This Tuesday, November 2, 2021, will be the gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia.
They are important, electorally, for good reasons.
New Jersey and Virginia are ranked the Nos. 11 and 12 most-populous states in the nation.
The two have long been considered harbingers for what will likely play out with the following year’s midterm elections. So, this is much about 2022.
In 2017, on the watch of Republican incumbent U.S. president Donald Trump, New Jersey became a Democratic pickup for Phil Murphy. (This followed two terms of Republican Chris Christie. His job-approval struggled to reach 20 percent. It was not feasible for 2017 Republicans to hold New Jersey.) Murphy won by a margin of +14.14 percentage points. In Virginia, the result was a Democratic hold for Ralph Northam. He won by a percentage-points margin of +8.93.
In the 2018 midterm-elections cycle, the Democrats won the U.S. Popular Vote for U.S. Governors by a margin of +3.07 percentage points. That was a good 7-point national increase from their losing 2014 margin of –4.09. The 2018 Democrats ended up winning a net gain of +7 governorships.
In midterm elections, there are 36 scheduled gubernatorial elections. There are 9 which rank among the nation’s Top 10 populous states. (North Carolina is scheduled with leap/presidential years.) And just over 50 percent of U.S. citizens reside in a Top 10 state.
Recent polls indicate both New Jersey and Virginia have shifts heading in the direction of the Republicans. Even if both states hold in the 2021 Democratic column, this is not good for Democratic incumbent U.S. president Joe Biden and Team Blue.
Virginia has been on a pattern of electing White House opposition-party governors since 1977. The pattern was, perhaps, interrupted in 2013 when former DNC chairman and 2008 Hillary Clinton campaign advisor Terry McAuliffe won a Democratic pickup while he defeated the state’s controversial attorney general and Republican nominee Ken Cuccinelli.
New Jersey has been on this pattern, with no exceptions, since 1989. But, it may break this year because the U.S.’s two most recent consecutive presidential-election cycles, in 2016 and 2020, switched party occupancy in the White House. That doesn’t happen frequently. It previously occurred in 1976 and 1980. Before that, it dates back to 1888 and 1892 and 1896.
My sense of the races are this: I predict New Jersey will end up a Democratic hold with a margin between +6 to +8 percentage points. (Republican nominee Jack Ciattarelli, a former member of the New Jersey General Assembly, has been able to cut into Democratic incumbent Phil Murphy’s 2017 margin. But, Ciattarelli appears to have arrived too late to surge sufficiently and make Murphy fight for re-election.) … Due to very recent momentum, especially over the last few days, Virginia will deliver a Republican pickup to Glenn Youngkin (with defeating Terry McAuliffe) by a percentage-points margin between +0 to +2. In fact, FiveThirtyEight is suggesting that Virginia—rated a Tossup—is more poised to flip. And I will include that information below.
(Next week: The 2022 Midterm Elections, One Year Out.)
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