There is some fresh polling in the Virginia governor’s race, and it’s chock full of good news for Republican Winsome Earle-Sears. Back in May, a Roanoke College poll showed Earle-Sears trailing her Democrat opponent, Abigail Spanberger, by a whopping 17 points. This new Roanoke College poll, conducted between August 11 and August 15, indicates Earle-Sears has made up an impressive 10 percentage points and now trails by only seven points.
As a reminder, Virginia’s current governor, Republican Glenn Youngkin, cannot run for consecutive terms, so he has to sit this one out. (Youngkin isn’t totally sitting things out, though; he recently headlined a high-profile GOP event in the early primary state of South Carolina. Make of that what you will.)
Here’s how things look right now for Earle-Sears:
There’s clearly still a lot work to be done as the campaign enters the final few months, with early in-person voting set to begin September 19. The entire Republican ticket, including incumbent Attorney General Jason Miyares, is polling behind their Democrat opponents, but that can partially be explained away by the August doldrums. Voters likely won’t start paying close attention until after Labor Day, and that’s when they’ll see how radical the Democrat slate truly is.
And that’s especially true for Abigail Spanberger, the Deep State darling. There are ample reasons why she finds that her campaign is in a death spiral—it could be her refusal to condemn a fellow Democrat for making antisemitic remarks or the fact that many of her senior staff are neck-deep in a defamation case—but we’ll focus on just two things.