Hi Everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This episode we will go over the panicking on the Republican side in terms of the Governor’s race and see if that panicking is warranted.
Now, last week on the show, we talked about the VCU poll, which wasn't great news for the Republicans. And then we talked about the fundraising numbers, which, again, wasn't great news for the Republicans, at least at the governor's level.
00:26.99
Sam Shirazi
And this week there was a new poll that was released, or at least we became aware of it this week. And that was a poll by Wick, which was which is a Republican pollster generally.
00:39.13
Sam Shirazi
And I was surprised because I think it came out last week, but not a lot of people knew about it. And I mean, some people figured out this poll had come out and the numbers are pretty interesting. They're similar to the VCU number.
00:51.93
Sam Shirazi
And so both polls show roughly the same thing. So I think that's a good indication when two polls are in the same ballpark that that's probably where the race is right now. So I will go over some of the numbers in the Vick poll.
01:03.93
Sam Shirazi
So the governor's race, top line number, Boucher, Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic nominee is at 50% and the Republican nominee winsome Earl Sears is that 40% Michael Boucher, They didn't pull the lieutenant governor's race for some reason, but they did pull the Attorney General's race so for Attorney General,
01:21.78
Sam Shirazi
You have the Democratic nominee, Jay Jones, at 48 percent. And then you have the incumbent Republican, Attorney General Jason Meares. He was at 47, 41 percent, excuse me. And so you have the two, these two statewide races, the Democrats have a pretty big lead.
01:37.17
Sam Shirazi
And again, and the attorney general race, there wasn't that much ticket splitting. Spanberger's up by 10 percent and Jones is up by 7 percent in this poll. A couple other pieces of interesting news in this poll. So the Trump approval was 55% disapproved and 44% approved in Virginia, which again is similar to the VCU poll. So I think pretty safe to say that Trump's at least at 10% disapproval in Virginia right now.
02:05.34
Sam Shirazi
And then they had an another interesting question I like when they ask about these potential referendums next year in Virginia. So as a reminder, the Virginia Democrats, if they win the House of Delegates this year, will put three referendums on the ballot in Virginia in 2026, one on reproductive rights, one on marriage equality, and one on restoring voting rights to former felons.
02:28.61
Sam Shirazi
And they only asked about the refer reproductive rights referendum for some reason, but that one is very popular. It had support from 57% of people and opposition from only 32%. So pretty clear that if that gets on the ballot, it will likely pass. That's for 2026, but I did think that was also interesting they asked about that.
02:50.59
Sam Shirazi
So big picture. I mean, first, this is a Republican pollster. So that's one thing to keep in mind. And so if ah when Winston Earl Sears is down by 10 percent in a Republican leaning poll, I mean, that's not great news. And Spanberger is at 50 percent in this poll.
03:04.24
Sam Shirazi
So that basically means even if all the undecideds in this poll, even if they most of them go to Earl Sears, I mean, she's still going to lose because Spanberger is already at 50 percent. And so I think the GOP, this is another indication they're in trouble.
03:17.37
Sam Shirazi
Again, I mentioned there's little ticket splitting between Governor and AG. So I think that's not great news for Jason Meares. And then finally, the the Trump approval being negative, at least negative 10 in Virginia is it's going to be hard for the Republicans to overcome.
03:31.25
Sam Shirazi
So, I mean, that is what's going on with that VIC vic poll. And i think, you know, Republicans probably took a look at that poll because it's a Republican poster. And that was part of the reason they were getting nervous.
03:43.23
Sam Shirazi
And there was a really interesting nugget in this poll. So a subsample of the poll, not a huge amount. It was about 4% of the poll poll. ah in terms of the respondents. And again, you know, that's kind of a small subsample, so it could be off.
03:56.45
Sam Shirazi
But they pulled about 4% of the, they noticed that 4% of the voters, they just that were Yunkin-Harris voters. And what that means is they voted for Glenn Yunkin in 2021, but they voted for Kamala Harris in 2024.
04:09.70
Sam Shirazi
And so these are kind of swing voters who might be more Republican-leaning in state elections versus federal elections. They might be more Democratic leading. But I think the the scary number for the Republicans is of those 4% of people in this poll, Spanberger is up 72% to 17%.
04:24.93
Sam Shirazi
And so that's just like a really rough number for the Republicans if they're trying to win or trying to replicate what Glenn Youngkin was able to do 2021. And it just shows you that that's not really happening right now.
04:37.53
Sam Shirazi
And all this has caused, I would describe it as basically panic on the Republican side. And we start seeing these what I call panic pieces coming out. Typically, you see these about from the Democratic side where news organizations and The political columnists will write about how Democrats are nervous and Democrats are in disarray and Democrats aren't doing well.
04:59.85
Sam Shirazi
I mean, that makes sense after what happened in 2024. But we are starting to see that about the Virginia governor's race. I'd say it's more so about the governor's race, although obviously the governor's race is the most important race. And so if that's not going well, the other races aren't going to go well.
05:14.78
Sam Shirazi
And so we saw some of these pieces start to come out this week. And I wanted to just kind of highlight some of the issues that the Republicans have. So, you know, in the political article that came out that was a panic piece, that says Republicans are panicking over the Virginia governor's race.
05:32.10
Sam Shirazi
The party is debating how much it can afford to spend on a losing proposition. And I think a lot of the blame right now is being pointed at the governor's race at Winston-Marie Sears. She is being criticized for the way her campaign is being run.
05:45.07
Sam Shirazi
And just for people's awareness, there has been some shakeups in the campaign. She had previously someone be her campaign manager who didn't have much campaign experience. I think he was one of her religious leaders.
05:59.37
Sam Shirazi
leaders who she followed and she basically made him as the campaign manager, which didn't really make a whole lot of sense because he didn't have political campaign experience. I think Republicans were upset about that. And recently he has stepped down from the campaign role and someone else took over that role.
06:15.51
Sam Shirazi
And then ah What these panic pieces typically talk about is Republicans hoping that the Attorney General spot might be able to be salvaged for the Republicans. So I wanted to say a quote that Terry Kilgore, who is the House Republican leader in the Virginia House of Delegates, he said that Jason Meares, quote, he's going to leave the ticket And then he added, this is gearing up to be a 2001 type year.
06:46.20
Sam Shirazi
You know, frankly, I think that's a little bit of wishful thinking. So just to unpack that quote. So 2001, Mark Warner won the governor's race. And the attorney general race was a big blowout for the Republicans. So even though Mark Warner won the governor's race, the attorney general that won that year was a Republican and he won by a lot. And guess who the Republican attorney general was in the 2001 election?
07:08.03
Sam Shirazi
election It was Jerry Kilgore, who is Terry Kilgore's brother. So obviously he's trying to you know make a comparison to that race. And and the message is basically Jason Meares is the strongest candidate on the ticket for the Republicans. He wants Jason Meares to basically take over the race.
07:24.19
Sam Shirazi
And hopefully that means even if Win Tomorrow Series isn't going to be able to win, Jason Meares is going to be able to win. I think the problem with that analysis is things have changed a lot since 2001. And
07:35.07
Sam Shirazi
But basically, people have become a lot more partisan since 2001. And so it's just very difficult to get people to split their tickets. And every governor's race since 2009, the attorney general has actually done better.
07:48.99
Sam Shirazi
So it doesn't matter if it's Democrat or Republican.
07:51.56
Sam Shirazi
The attorney attorney general tends to do better for the party that loses the governor's race. But it's only by 2%. so... and so It doesn't really matter what's going on with the attorney general's race if it's going to be a landslide at the top of the ticket, because there's just no way there's going to be enough ticket splitting.
08:07.39
Sam Shirazi
2001 was a very different environment. You know, that was after 9-11. And people, I think, were more willing to vote for one party for governor, one party for attorney general. know, in this environment, with this level of partisanship, where you're either on the red team or blue team. I mean, there are a few people...
08:24.60
Sam Shirazi
really in the middle, who might be able to split their ticket. But honestly, it's probably going to be 2% and on a really good night for the Republicans, 5%. And so you you have to ask yourself, you know if this is a race that is not going to be closer than 5% at the top of the ticket, I just don't know how competitive the attorney general race is going to be.
08:44.89
Sam Shirazi
And, you know, we're not even talking about the House of Delegates, which is just a different animal. And, you know, at some point I will start to reassess, you know, what's going on in the House of Delegates. I think right now, because of some of the turmoil on the Republican side, it's hard to get a sense of where things are.
08:57.79
Sam Shirazi
But House of Delegates, I think definitely the Democrats are on the offense and they're thinking about picking up these seats. Okay, so big picture, Republicans, both privately and publicly in some cases, are are kind of sounding the alarm. There's a little bit of panic. There's these panic pieces that are coming out.
09:15.29
Sam Shirazi
And I think part of it is the reality is setting in that the election is coming up and it's sneaking up on us. And I know it seems like a long way off, but we're getting close towards the end of July and soon it will be August.
09:27.44
Sam Shirazi
And then we will be, you know, a few weeks away from the start of early voting. And, you know, obviously things can change, you know, just because a campaign is up or down in July doesn't mean that's what's going to happen in November.
09:42.57
Sam Shirazi
But these things are, I've talked about it before, campaigns tend to be big ships, and they're hard to turn around once they're going a certain direction. And I think it's not a great sign when in July, you have to change the campaign manager if you're the Winston-Marcel Sears campaign.
09:57.60
Sam Shirazi
also wanted to talk about what's going on with Trump approval. So Trump approval has been a little bit shaky recently. It's been You know, there's a bunch of national polls that come out in terms of Trump's approval. I would say ah ah fair assessment right now is probably he's at 45% to 55% disapproved nationally, which probably is roughly the same in Virginia, maybe a little bit more disapproval in Virginia.
10:21.60
Sam Shirazi
And the main reason for that, I would say, is his handling of the economy has taken a hit from when he first entered office. Part of that is the tariffs and some of the uncertainty with that. Part of it is just the reality that know, prices aren't coming down and, you know, people are just feeling the hit. And, you know, the Republicans would say maybe that's not President Trump's front fault, but the reality is people blame the party in the White House when things are not super affordable. So long story short, I mean, you don't have a good campaign necessarily in Virginia for the Republicans, and then things are rough, starting to get rougher nationally, I would say, for the national GOP.
10:57.10
Sam Shirazi
And all that is pointing towards a November that's not going to be great for the Virginia GOP in
11:03.27
Sam Shirazi
And so
11:04.35
Sam Shirazi
I wanted to take a moment and just talk about part of what might be going on. And again, this is not, I don't have any confirmation of this, but I wanted to just kind of lay this out. So people kind of understand the reality of what, what might happen in November if the Republicans don't do well. And again, I don't want to assume the Democrats are going to get this huge blowout win.
11:24.32
Sam Shirazi
i think there's two things going on with the Republicans with some of these panic pieces. I think one of the goals of the panic pieces is set expectations. So, If in July you're telling people, we're losing, it's going to be disaster, we're doing really badly, you know realistically, even if you don't win, if it's somewhat competitive, you've set expectations. And then you can say, oh, look, we didn't do as badly as people thought.
11:45.85
Sam Shirazi
Conversely, even if you do get blown out and it's really bad, at least the expectation is there. And so people are not going to be as shocked, let's say, if you get a really bad result in November for the Virginia GOP.
11:56.29
Sam Shirazi
And I think part of the problem 2017 specifically You know, the Virginia GOP tried to act like that was going to be a really competitive race. I think national media thought it was really competitive. Everyone was saying, yeah, this is competitive. Republicans could win this.
12:08.46
Sam Shirazi
And then Ralph Northam wins by 9%. And I think that was a really bad result for the Republicans. And it seemed worse than it was because of how much the expectations maybe got out of hand for that election. So I think, in a sense, it's smart for the Republicans to set the expectations where they are, where they're saying,
12:24.06
Sam Shirazi
Yeah, we're probably not going to do well this year in Virginia. And then if they end up not doing well in Virginia, well, at least people expected that. I think that's part of what's going on with these panic pieces. I think part of the reality, too, is going to be the question of who's to blame. i mean, because anytime you lose, you're going to blame someone.
12:38.40
Sam Shirazi
I think a certain extent, and again, this is me speculating. I don't want to say this is going to happen for certain, and I don't know if this is going to happen. But I think... to a certain extent, the MAGA folks and the pro-Trump world might be saying, especially if they don't get super involved and the Virginia Republicans don't do too well, this is mainly Winston Merle-Sears' fault. Her campaign's not doing well. This is like what's going on.
13:01.27
Sam Shirazi
And it's just kind of a Virginia issue. She didn't run a great campaign and this has nothing to do with President Trump and it's not his fault. I think the reality is a lot of what the problems of Virginia Republicans are having partly stem from what's going on in DC and partly stem from the national environment and also the cuts of federal government.
13:19.91
Sam Shirazi
So it's always harder if you were a campaign trying to raise money, trying to run your race when you're running against headwinds nationally. so I think the reality is part of the blame is also going to be with President Trump and the National Republicans if the Virginia Republicans don't do too well.
13:36.48
Sam Shirazi
And it's easy when you lose to to blame and there's going to be the blame game. regardless, I mean, i am trying to still think about this as not necessarily a place where the Republicans are going to get blown out. And and think it's important not to assume anything. i think there is a lot of partisanship that comes at the end of any campaign.
13:58.82
Sam Shirazi
People might not love necessarily the Republican campaign right now, but at the end of the day, when they have to get in a voting booth and there's the DNR, a lot of Republicans will probably end up coming home. And we see this in the polling results. So it's not like Spanberger is getting like 60 percent of the vote. She's getting in these polls about 50 percent of the vote.
14:16.60
Sam Shirazi
So that means basically most people who are considered themselves Democrats in Virginia and most people have voted for Kamala Harris are going to vote for Spanberger. And so she's consolidated the Democratic support.
14:27.86
Sam Shirazi
I think the problem Earl Sears has is she hasn't consolidated the republican Republican support. She's not getting the numbers as compared to what President Trump got in November 2024. So I think she has more room to grow potentially.
14:40.76
Sam Shirazi
because she's only at 40%. The problem for her is Spanberger also has room to grow. So even if, let's say Sears does really well and you know gets a bunch of undecideds to back her and she's up to like, I'm just making up numbers, she gets up to 46%.
14:56.05
Sam Shirazi
I mean, that's great for her, but Spanberger could get up to 54%. And then at that point, you get an eight point victory for Spanberger. And so it's just, the math is difficult for the Virginia Republicans right now.
15:08.20
Sam Shirazi
They're not in a place where there's a lot of votes that they can get to get up to 50.1% to win this race. And, you know, I think the reality is that Virginia Democrats are doing their their campaign is chugging along. They don't have too many issues.
15:25.74
Sam Shirazi
The ticket's pretty unified. Spanburger's running pretty a competent campaign. And they just have the momentum. And I think sometimes elections are just based on the environment. And sometimes you're in a good environment and sometimes you're in a bad environment. And campaigns are really easy when you're in a good environment and they're really hard when you're in a bad environment. And there's not a whole lot you can do. And Obviously, in this podcast and and generally in election analysts, we spend all this time thinking about this and that. And the reality is sometimes it's just the where things are and it's just really hard to overcome the national environment or the state environment when you're running these sorts of campaigns.
16:03.07
Sam Shirazi
So anyways, you know, i think the Republicans panic is probably warranted to a certain extent. I also want to keep in mind that it might be part of a strategy to kind of set expectations for November.
16:17.18
Sam Shirazi
And frankly, I think it's smart for them to set expectations. You know, as I mentioned, 2017, things got a little bit out of hand. And I think the reason 2021 in some ways was such a shock was for much of the summer, Democrats kept saying, nah, that we're going to win the Virginia governor's race. It's Virginia. Virginia's a blue state. We're going win.
16:34.13
Sam Shirazi
Don't worry about it. And then obviously towards the end, it was getting kind of dicey and they kind of changed their tone and said, no, this is really close. We might lose. And so but when they ended up losing, it was a little bit of surprise because they they hadn't necessarily set those expectations that the Republicans could win in Virginia. And so I think to the extent the Republicans are setting expectations, that makes sense.
16:54.26
Sam Shirazi
I think the danger when you really start doing too many panic pieces and you start going into panic mode is your voters get demoralized. You think there's no way we're going to win.
17:05.23
Sam Shirazi
What's the point of showing up and voting because we're not going to win? and so you kind of you don't want to go overboard. Maybe they're doing this in July so that, you know, in September, right before early voting, they can say, oh, look, we're doing better.
17:17.58
Sam Shirazi
We made a comeback. All these things happen in campaigns. A lot of it is strategy. A lot of it is kind of how you spin the media. Maybe I'm overthinking it. Maybe the Republicans are not crazy as like Fox is. Maybe they're just overthinking this and they're just panicking because that's the reality. They're not going to do too well. so It'll be interesting to see what happens. I don't want to dwell on it too much right now because I think we'll have to wait and see how things shape up in August.
17:43.70
Sam Shirazi
And then obviously once Labor Day rolls around and the campaign gets into full swing, we can talk more about how things are shaping up in November before the election. But anyways, wanted to do this episode to just talk about some of the panic on the Republican side. And yeah, I will ah join you next time for a federal call-out.
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