Transcript: The GOP May Lose Next Week’s Elections—Thanks to Trump

All the variability is gonna go into this to some degree—like how well you can actually,  take advantage of these conditions that we tend to see, and, you know, how unpopular Trump actually is and whatnot. But Trump isn’t popular in Virginia. That’s continued to be the case. And so I think that was gonna make it really hard for Earle-Sears.

And then, on top of that, Spanberger has fundraised very impressively, has done all the things she needed to do to put herself in a position to win. And there’s been talk that Earle-Sears is not a particularly, great candidate in terms of her work on the campaign trail. And, you know, again, how much do those things matter?

I don’t wanna overplay them, but I do think that in that situation where you need to sort of alter some fundamental dynamics in the electoral environment, you need to be a particularly special candidate, or you need your opponent to do a bunch of things wrong. And that hasn’t really worked out for Earl-Sears at this point.

Bacon: So, lemme drill down here. I guess just watching this from afar, my impression has been that the Democrats have a strong candidate and the Republicans a weak one. But if the margin is six or eight, that’s kind of— I guess if Youngkin were running against Spanberger, Spanberger would be ahead by four, we think.

Because what are we looking at here? Is it like Virginia leans to the left slightly?

Skelley: Yeah, it’s interesting. Youngkin, in polling of this race that has asked about his approval or favorability, has tended to be somewhat above water—in net positive territory—even while Trump has polled net negative, uh, on approval or favorability.

So, in that sense, I think Youngkin would definitely have a chance. I mean, I think a Spanberger–Youngkin race would’ve been a really, really impressive contest. That would’ve been something.

At the same time, maybe Spanberger wouldn’t have decided to run. She might have been like, well, I’ll just hang out in my congressional district…

Bacon: In part, he’s an incumbent, so that’s not a fair question.

Like, I guess—yeah, I guess—is Spanberger better than the generic Democrat, is what I’m trying to ask? Let me ask you that way.

Skelley: Yeah. And I, I think, I think perhaps—I mean, I think there’s a good chance that she is going to—I mean, she’s leading the ticket and is probably going to win by more if Democrats win the lieutenant governor’s race.

Then we can talk about the attorney general’s race for a minute if you want to. Yeah, ’cause that’s actually really the most interesting contest now in Virginia. Uh, but Spanberger—all signs point to her sort of leading the ticket in terms of her margin of victory.

Ghazala Hashmi, who’s the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor, leads by about four percentage points in our polling average. And different polls have shown her ahead by either somewhat close to three percentage points, or maybe she’s ahead by almost as much as Spanberger is ahead in some of these polls that have had Spanberger up by 10 or so.

So I think the thing to remember with Virginia, though, is that in recent elections—basically since 2009—you’ve almost always seen those three statewide races, the three statewide offices in Virginia, the results run very close together generally.

So if Spanberger is winning by 10 at the top of the ticket, I would expect Hashmi to not be too far away, for instance. Now, I might not have expected Jay Jones to be that far away, who’s the Democratic nominee for attorney general, running against—now, incumbents for other offices in Virginia can seek reelection, which is a little confusing—but incumbent Attorney General Jason Miyares, the Republican.

There he is, seeking reelection, and maybe because he was an incumbent and was outraising Jones, maybe he was always going to run stronger than any of the other Republicans on the ticket.

However, because of this texting scandal that Jay Jones has gotten caught up in—he’s had some other things, too—but in particular, the revelation that he had this series of texts and conversations in 2022 where he talked—I mean, it was hypothetical, but nonetheless—very openly in this conversation with the Republican state legislator. By the way, not the most brilliant move on his part.

I mean, besides even the content—what, like, what are you doing, my guy? Very dumb. He’s texting about a hypothetical where he shoots and kills the then Republican speaker of the State House of Delegates. I mean, just, you know, really out-of-bounds kind of stuff. Just very, very off-putting.

And in this particular moment, obviously in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination, political violence is very much top of mind for people as a concern. And just for this to all come out at this moment, I think, was particularly, you know, bad for Jones politically—and, fairly good for Miyares.

And in the aftermath of that, we have seen Miyares lead in the polls in this race. Is it enough for him to win? We’ll see. I think there is definitely a path for Jones to sort of get carried across by a favorable environment for Democrats. If, you know, Spanberger is winning by, like, nine or ten at the top of the ticket, I could see Jones winning by one or two points. That could absolutely happen. There’s just not enough ticket-splitting in this day and age for Miyares to pull it out.

But if it’s more that Spanberger-by-seven-or-six kind of environment, then maybe Miyares does hold, does pull it off, and does get a split-ticket result—which hasn’t happened in Virginia for the three statewide races since 2005.

So the attorney general’s race is actually the one that I think people are most closely following because of the Jones texting scandal and the opportunity this has given to Miyares.

Bacon: Let me conclude by talking about redistricting in Virginia, the Virginia Legislature which is controlled by Democrats has taken some early steps to, maybe follow or use referendums as gerrymandered districts. In a way, the current Virginia delegation is six Democrats, five Republicans. They’re looking potentially at making it, uh, basically nine to two, eight to three.

What I want to ask you about, though, is the broader picture. I’m having a hard time figuring out where we are, ’cause I don’t think I’ve seen a good analysis about where we are generally. Like, in a normal environment—Trump’s approval is, like, in the low forties—I think the Democrats would be favored to win the House.

Has enough changed in redistricting to where we can’t say that anymore? Are the Republicans the favorites? Or do we have a good sense of, like, how many seats the Republicans have sort of won by redistricting right now, or how much of an advantage they’ve gained by redistricting?

Skelley: So right now, the two big stories are California and Texas. And they may roughly cancel out—assuming, I mean, look, it looks like California voters are probably gonna pass Proposition 50. And if they do, Democrats will get the map they wanted, and that will position them to perhaps cancel out the gains that Republicans are gonna make in Texas.

Four, five seats, basically. From there, you know, Missouri—they’re gonna need to see whether that map gets halted by a referendum campaign, which is also a possibility. I would say, at this particular moment, Republicans have positioned themselves to perhaps gain a little bit more. And it sounds like Indiana may also pursue redistricting.

And North Carolina just made a move that will gain them a seat—Republicans one seat there. So at this point, I think Republicans have edged ahead slightly in terms of the net gains they could get from this process. However, I don’t think it’s enough at this point to at all guarantee them continued control of the House.

You know, if you’re thinking about where things are right now, based on the current makeup of districts, roughly 20, I think, would automatically be in the conversation as in play for Democrats to target. And that’s, that’s like a conservative estimate—where an estimate might seem a little too far in one direction, but maybe, whatever, the perfect conditions come about that, you know, like, oh, in 2018, Democrats flipped a seat in Oklahoma City. Yeah, you know?

Like, for instance, that was a little farther afield than I think people expected that to happen, even in a pro-Democratic environment.

But if you’re thinking about roughly 20 seats where either they leaned slightly to the left of the country’s 2024 presidential election, but Republicans held onto it—so, like, Harris carried it, but by slightly less than the overall margin—or, sorry, Trump carried it, but by slightly less than his national one-and-a-half-point margin, or Trump carried it narrowly and it was just, like, a hair to the right of the country.

Those are the kinds of seats that are gonna be in play in an environment where I do expect Democrats, in terms of the overall environment, to have at least some advantage. We don’t know what that advantage will be yet—but at least some advantage, just like Republicans had at least a small advantage in 2022.

Maybe not as big a one as we might have expected, but there were a lot of things going into that—with, obviously, the Supreme Court and the ruling regarding Roe v. Wade—that, I think, kind of shifted the balance of where that electoral environment was. But Republicans still had at least something, a small advantage in the overall political environment in 2022.

So if Democrats have a small—at least a small—political advantage in the environment in 2026, I would expect Democrats to at least get some of those seats. And they only need three. Now, obviously, that’s gonna change with the redistricting math being incorporated or whatnot, but if you’re talking about a situation where Democrats might be able to win 15 to 20 seats, I think you’re gonna need more to change to really guarantee Republicans a shot at holding on.

And this is not to say that that won’t happen—’cause it definitely could. Like, especially with all this conversation about the Voting Rights Act, and the Court making decisions on that. If it made a decision on that, it could really open the door to a much larger set of changes.

Perry Bacon: Okay, interesting. I think we’ll wrap there. That’s a good, uh, because I think that’s where I’m looking, that’s the next thing. If they rewrite the Voting Rights Act, then we’re talking about a lot of seats. Okay. That’s the, that’s a good thing. And, so, Geoffrey Skelley, thanks for joining me.

Skelley: Hey, Perry. Thank you so much for having me. Good to see you.