What Went Down During The 2021 Elections

Amelia, I think a lot of that comes down to Biden being president. With a Democrat in the White House and all else being equal, the average Republican is more likely to show up than the average Democrat. This “differential turnout” helps explain why the out party tends to do better in non-presidential years, as does having an unpopular president, which may heighten the presidential penalty for the White House party. These factors help Youngkin unify and energize the base, just as Democrats were unified and motivated to turn out when Trump was in office.

One advantage Youngkin has had in balancing appealing to Trump voters and swing voters is that he doesn’t have a long background in politics, because of his business background. We can imagine, for example, that maybe he would have opposed Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary. Something like that could have hurt him with the base. And in a similar vein, he doesn’t have a legislative background that Democrats can pick apart when attacking him on policy.

Yeah, Amelia, he’s really tried to thread the needle here. Throughout the campaign, he would often dodge questions and later clarify when it came to topics like the Big Lie. He questioned the reliability of voting machines while also asserting that Biden indeed won the 2020 election. He had Amanda Chase (a state senator and Youngkin surrogate) running around making rather wild, baseless claims of election fraud to anyone who would listen, including often having her speak at his campaign events. It’s not 100 percent effective — some Trump supporters are still suspicious of him, or write him off as a RINO, or just don’t trust the election process at all — but it was obviously effective enough to garner some final-inning support from the former president himself.