What Went Down During The 2021 Elections

You might have heard that the Virginia governor’s race has become an election about education. However, as I wrote in yesterday’s National Journal, that’s not what’s happening here, at least not in how we’ve historically talked about education.

Typically, education issues have involved things like teacher pay and class sizes, but Youngkin’s messaging involves everything from the censorship of books in schools to alleged sex crimes committed against Virginia students. Youngkin has also made the role parents play in their children’s schooling a central part of his campaign, which was given new life when McAuliffe declared on a debate stage that he didn’t “think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

Randi Weingarten, president of American Federation of Teachers, which endorsed McAuliffe, told me yesterday that Youngkin’s message centers on “culture wars,” not on education. “​​Parents have to be our partners, so this sense of creating this kind of divide is really dangerous,” said Weingarten. “Teachers need parents, and parents need teachers. That’s how we educate kids. But we also need a common curriculum.”

In one sense, Youngkin’s message is an extension of the debate over Common Core, which centered on the degree to which the federal government can standardize national K-12 standards. And at the time, anxious parents could lobby their state governments for exemptions from the national curriculum.

But there’s a different approach to the issue of education in Youngkin’s campaign, which is attempting to seize upon what it sees as a societal problem, not a specific policy. That’s why if Youngkin is successful in his education strategy, giving anti-Trump, suburban voters a reason to vote for a Republican — without having to adopt a moderate platform that could alienate base voters — it’s going to be a soundtrack we can expect to hear for GOP ads in the midterms.

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.