What Went Down During The 2021 Elections

A stray thought as the first preliminary exit poll numbers come in …

I’ve long had this idea to do a story that uses exit poll questions as a way to quantify which issues were prominent in a particular campaign. (So, for example, if an exit poll in a particular election asked about property taxes, that would suggest property taxes were a prominent part of the campaign.)

With that in mind, the fact that the Virginia exit poll asked “how much say should parents have in what their child’s school teaches?” reflects a huge win for the Youngkin campaign. Forget the results for a second (53 percent of respondents said, “a lot,” also a good result for Youngkin), the question’s inclusion is indicative of the extent to which the Youngkin campaign was successful in making that issue a talking point in the race (or, at the least, coverage of the race). And as Nathaniel just noted, “education” also ranked as a top issue among respondents.

According to preliminary exit poll data — so, again, these numbers will change — 33 percent of Virginia voters named the economy and jobs as the most important issue facing the commonwealth. Twenty-four percent named education, 16 percent named taxes, 13 percent named the pandemic and 9 percent named abortion. That pandemic number really caught my attention — it’s interesting that it’s slipped in salience so much since the California recall, when it was the most important issue. As others on this live blog have mentioned, that’s not good for McAuliffe, since Virginia voters told exit pollsters that they trusted McAuliffe more than Youngkin to handle the pandemic, 43 percent to 36 percent.

As for that top issue, the economy? Voters were roughly split, with 43 percent saying they trusted Youngkin more on it and 40 percent saying they trusted McAuliffe.

In a few minutes, we’ll have some preliminary exit poll numbers for you (you might already be seeing them circulate on Twitter), but we just want to remind you: These are early, preliminary numbers, and you should take them with a healthy grain of salt. Exit polls are polls just like any other, so they have a margin of error. Plus, these preliminary exit polls don’t account for folks who will vote between now and when polls close, and they haven’t yet been weighted to the final result of the election (which is the big advantage that exit polls have over regular old pre-election polls).