Within the Margin

Keeping this very brief tonight, but I wanted to check in to deposit a few concepts so that I cannot retcon my priors after tomorrow!

Starting with the big picture: Trump is polling poorly by any standard, including his. He is polling particularly poorly on his handling of the economy and the cost of living – arguably the most critical aspect of his election a year ago. In most surveys, that’s top of mind for voters as is typically the case. Tariff wars, demolishing part of the White House to build a ballroom, fighting with Jimmy Kimmel…these do not make for a laser focus on affordability. The Democratic Party continues to poll at historic lows, but some of that is driven by committed Dems angry at party leadership but still highly motivated to vote against Trump and the Republicans.

On the whole it feels more like 2017 than 2021, as we might expect: there’s a Republican in the White House and negative partisanship is a powerful driver in today’s politics. Accordingly, Abigail Spanberger appears headed for a high-single digit or maybe double-digit win to flip the Virginia governorship back to Democrats. Ghazala Hashmi is probably set to win the lieutenant governor’s race with a smaller margin after a much more lowkey campaign. And potentially completing the trifecta of Democratic flips is Jay Jones, their deeply flawed candidate for attorney general against incumbent Jason Miyares. I do not personally see how Jones can serve in a law enforcement capacity given revelations of horrific, graphic texts he sent a few years ago, but polling shows a very tight race and historically, scandal-plagued candidates often overperform their polling a bit as voters tend to give a socially-desirable response to pollsters.

The New Jersey governor’s race is trickier. Republican Jack Ciatarelli nearly upset Phil Murphy in 2021, and since then we’ve seen New Jersey lurch rightward in last year’s presidential race. Democratic nominee Mikie Sherrill has struggled to close the deal, and I have concerns about whether Trump’s rapid collapse among the non-white voters he flipped last year translates to voting for Dems versus not voting at all this year. I have Sherrill winning, but by substantially smaller margin than Spanberger – let’s call it 4-5% for Sherrill versus 8-10% for Spanberger.

Drilling down much closer to my own context in Dutchess County, I don’t want to engage bad juju by offering specific predictions. It invites extra disappointment if you predict local wins and they don’t happen, and recriminations are inevitable if you predict local losses. So I’m staying above the trees here. The national factors mentioned above, in combination with the shifting makeup of the respective party coalitions in ways that have substantially raised the floor for Dem turnout in off-year races, provide reasons to believe that a strong slate of Democratic candidates can hold the comptroller’s seat, flip a county court judgeship, and flip the county legislature to Democrats for only the third time in our county’s history. There are some hyper-local things to mitigate against that – a boat club controversy in Red Hook, the ever-looming specter of low turnout in Poughkeepsie though signs are encouraging on that front so far – but the much bigger issue in my view is the dichotomy in what drives each party to the polls here. It certainly seems like the GOP can just scream “Mamdani!” over and over and presto, a good chunk of their base buys that Democratic candidates must be socialist, Muslims and whatever else annoys them about Mamdani. But at the same time, in my experience, convincing certain Democrats that a candidate is sufficiently left for their preferences is a massive challenge. Mamdani excites, but proving someone without such a high profile is worth their time – even if their progressive credentials are solidly in order – is an undertaking that is often met with shrugs. I don’t know how to square that circle. And it likely won’t hold Dutchess Dems back if indeed the national tide has truly shifted substantially in Democrats’ direction – but if it has not, it may well prove decisive. Tomorrow will provide much-needed illumination.