Joe BidenVirginia’s presidential campaign is taking no chances. The campaign has opened six field offices across the state, with more on the way. It has organized nearly a dozen grassroots events involving Black voters and is now doing the same older votersutilizing the allure of ice cream and pickle.
However, a recent Fox News poll suggested that Biden and Donald Trump are tied up in Virginia five months after the election — a worrying sign for Biden in a state that no Democratic presidential candidate has lost since 2004. Trump’s campaign has even bragged that it sees an opportunity to expand its electoral map into blue areas, including Virginia.
One Democratic strategist, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, admitted that “things are tight” in Virginia while still dismissing a Trump victory there as highly unlikely.
But other Virginia Democrats and allies of the Biden campaign are downplaying the idea that Biden could be vulnerable at all in a state he won by more than 10 percentage points four years ago. If Biden actually gets into trouble in Virginia in November, that would mean he has much bigger problems everywhere else.
If I remember correctly, Virginia always breaks the hearts of Republicans.Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas)
“The Biden team is very confident, but it is also clear that they are not taking anything for granted. That’s why they have a strong operation on the ground. That’s why they’re building staff,” said Christina Freundlich, a Democratic strategist who has worked on a number of campaigns in Virginia.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who is up for re-election this year and benefits from a strong Biden campaign presence in the state, said he is not concerned about Biden losing.
“I’ve seen other polls that say it’s not that close,” Kaine told HuffPost. “Maybe it’s not a 10-point race like it was four years ago, but Biden is in pretty good shape. I will do everything I can to ensure that is the case.”
Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) was even skeptical that Trump could achieve a victory.
“As I recall, Virginia always breaks Republicans’ hearts,” he said. “But there seems to be a pretty significant lack of enthusiasm on the part of the Democrats and the Biden campaign, and then a lot of enthusiasm on the part of President Trump and his supporters.”
The Fox News poll continues to underscore Biden’s overall weakness in the polls some swing states while voters worry about the economy and inflation, immigration and border security, and the realities of an 81-year-old candidate — even if another option is a 77-year-old former president just convicted of falsifying business records to solicit hush-money payments to be able to do to a porn star.
“If the state is really close in November, there won’t be much drama about the overall outcome — Trump should be very heavily favored in a situation like this,” said Kyle Kondik, the editor-in-chief of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the Center in Politics from the University of Virginia.
Kondik said it’s not unusual for polls this far before the election to reflect a reality that doesn’t materialize in November. “It’s not uncommon to see tight polls in states that ultimately aren’t that close — that happened in Iowa and Ohio in 2020, for example, and also much closer to the election than now,” he said.
At a private donor retreat last month, Trump’s campaign waved internal polling showing Trump’s relative strength in Minnesota and Virginia, states where he lost by seven and 10 points, respectively, in 2020. However, Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. there appears to be no evidence that Trump’s campaign used its internal data as a basis for building a campaign operation in either state.
Following the release of the Fox News poll that found Biden and Trump in a dead heat of 48% in Virginia, the state’s Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin told the network that polls showing a close race “not only represent the strength reflect that President Trump would bring to the presidency, but the weakness that Joe Biden has shown.”
Virginia has turned blue since Barack Obama flipped it in 2008. But in 2021, Youngkin, who ran away from Trump on a “parental rights” platform after the pandemic, scored a victory over former Gov. Terry McAuliffe. After the election, Youngkin aligned himself more closely with Trump and MAGA Republicans.
Two years later, Democrats bounced back in the wake of the Supreme Court’s rollback of abortion rights, flipping control of the Virginia House of Delegates and defending the Senate majority despite Youngkin’s aggressive campaigning for Republicans.
“Ultimately, Virginia will not be the 270th electoral vote. Trump won’t win. Not with suburban, college-educated, diverse voters,” said the Democratic strategist, who requested anonymity.
These types of voters have been crucial to Democrats’ recent victories, especially in the northern suburbs outside Washington. Biden held a meeting there in January with Vice President Kamala Harris, where they blamed Trump for laying the groundwork for the federal push for abortion rights and the resulting wave of extreme anti-abortion laws across the country. Democrats hope their focus on abortion rights will keep voters in their column who switched from Trump to Biden four years ago.
“Virginians have rejected Trump every time he came here, and his MAGA allies were soundly defeated last year after campaigning on his agenda to ban abortion across the Commonwealth,” Jake Rubenstein, Biden’s Virginia state director, said in a statement. “We are mobilizing voters in every corner of Virginia and look forward to defeating Trump for a third time in November.”
The results of the Republican Party’s presidential primaries in Virginia in March may also bode well for Biden’s campaign: Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley performed strongly against Trump, winning 35% of the vote, up from 63 % of Trump. In Northern Virginia, Haley even defeated Trump outright.
Rep. Gerry Connolly (D), who has represented Northern Virginia in various offices for 30 years, said he has seen firsthand the area’s transition from red to blue, partly due to the influx of government workers from Washington. “Remember, we voted for Republican presidential candidates for 44 consecutive years until 2008. And then we voted for Barack Hussein Obama in Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy,” Connolly said.
“I really believe it’s close now. There’s a lot going on, there’s a lot of uncertainty,” Connolly said of the presidential race in Virginia. “But I believe a lot of Virginians have benefited from the Biden economy, and they know that and they appreciate that and they’re going to vote on that.”
Susan Swecker, the chair of the Democratic Party of Virginia, noted that Biden’s campaign is going very differently than how she had to campaign in 2020 during the pandemic. “We had Dr. Biden and Doug Emhoff, but they were outside and you were at a distance,” Swecker said, referring to the first lady and second gentleman. “We did what we could. … We learned a lot of lessons about outreach then, and some of them were critical.”
Jared Leopold, a Democratic strategist and former spokesman for the Democratic Party in Virginia, said Democrats should not ignore the work they need to do in Virginia.
“Virginia is bluish purple. It won’t be the tipping point, but it’s certainly not a state you want to fall asleep in,” he said.
