020. He will demand that Youngkin conduct investigations and audits, decertify the 2020 vote and help restore Trump to office.
Trump isn’t letting this go. Someone once called Trump a “short-fingered vulgarian” and he spent the next 30 years holding a grudge and trying to prove his fingers weren’t short (unsurprisingly, the vulgarian thing didn’t seem to bother him.)
Trump is, like Republicans used to say guilelessly, “transactional”. Trump doesn’t give a f about any of the priorities of the Republican Party other than immigration and owning the libs, and they fall behind avenging his election loss. And you need to understand that this transactional President still hasn’t released the Republican Party from their end of the transaction. He expects them to make him President. Now. Not in 2024, now. He keeps telling them this in his mob boss fashion, and he’s not going to stop. Not ever. In today’s news, Roger Stone is threatening to run against DeSantis unless he gets onboard with auditing Trump’s 2020 win in Florida.
And Trump’s behind that, whether or not he’d admit it.
With 75% of the votes counted, Youngkin is leading 54/45. He’s leading by about 200,000 votes.
And I believe early votes have been counted, or are being counted along with the others. I saw a headline that said Fairfax county was re-scanning 20,000 early votes for some reason.
Also, ‘Law and order’ candidate Eric Adams won the NYC mayor’s race, but that was expected.
And Trump was winning Pennsylvania by over 400K and yet I still called it for Biden at that time. If the mail-in ballots are counted, Youngkin is going to win. If they haven’t started counting them yet, I’d actually predict a McAuliffe win. If the truth is somewhere in the middle, then all we have is noise so far.
If you have actual evidence as to the state of the mail-in ballots, share it. Otherwise, I’ll go with the facts that are available, which is that this race is not yet over.
As someone who hasn’t paid much attention to this particular election, did Youngkin run as someone who would acquiesce to Trump demands like this? Even if he didn’t say directly, what was the sense he was trying to give off?