The major elections this year were the gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia. The Virginia gubernatorial race was the most covered race, with former Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe running against ex-Carlyle group CEO Glenn Youngkin. Generally, the Virginia governor’s mansion is won by the opposing political party from the party in the White House. When Obama won Virginia by six points in 2008, Republican Bob McDonnell won the gubernatorial race in 2009 by 17 points. Similarly, Democrat Ralph Northam won the gubernatorial race in 2017 by nine points after Trump was elected in 2016. Democrats had hoped that Virginia’s shift to the left in recent years would break this streak, as Biden won the state by 10 points. Due to Trump repelling many college-educated voters from the GOP, Democrats believed these voters would be a permanent part of the democratic coalition.
The map below shows the breakdown of the 2021 gubernatorial race compared to the 2020 presidential race by congressional district.
As seen in the map above, every single congressional district in VA became more Republican from 2020 to 2021, even deep red VA-9 in the Appalachian Mountains. Youngkin performed well in the Hampton Roads area and the suburbs of Richmond. Like other suburban areas in the county, the trends over the last decade favored the Democrats, but McAuliffe performed worse in these areas than he did in his 2013 race. McAuliffe did better in the NOVA suburbs than he did in 2013, but these results did not offset his much worse performance in rural areas.
Modern political science shows that midterm elections are usually correlated to an incumbent president’s approval rating. Since the president himself is not on the ballot, voters decide to either punish or support the president’s party with the same approval they have of the president, with midterm elections over the last 50 years showing a direct correlation between vote share of the resident’s party in the midterm election and the president’s approval rating. As such, with President Biden’s approval rating at 42% percent in November 2021 compared to the average 54% approval he had in November 2020, a double-digit national electoral swing towards the Republicans is expected.
The New Jersey elections also matched up with this downswing in approval rating. Biden won the state of New Jersey by 16 points, so incumbent Democrat Governor Phil Murphy, according to historical electoral precedents, was supposed to win an easy re-election. The race was rated safe for the Democratic candidate by most election predictions, but Phil Murphy narrowly won re-election by three points against Jack Ciaterelli. A 13 point swing towards the Republican Party was seen across the state, with Murphy doing worse than Biden everywhere except in Essex county where majority-minority cities like Newark are located. Suburban counties like Morris and Somerset that were thought to be trending toward Democrats had a lackluster showing for Phil Murphy, with Murphy losing to Morris by double digits, in a county that Biden won by 5 points. Murphy only won Somerset by single digits, despite Biden winning the county by 20 points. Again, this support for Republicans correlates well with the 12 point swing seen in VA, pointing to president Biden’s low approval rating which are dragging Democratic candidates down in most states.
Republican overperformance was not limited to the gubernatorial races. New York State had many local elections on November 2, and the results were not promising for Democrats. Republican Bruce Blakeman defeated incumbent Democrat Laura Curran by one percentage point in the Nassau County executive race. Nassau County voted for President Biden by nine and a half points in the 2020 election, so this result shows a large Republican shift. Several ballot referendums that would make voting easier in NY state were also defeated statewide. Overall, Democrats suffered a heavy loss, and above all, another uniform swing towards Republicans which corresponds with President Biden’s poor poll numbers.
Many Democratic politicians are concerned that this result is a bad sign for the 2022 midterms. Parties in power almost always lose seats in midterm elections. Even popular presidents like FDR and Reagan lost congressional seats for their party during their midterm elections.
It is likely that Democrats will lose both the House and Senate in 2022 if the national political environment shifts 10 points toward the GOP from the 2020 election baseline.
These results show that President Biden needs to raise his approval rating to show any chance of his party winning the midterms. If Biden maintains his 42% aggregate approval in November 2022, we can expect disastrous results for the Democratic party in the 2022 midterms, since that would be their estimated vote share in that election.