Can Demographic Shifts Help the GOP Eke Out Wins in Governors’ Races in New Jersey and Virginia?

No two states voted more alike and closer to the national average in last year’s presidential election than the two states that have gubernatorial elections in this odd-numbered year: New Jersey and Virginia. New Jersey voted 51.8 percent for Vice President Kamala Harris and 45.9 percent for President Trump. Virginia voted 51.8 percent for Ms. Harris and 46.1 percent for Mr. Trump. Aside from the seven target states and Democratic underperformance in New Hampshire and Minnesota, these were the two closest states in the country.They have other similarities. Large percentages of their voters live in metropolitan areas centered on cities outside the state, such as New York City and Washington, D.C. Both of those metro areas have populations far above the national average in education credentials and income.That has tilted them toward the Democratic Party in this era when upscale voters, in line with their liberal stands on cultural issues, trend that way. It’s a time when million-plus metro areas, evenly divided in the 1980s, have become heavily Democratic, while the half of Americans living outside those big metro areas have, often despite historical Democratic allegiances, been delivering increasing margins for Mr. Trump’s Republicans.Republican Jack Ciattarelli. AP/Noah K. MurrayIt comes as second nature to political writers to seek omens in the results and trends of off-year elections. Virginia has provided plenty of grist for their mills, having elected governors of the party that lost the presidential election the year before in 11 of the last 12 contests starting in 1977.That would seem to give an advantage to Democrats in two states carried by Ms, Harris. It helps that Democrats have managed to nominate candidates with attractive biographies and reputations, despite their generally party-line voting records, as centrists. Both are women with national security experience who were first elected to the House of Representatives in the Democratic year of 2018.Representative Mikie Sherrill was a Navy helicopter pilot and later worked as a lawyer. After her military service, she went to graduate school, earning a law degree and an Arabic language certificate. She captured an ex-urban, traditionally Republican New Jersey district when the incumbent retired. She won her first primary easily and has won general elections with 53 percent to 59 percent of the vote.A former congresswoman, Abigail Spanberger, also earned a graduate degree, taught at northern Virginia’s Islamic Saudi Academy, and was an intelligence officer in the CIA for six years. She won her suburban House seat, stretching between Richmond and Fairfax County, against an incumbent Republican by 2 points, twice won re-election — first by 2 points, then by 5 — and stepped down in 2024, with the governor’s race in mind.Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill, who is running for governor of New Jersey. AP/Mariam ZuhaibCurrent RealClearPolitics polling averages have Mr. Sherrill ahead of 2021 nominee Jack Ciattarelli by a 48 percent to 44 percent margin, and Mr. Spanberger leading Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears by 50 percent to 44 percent — margins not that far from the virtually identical margins by which Ms. Harris carried both states.Republicans hold out some hope in both races. Mr. Ciattarelli lost by only 51 percent to 48 percent against the incumbent Democrat, Phil Murphy, in 2021, campaigning against the high taxes that have helped Republicans win four of eight New Jersey elections starting in 1993, despite the state’s Democratic lean in presidential politics. And Mr. Sherrill, Republicans say, is on the defensive for having been required not to appear at her graduation from the Naval Academy, apparently for not having reported another cadet’s violation of the honor code.In Virginia, Ms. Spanberger was set back by the disclosure on October 3 that Democratic attorney general candidate Jay Jones sent messages in 2022 expressing a desire to shoot the then-Republican House speaker and see his children murdered in their mother’s arms. Ms. Spanberger expressed abhorrence but refused to call on him to step aside and announced her early vote for him. October polling shows Mr. Jones trailing the incumbent attorney general, Jason Miyares, 47 percent to 43 percent.Despite their identical responses in 2024, these two states have different traditions. In assessing the chances for an upset in either race, it may be useful to look at the different surges of migration, immigrant and internal, that have populated these two states over the years.In New Jersey, one can find traces of Dutch settlers from Nieuw Amsterdam and Quakers in the Delaware River Valley from colonial days. But the big surge of migration came from the descendants of the Ellis Island migration of 1892 to 1924, Italians, Jews, and Poles spilling over from the big cities across the Hudson and Delaware rivers.Their offspring responded favorably to the appeals of Presidents Clinton and Obama, as the anti-tax constituency was reduced by migrants to Florida. Yet inflation and illegal immigration in the Biden years have pushed them toward Mr. Trump, who raised Republicans’ presidential percentages to 46 percent in 2024 from 41 percent in the years 2012 to 2020.That move was accentuated by Trumpward moves among Hispanics. The 1940 to 1965 northward migration of black people has ebbed in New Jersey, leaving only two municipalities (East Orange and Lawnside) with black majorities. In contrast, the post-1982 Hispanic migration has produced 29 municipalities with Hispanic majorities.In those two-thirds or more Hispanic, Mr. Trump made major gains in 2024, reducing their average Democratic margins from 40 percent in 2020 to 12 percent. NBC analyst Steve Kornacki pointed out that if Mr. Ciattarelli in 2021 had won Trump 2024 percentages in majority nonwhite municipalities, he would have lost by only 0.3 percent.Virginia is a different story. The demographic surge has been an influx of affluent, highly educated Americans plus relatively high-skill immigrants, with significant numbers of Asians and Hispanics, over the past 30 years. Northern Virginia’s share of the statewide vote has increased to 36 percent in 2024 from 25 percent in 1980.In the three Trump elections, northern Virginia has voted 60 percent, 65 percent, and 61 percent Democratic, putting a state safely in the Democratic column that, with just one exception, had voted comfortably Republican from 1952 to 2004. That’s notwithstanding Trump’s 50 percent, 50 percent, and 52 percent wins in the rest of Virginia, similar to his showings in next-door North Carolina.In that setting, Ms. Spanberger’s cold-blooded refusal to renounce Mr. Jones, and her stubborn refusal to oppose girls in boys sports, look like efforts to avoid disenchanting Democratic voters in one of the strongest anti-Trump constituencies in America. Trends may be working for Mr. Trump’s party in New Jersey but less so in Virginia.Creators.com

Can Demographic Shifts Help the GOP Eke Out Wins in Governors’ Races in New Jersey and Virginia?

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