It’s Election Day 2021, which means it’s time to engage in a familiar and fraught exercise: trying to figure out which way the electoral winds are blowing, judging by the votes of roughly 5 percent of the country.
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The gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia are basically all we have to work with one year after the last presidential election, and so we use them. We look to them for clues about what might lie ahead in the coming year and the midterm elections, because these two races are our best — and really only — bona fide indicator of how voters are reacting to the new presidential administration. Today, that means finding out whether Republican Glenn Youngkin can give the GOP a shot in the arm in Virginia.
And these races have seemed to validate their status as early indicators:
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In 2005, Democrats pulled the upset for Virginia governor early in George W. Bush’s second term and went on to flip the U.S. House and Senate the following year. In 2009, Republicans turned losses in both states in the preceding presidential election into wins for governor and took back the U.S. House in 2010. In 2017, Democrats won back the New Jersey governor’s seat and over-performed in Virginia, then flipped the U.S. House again in 2018.
The situation is setting up similarly in 2021. Youngkin has a good shot at winning Virginia, a state President Biden carried by 10 points just last year. And just over the horizon are Democrats’ minuscule majorities in the House and Senate, which we already knew were in quite a bit of danger in 2022.
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But just how reliable are these states as early indicators?
In politics, we often focus on who wins — and for good reason. But more telling for these purposes is how the margins shift. Whether Youngkin wins by 1 point or former governor Terry McAuliffe wins by 1 point, that doesn’t really change the fact that Republicans will have done about 10 points better than in 2020, on net.
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Below is a chart looking at how Republicans’ margins have shifted between a presidential election and the New Jersey and Virginia governor’s races since 1993, along with how they then performed in the following midterm election.
(For now, the chart is using polling averages for the Virginia race and the New Jersey race between Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy and Republican Jack Ciattarelli, in which Murphy is expected to win reelection.)
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This is a lot of data, but it’s worth breaking down. Not only have the results in New Jersey and Virginia seemed to portend good things for one side or the other in 2005, 2009 and (to a lesser extent) in 2017, but such was also the case in 1993.
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Back then, Republicans flipped both governor’s seats, over-performing their 1992 presidential margins by three points in New Jersey and 13 in Virginia. By 1994 came the Republican Revolution, in which the GOP took back both the House and the Senate and controlled both for the first time in more than four decades.
But this exercise is hardly foolproof.
In 1997, for instance, the GOP over-performed big in both governor’s races, but 1998 wound up being more-or-less a status-quo midterm.
In 2001, Democrats pulled the upset for Virginia governor shortly after 9/11, but again few seats changed hands in the 2002 midterms. In fact, Republicans gained seats in both.
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The 2013 election was also a bit of an odd case. After President Barack Obama’s reelection, Democrats took over the Virginia governor’s seat (thanks to McAuliffe), while Republican Gov. Chris Christie won a resounding reelection victory in New Jersey. That preceded Republicans winning nine seats and taking over the Senate in 2014.
But again, the point is the margins. McAuliffe won, but his win was in line with how Democrats did in Virginia in 2012. Christie, meanwhile, way over-performed in New Jersey. This was written off by many as something of a split decision — especially since Christie was riding high due to some unusual and very local circumstances (huge approval of his handling of Superstorm Sandy). But just like the 2005 and 2009 races before it and the 2017 races after it, the relative margins were indicative of what happened a year later.
In total, if you look at which party over-performed in New Jersey and Virginia in the seven gubernatorial Election Days since 1993, five of them went on to flip at least one chamber of Congress in the following midterm. The other two preceded status-quo midterms.
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Which brings us to 2021. We don’t yet know if Youngkin will win in Virginia, but polling averages in New Jersey and Virginia show Republicans outpacing their 2020 performance by 8 points in the former and 11 points in the latter. With the notable exceptions in 1997 and 2001, that has meant the GOP would be in line for a good day on Election Day 2022 as well. And given the GOP only needs to win one Senate seat and five House seats to retake each chamber, it’s not like it needs a ton of wind at its back.
So for all the hand-wringing about how much we might overanalyze just two states and use them to predict what lies ahead, those two states have proven to be pretty strong indicators.