Virginia's Bellweather Election; Conservatism v. Biden-ism

The best news Virginia's Republican Lieutenant Governor and gubernatorial candidate Winsome Earle-Sears could receive is that she's trailing in the polls. The Virginia Commonwealth University Wilder School polling, conducted from August 18 to August 28, found that 748 registered and likely voters prefer Democrat Abigail Spanberger to Earle-Sears by a 49% to 40% margin.

Starting in 2016 and continuing through 2020 and 2024, pollsters have been so far off the mark that they should have been embarrassed to show their faces in public. Maybe that’s why Nate Silver sold his once heralded FiveThirtyEight to Disney in 2013 which then, in 2018, shut it down permanently. A list of colossal prediction failures limited to recent memory begin in 2016 whenHillary Clinton was widely projected to win by sweeping key blue wall states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump took all three and handily defeated Clinton. In 2020, pollsters admitted the obvious---that their results were "the most inaccurate in 40 years." In 2024, the same off-the-mark pollsters predicted that the nation would be awake until the wee hours waiting to learn the Kamala Harris-Donald Trump results. Instead, as Trump scored a landslide, everyone went to sleep early.

Given polls' proven unreliability, news stories that include their latest results should not get past editors. Such stories represent a subtle form of editorial bias. A reader might conclude that if their candidate is Earle-Sears, who is allegedly trailing Spanberger by nine points—so far outside the 4-point margin of error—voting is pointless. Reporters should stick to the issues, ask tough questions, and insist on detailed, specific answers.

The press should question Spanberger on her congressional record. Spanberger, who won her seat in part through redistricting, served as VA-7's representative for three terms from 2019 to 2025. Looking back at Spanberger's years as part of President Joe Biden's failed administration, her votes were troubling. She voted for all 73 House bills and resolutions that Biden supported.

On September 23, 2019, Spanberger joined six other freshman House Democrats with national security backgrounds in calling for an impeachment inquiry into Trump. They co-wrote a Washington Post opinion piece explaining their support for an impeachment inquiry, writing: "Congress must determine whether the president was indeed willing to use his power and withhold security assistance funds to persuade a foreign country to assist him in an upcoming election." They concluded that if the allegations were true, they amounted to "a flagrant disregard for the law" and "a threat to all we have sworn to protect." Spanberger later voted to impeach Trump. "The President's actions violate his oath of office, endanger our national security, and betray public trust," she said. The current Democratic congressional delegation has admitted that if the party regained House control, it would immediately move to impeach President Trump—a futile, costly, and divisive exercise that would be dead on arrival in the Senate.

On issues that have become increasingly important to the electorate—immigration and national security—Spanberger's documented record is abysmal. Despite her six-year CIA career before entering politics, much of it spent under disgraced former CIA Director John Brennan, whose security clearance the White House revoked in 2018, Spanberger voted against bills to keep the nation safe. She opposed the southwest border wall and favors amnesty for illegal aliens who work and pay taxes—the typical feel-good talking points that immigration advocates advance. Spanberger is soft on crime. In an interview with the Virginia Mercury, she vowed to rescind Governor Glenn Youngkin’s Executive Order 47 which allows state officers to cooperate with federal immigration agents to deport criminal aliens.

More specifically, Spanberger's congressional votes on border and interior enforcement, as well as creating more rigid amnesty and refugee approval guidelines, earned her an aggregate F- score. The open-borders Biden administration processed thousands of terrorists and violent criminals into the U.S.

Gun control has taken center stage in the Virginia gubernatorial race. Spanberger recently made her anti-gun agenda clear at an event held by Everytown, the gun-control group bankrolled by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. While running for Congress in 2018, Spanberger posted on X: "I support universal background checks, Extreme Risk Protective Orders, banning bump stocks, and reenacting the assault weapons ban."

From the other side of the gubernatorial campaign, Earle-Sears (R) is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and staunch Second Amendment defender who spoke with America's 1st Freedom after winning her 2021 election over state Del. Hala Ayala (D), another noted anti-Second Amendment legislator. "Remember that our government is we the people—not we the politicians, not we the elite. It's we the people! Don't be afraid, and don't be caught napping. You're the people," said Earle-Sears.

On immigration, Earle-Sears speaks through a personal lens. "My father and I had to file documents and wait to be granted permission to enter the United States," she said. "Under Governor Youngkin's leadership, Virginia stands firm: we are not a sanctuary state. The rule of law is not negotiable, it is the foundation of our safety, our freedom, and the promise of opportunity that defines America."

The other contentious campaign issue, perhaps more volatile than immigration, is LGBTQ+ rights. Spanberger is dancing around the topic and refuses to answer whether she agrees that young people should be able to use any bathroom in a school building that corresponds with their gender identity, even if it doesn't correlate with their sex assigned at birth. She has also avoided getting into specifics when addressing transgender athletes' participation in women's sports. Instead, Spanberger has instead vaguely said that her "priority is making sure Virginia's kids are safe and supported." Earle-Sears' opinion is more straightforward: "It's time for everyone to recognize what is settled truth. Girls are girls and boys are boys."

To Spanberger's dismay, the political trend is shifting away from the Biden-era left, to which she was a reliable contributor, and toward the more moderate middle ground that Earle-Sears represents.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org