Virginia Wild Card: Turnout Among Black Voters | The American Spectator

The conventional wisdom among most election analysts is that the 2025 Virginia gubernatorial contest between Republican Winsome Earle-Sears and Democrat Abigail Spanberger will be won by the latter. This consensus is primarily based on a series of polls that purport to show her ahead by very comfortable margins. All such surveys, however, necessarily incorporate certain assumptions about the make-up of the electorate and turnout. If those assumptions are inaccurate, pollsters can end up wiping a lot of egg yolk off their faces. In the Old Dominion, 45 days of early voting has produced a record-breaking turnout — except in localities where most of the electorate consists of black voters.

This suggests that the pollsters need to keep clean towels on hand. According to the Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP), statewide turnout through the last day of early voting on Nov. 1 exceeded the 2021 total by 25 percent. Yet, in cities and counties in which black voters outnumber white voters by significant margins the increase in turnout was far lower. In Richmond, for example, turnout increased by only 13 percent. Likewise, the increase in Newport News was also 13 percent. In Hampton, the increase was only 11 percent. Portsmouth had the largest increase of any city with a majority of black voters and its increase was 17 percent. The story was the same at the county level. Black voters aren’t motivated in Virginia.

This is not very surprising if you look beneath the top lines of the polls that allegedly portend a Spanberger victory on November 4. The crosstabs of the AtlasIntel poll, for example, indicate that 26.9 percent of likely black voters said that they planned to vote for Winsome Earle-Sears. If this number is even close, Abigail Spanberger can’t possibly win. This table also contains catastrophic data for Spanberger’s prospects among Hispanic voters. If Winsome Earle-Sears wins anywhere near 56 percent of the Hispanic vote, combined with 26.9 percent of the black vote, she will be the next governor of Virginia. No Democrat can give up such percentages of these two crucial voting blocs and expect to win a general election anywhere.

This is not the only survey that contains such terrifying data for Spanberger. According to the most recent Insider Advantage/Trafalgar poll, 35.2 percent of the black respondents said they would vote for Winsome Earle-Sears. If this seems implausible, remember that Earle-Sears is a native of Jamaica and she immigrated to the United States with her family at the age of six and later became a naturalized citizen while serving in the U.S. Marine Corps. Moreover, unlike the former president who materialized in Norfolk on Saturday to campaign for her conspicuously pale challenger, she has no communists in her family. Here is how Tim Anderson, a candidate for the 97th District in Virginia’s House of Delegates, described that event:

Obama came to Hampton Roads yesterday to fix a known problem with Democrats — low black voting turnout for Spanberger. The room was filled with white liberals. While it was a large crowd the mission was not accomplished.  Black voters who were told by Obama last year to vote for Harris based on her race are unpersuaded by the glaring flip flop in this race. Tuesday is going to be a lot closer than the pollsters predict. The rally was a pep rally. Not a GOTV rally. This wasn’t enthusiasm for Spanberger … It was enthusiasm to see Obama. I think we are going to see something amazing this election.

By now many readers are thinking something like, “Catron is just whistling past the graveyard. Spanberger has this in the bag and no amount of number crunching is going to change that reality.” That is entirely possible but elections are, in the end, about the numbers. And if it seems implausible that so many pollsters could be wrong, remember 2016. Very few people reading this believed that Donald Trump had a prayer of winning. Why? Because all of the pollsters and other “experts” who are now telling us that Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears can’t possibly win also  insisted that he couldn’t win . But these geniuses don’t get to decide the outcome. In Virginia, elections are pretty straight. The Democrats won’t be able to cheat (too much).

The big problem for the good guys is the unemployed apparatchiks in the northern part of the Commonwealth. They are not happy and they will vote for Abigail Spanberger. Moreover the early vote numbers suggest that many already have done so. And there is also the fifth column that we still call “educators.” In the end, though, Virginia gave us a 45 day preview of the election and the voters Spanberger desperately needs just aren’t buying. Good.

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