Previewing the New Jersey and Virginia Governor Races: Part Two

Examining the current polling picture and big issues at play in each state.

Next week, voters in New Jersey and Virginia will go to the polls to select new governors in the first major election since Donald Trump was re-elected. In my previous rundown of these races, I detailed how historical trends suggest Democrats are favored to win both. But I also noted that over the last four years, these two blue-leaning states have drifted rightward and delivered some surprise wins for Republicans—and that Democrats can’t take either one for granted.

This week, we’re diving into the current state of play, including what the polls show, which issues are dominating, and how much all this can tell us about what to expect next week.

Virginia

Heading into the final stretch of the campaign, Democrats appear to be in a stronger position in Virginia than in New Jersey. According to the RealClearPolitics average of polls, the Democrat in the race, former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, lead her GOP challenger, Lt. Governor Winsome Earle-Sears, by about seven points.

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It’s worth noting a couple of things about the polls in this race. First, Spanberger’s lead over Earle-Sears has been remarkably consistent: roughly six to eight points since the summer. Some polls have shown Spanberger with even larger leads, like one from the Washington Post/Schar School that had her leading by 12 points. Second, Earle-Sears has never hit 50 percent in any poll. Meanwhile, Spanberger has received 50 percent support or more in six of the 12 polls conducted in October, including several from pollsters considered by most election analysts to be highly reliable. Of the other six, three came from the Trafalgar Group, which is considered a Republican firm.¹

Of course, the polls have had their issues in recent elections, but those issues appear to have been limited to elections in which Trump was on the ballot. In the 2022 midterms, for example, the polls were historically accurate. And in the previous election for Virginia governor in 2021, RealClearPolitics’ final average showed the Republican, Glenn Youngkin, winning by 1.7 points. The result? A 1.9-points Youngkin win. So, although there are always limitations to any poll or even polling average, the picture here suggests Spanberger is a strong favorite.

Spanberger’s advantage hinges on her performance with key parts of the electorate. In the Post/Schar poll, she trailed Earle-Sears among men by just five points but had a massive 29-point advantage with women, who tend to make up a greater share of the vote. Spanberger also led with independent voters by about the same margin. And, she fared better than Harris with the all-important white working-class, trailing by 21 points versus the former vice president’s estimated 30-point deficit in the state last year. Spanberger would be very well positioned to win is she maintains these margins on Election Day.

Beyond the polls, Spanberger has outraised Earle-Sears by a nearly two-to-one margin, bringing in $65.6 million—more than $40 million of which came in the form of small-dollar donations. By comparison, Earle-Sears has raised $35.4 million ($20.3 million of which was from small-dollar donors). This fundraising disparity has allowed Spanberger to dominate the airwaves—especially earlier in the campaign—spending $27.1 million on ads versus Earle-Sears’ just $13.4 million.

Both polling data and the ad wars also offer some insight into the top issues in the campaign. The two candidates have differed greatly in their focus. Though Earle-Sears ran early on her accomplishments with Governor Glenn Youngkin, the bulk of her ads (and those of her allies) has focused on attacking Spanberger on two key fronts: transgender issues and her continued support for attorney general candidate Jay Jones, who has been caught up in scandal down the home stretch.

Republicans believe they have an edge on trans issues, specifically, which likely played some role in propelling Trump back to the White House. Earle-Sears has zeroed in on public school bathroom policies and sports, saying, “Let’s have girls have their private spaces and boys have their private spaces. It has worked for how many millennia and certainly it can work now.”

For her part, Spanberger has decided the best course of action is to basically stay silent on both controversies and focus instead on other issues: namely, the cost of living, abortion, and Trump—specifically, the impact of the administration’s DOGE cuts and the government shutdown on federal workers in the state (of which there are many).

Spanberger may be onto something: in addition to maintaining a steady lead over Earle-Sears for most of the campaign, both the Post-Schar poll and another recent survey from Christopher Newport University found that the top two issues for Virginia voters are the cost of living and concerns about Trump and democracy. Meanwhile, just four percent said “policies about transgender students” are the most important thing informing their vote in the race for governor.

Earle-Sears hopes the fraught national culture war issues can help boost her chances. But given the state’s historical trends, her massive fundraising deficit, and the impact of DOGE cuts and the federal shutdown, she is fighting a steep uphill battle heading into Election Day.

New Jersey

Up the Atlantic coast, the landscape looks a little different. Though New Jersey has for years been a much bluer state than Virginia in federal elections, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate there, Mikie Sherrill, is having a tougher go at it than Spanberger. Sherrill has held a lead over Republican challenger, Jack Ciattarelli, since late summer, but it has narrowed considerably over the past couple of months. RealClearPolitics’ polling average showed Sherrill’s advantage dropping from nine points in August to just 3.7 points as of this week.

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Especially striking is how much things have shifted in New Jersey overall. Throughout the 2010s, Democrats running for statewide office typically won here by roughly 15 points, including Barack Obama, Phil Murphy, and Joe Biden. Since then, however, margins have tightened. In 2021, Murphy won re-election in a nailbiter, and last year, Kamala Harris carried the state by the smallest margin for a Democratic presidential nominee (5.9 points) since 1992.

Sherrill’s precarious lead makes more sense in this context, though it likely does little to assuage Democrats’ anxieties. Neither does the fact that in the last election for New Jersey governor, the polls underestimated Republicans by five points. If they did so again this time, Ciattarelli would win. Still, one point working against him is that while Sherrill has hit 50 percent support or higher in four of the eight polls conducted just during October, Ciattarelli, like Earle-Sears, hasn’t achieved this in any poll this cycle.

The competitive nature of this race is also evident in the two candidates’ fundraising, which is far more even than in Virginia. Campaign finance reports from early October showed that Sherrill had raised $17.5 million while Ciattarelli had brought in $16.5 million. And the candidates had taken nearly identical amounts in matching funds from the state (~$9.7 million). Both have also received hefty, roughly equal support from outside groups like the Democratic and Republican Governors Associations.

Another unique feature of this race is the shifting support of organized labor. Many still back Democrats—and thus, in this case, Sherrill—including teachers unions and the Laborers, both of which contributed substantial amounts to the DGA. But some unions have swung toward Republicans. On his campaign website, Ciattarelli touts endorsements from the operating engineers, the bricklayers, and the New Jersey Fraternal Order of Police (among others), a sign of the continued move of some blue-collar, working-class voters to the GOP.

The central issue at play in this election is the cost of living. In their first ads of the campaign, both Sherrill and Ciattarelli emphasized this—in particular the cost of energy bills, as residential electricity costs have gone up far more than the national average. Ciattarelli has also pledged to tackle New Jersey’s property taxes, which are the second-highest in the country.

As the race has gone on, though, things have taken a more personal turn. Sherrill has accused Ciattarelli of profiting from the opioid crisis, leading him to threaten a defamation lawsuit. On the other side, the National Archives released Sherrill’s unredacted military records to a Ciattarelli ally, which Ciattarelli has used to attack Sherrill over her links to a Naval Academy cheating scandal. She has in turn charged that both Ciattarelli and the Trump administration broke the law.

Despite the eleventh-hour pugilism, voters appear to be focused on the more mundane matter of inflation. Consider:

• Over the summer, a Rutgers/Eagleton poll found that half of New Jerseyans had trouble paying their utility bills, particularly poor and working-class residents.

• In a mid-October Fox News survey, a majority of New Jersey voters said that the cost of living is the number one problem facing the state today, with a plurality pointing to high taxes, specifically.

• And, according to a Quinnipiac University poll from around the same time, more voters said they expected property taxes to go up if Sherrill won than said the same about a possible Ciattarelli win.

However, the Republican businessman must also overcome two key factors working in Democrats’ favor. The first is advertising. According to a recent Cook Political Report analysis, “Since the June primary, Democrats have outspent Republicans on broadcast, cable and streaming advertisements by more than $5 million. That’s a substantially larger gap than existed at this point in 2021, when Democratic allies combined for $5.9 million in ad spending to the GOP’s $4.1 million.” Even if Republicans catch up in the final weeks, the damage may already be done.

Additionally, since 2016, the Democrats have run up a massive advantage in party registrations in New Jersey. At its peak in 2020, they had registered 1,079,157 more voters than Republicans. That edge has narrowed a bit in the years since and today sits at 855,049. Still, that is a large gap to overcome, meaning Ciattarelli will almost certainly need to win support from some voters who backed Harris for president last year—not an impossible task but certainly a difficult one in a year when the national winds aren’t favoring his party.

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When married together with historical election trends, this evidence adds to the idea that Spanberger and Sherrill are the favorites ahead of next week. However, Sherrill is arguably in a tougher fight, and there is a clear opening for Ciattarelli to upset historical trends and become New Jersey’s first Republican governor since Chris Christie.

Next week, I’ll conclude this series with a look at the arguments for why each party’s candidate could win in each state—and detail a list of things I’ll be watching for heading into election night.

1. Notably, even Trafalgar’s surveys showed Spanberger leading, albeit by closer to 3–5 points.