New Cygnal survey of 800+ likely voters shows steep declines for McAuliffe
WASHINGTON – The ground in Virginia has shifted. A new poll of 816 likely voters shows Glenn Youngkin and Terry McAuliffe dead even at 48% a piece, with one week to go until Election Day. Voters are shifting to down-ballot Republicans, as well, with the GOP holding a R+1 advantage on the generic General Assembly ballot.
“Independent voters and parents of K-12 students are stampeding to support Republicans Glenn Youngkin, Winsome Sears, Jason Miyares and GOP state house candidates,” remarked pollster Brent Buchanan, CEO of Cygnal, a national polling firm ranked as most accurate. “In an interesting twist of political fate, voters under the age of 55 are strongly for Republicans.”
President Joe Biden is a millstone around the neck of Democratic candidates. For example, he won Virginia female voters in 2020 by 23 points but the generic Republican for General Assembly in 2021 is only losing female voters by 3 points and McAuliffe only leads them by 5 points. Youngkin has a 4 point higher “very favorable” rating while McAuliffe has a 4 point higher “very unfavorable” rating.
“It’s all been turned upside down in Virginia politics this year. Seventy-one percent of Independents view McAuliffe negatively, and more Democrats than Republicans are defecting to support the candidate of the other party,” Buchanan added.
Interestingly, 98% of 2020 Trump voters are sticking with Republicans while only 91% of Biden voters are sticking with Democrats.
“The direction of Virginia could be a bellwether of things to come in 2022,” noted Cygnal’s Chris Kratzer. “We’re seeing generic Republican support rise across much of our polling, while Biden’s image continues to plummet.”
Matt Hubbard of Cygnal led the data collection efforts on the Virginia poll and noted that the data from the field was “one of the best samples I’ve seen all year,” which means the underlying data required little weighting to match the projected turnout composition.
The toplines and polling memo can be found below. The crosstabs can be downloaded here.
MEDIA STATEMENT: Cygnal has polled privately in Virginia in 2021 for multiple private Republican stakeholders. The poll released was conducted at Cygnal’s expense for internal testing purposes. No clients were consulted for questions, methodology, or approach. Cygnal chose to release the results of the survey because so much has changed in Virginia.