Trump Is a Factor In the Virginia Governor’s Race

Harry Enten: “You can see how closely feelings toward Trump and vote choice align by looking at the crosstabs of the Fox News poll. On a scale of -1 to +1, the correlation across demographic groups between Trump’s unfavorable rating and McAuliffe’s standing in the horse race was over +0.98. You rarely get that type of correlation between the popularity of an out-of-office politician and vote choice. It’s nearly the same as Biden’s popularity and vote choice (over +0.99 correlation).”

“Indeed, a CBS News/YouGov poll from Virginia shows just how motivating a factor Trump is in whether voters cast a ballot. A majority of likely voters (51%) said feelings about Trump were very motivating. That’s basically the same as the 48% who said the same thing about their feelings toward Biden.”

“Separate polling from a Monmouth University poll in August showed that about the same share of Virginia voters indicated that Trump was a major factor in their 2021 vote as they did in 2017.”