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The question persists: Why did Glenn Youngkin win in a blue state? Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP/Shutterstock

Understandably, the loss of three statewide contests in previously blue-trending Virginia last November was shocking to Democrats. Interpretations of what went wrong there are having a heavy effect on how the party perceives its weaknesses heading into the 2022 midterms, so its pretty important to get it right but it doesnt seem thats whats happening.

The prevailing conventional wisdom has been that Republican Glenn Youngkin won and Democrat Terry McAuliffe lost because suburban swing voters upset about education and, to a lesser extent, economic issues switched from voting Democrat to Republican between 2020 and 2021. Indeed, a lot of influential focus-group work on the election began with the assumption that these voters made the difference and tried to interpret why they swung rather than how far they swung and how much it mattered. And the more that analysts dwelled on education issues as crucial, the more they agreed that school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic may have damaged Democrats in Virginia and New Jersey (where Democratic governor Phil Murphy had a surprisingly narrow winning margin) even more than Republican attacks on the alleged teaching of critical race theory or other culture-war topics related to schools.

Now comes a new study from the data-analysis firm TargetSmart that calls this narrative into question even more than past dissents. As TargetSmart CEO Tom Bonier notes, comparing the Virginia results to data on school closures calls into question the idea that the latter affected the former:

Of the top 10 counties in Virginia ranked by days with in-person education during the 2020-2021 school year, 6 of the 10 saw a larger swing towards Republicans than the state average swing of 5.3%, while the remaining 4 counties saw a slightly below average GOP swing. In fact, the biggest swings towards Republicans occurred in southwestern Virginia, where schools were open for in person instruction for most of the year.

Conversely, those counties that conducted virtual learning for most of the 2020-2021 school year saw a smaller shift towards Republicans than the state average the top 10 counties for days spent in virtual learning in 2020-2021 saw a 3.8% average swing towards Republicans, well below the statewide average of 5.3%.

More generally, TargetSmart took a look at the voter-file information recently made available by Virginia and drew attention to some rather dramatic turnout numbers that seemed to suggest parents of school-age children in the Washington and Richmond suburbs werent the keys to this election:

Turnout among voters age 75 or olderincreased by 59%, relative to 2017 while turnout among voters under age 30 only increased by just 18%. Notably, turnout of all other age groups combined (18-74), which would likely include parents of school-aged children, only increased by 9% compared to 2017.

These are massive changes in the electorate in an election that was far from a blowout: Youngkin won by just 2%.

Its common for seniors to turn out to vote significantly more than younger cohorts in non-presidential elections. But the figures for Virginia in 2021 were unusually large:

Voters age 65 and older are an estimated15.9%of Virginias population according to the census, yet accounted for 31.9% of all ballots cast in 2021.

348,314 more seniors (ages 65+) voted in Virginias2021gubernatorial election than in the2016presidential election.

TargetSmart calls it a silver surge. Whatever you call it, it seems to suggest that variable turnout patterns rather than swing voting was the biggest deal in Youngkins win. Its also what a December analysis in FiveThirtyEight of precinct-level data showed, indicating that the big net gains by Youngkin were in Democratic- and Republican-base areas, not in highly competitive swing areas. And for that matter, thats what the much-discounted exit polls suggested, as Ron Brownstein pointed out right after the election:

None of this is to say that Youngkins victory over McAuliffe was some sort of aberration or that it shouldnt alarm Democrats. But what it takes to boost turnout by Democrats without further boosting turnout by Republicans is not the same as what it takes to persuade a narrowly defined suburban swing vote upset principally about schools. Narratives matter, and Democrats should take care to ensure they arent telling themselves the wrong story.

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Read the rest here:
Democrats Learned the Wrong Lessons From Losing Virginia - New York Magazine