A new Roanoke College poll shows President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump tied at 42% in a head-to-head matchup in Virginia. In a five-way race, Biden leads by 2 points. Considering that Biden won Virginia in 2020 by 9.4 points, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won in 2016 by 5.3 points, the fact that Trump is even competitive in a blue state is stunning.
On the eve of the 2020 election, the RealClearPolitics average of polls in Virginia showed Biden up 11.5 points, meaning he underperformed expectations by 2.1%. RCP’s current polling average shows Biden with a 3-point advantage.
Although Trump has said he hopes to flip the state in November, pollsters do not consider Virginia to be a toss-up state. The CookPoliticalReport categorizes the Old Dominion as a “Solid Democrat” state, and RCP includes it in its “Leans Biden” column.
If Trump were to win every state he won in 2020, plus Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada, all states where his current lead exceeds the margin of error, he would have 268 electoral votes, just two shy of the 270 required to win the presidency.
He needs to win one more state to return to the White House. He is currently ahead by 2.3% in the RCP polling averages in Pennsylvania, a state with 19 electoral votes, in Michigan by 0.5% (15 electoral votes), and in Wisconsin by 0.1% (10 electoral votes). He is trailing but remains within the margin of error in Minnesota by 2.3% (10 electoral votes), and in Virginia by 3% (13 electoral votes).
Roanoke College polls conducted over the past year show a clear downward trend in support for Biden among voters in the state. In May 2023, for example, a Roanoke survey showed Biden up by 16 points. Three months later, his lead had dwindled to 9 points. By November, it had dropped to 4 points. And, in the latest survey, the two are tied.
It’s not crazy to think that Trump could turn Virginia red again. Prior to electing President Barack Obama in 2008, Virginians had a long history of voting for Republicans. With the exception of President Lyndon Johnson’s victory in 1964, Virginians voted for the Republican candidate in every presidential election from 1952 to 2004.
Moreover, we well remember Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s (R-VA) upset victory over former Gov. Terry McAuliffe in the November 2021 gubernatorial race. A close ally of the Clintons, McAuliffe was widely expected to defeat Youngkin.
The campaign, you may recall, centered on the role of parents in determining what their children should be taught in public schools. During a gubernatorial debate, McAuliffe said parents should not be telling schools what to teach, a remark that rankled voters. Despite the Democrats trotting in Obama, Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams to carry McAuliffe over the finish line, Youngkin was able to tap into parents’ anger and wound up winning the race.
The contest was also viewed as a referendum on Biden’s presidency. Biden’s approval numbers had been in the tank since his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan three months earlier. And 2 1/2 years later, they still haven’t recovered.
Sources who attended a Republican National Committee retreat earlier this month told NBC News that Trump campaign officials presented donors with internal polling results that showed Trump closing in on Biden in Virginia and Minnesota. The article scoffed at the notion of these states being in play and noted that “campaigns often use the promise of playing offense on new turf as an incentive for donors to give money to support those efforts.”
NBC reached out to Biden campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt, who said, “Trump’s team has so little campaign or infrastructure to speak of they’re resorting to leaking memos that say ‘the polls we paid for show us winning, don’t ask us to show you the whole poll though.’ Sure, guys.”
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She continued, “While we have 150 offices open with hundreds of staff across the key battlegrounds, the RNC is closing offices and hemorrhaging money on legal fees. Joe Biden has hit every battleground at least once, while Trump’s in the courtroom or on the golf course. We’ll see how that translates in November.”
We will indeed.
Elizabeth Stauffer is a contributor to the Washington Examiner and the Western Journal. Follow her on X or LinkedIn.