Virginians like the job that Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin is doing but are leaning toward Democrat Abigail Spanberger as his successor. They’d overwhelmingly approve constitutional amendments to guarantee abortion rights and restore civil rights to convicted felons. They generally want to see the state’s budget surplus spent on schools, not tax cuts, and they really don’t like data centers — although people in Southwest Virginia might be more open to them than others.
Those are some of the findings in a new poll that came out Thursday from Christopher Newport University’s Wason Center for Civic Leadership. For political junkies, there’s nothing better than a new set of numbers, so let’s see what we have here.
Spanberger takes early lead in governor’s race (maybe).
The CNU poll puts the governor’s race at 44% for Democrat Abigail Spanberger, who recently left her 7th District seat in the U.S. House to run, and 39% for Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears. That margin of 5 percentage points is outside the poll’s 3.6% margin of error.
Before we go further, I should point out that these findings are different from two other recent polls that showed the race essentially tied. An Emerson College poll put the race at Spanberger 42%, Earle-Sears 41%, while the Mason-Dixon poll found the race to be Spanberger 47%, Earle-Sears 44%.
This comes against a backdrop of the latest campaign finance reports, which show Spanberger with a big money lead. In reports that came out Wednesday, Spanberger has raised $5,965,249 to Earle-Sears’ $2,563,085. Spanberger did start earlier than Earle-Sears, and no one expects the Democrat to continue to have more than twice as much money as the Republican. Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Newport News, continues to say he might seek the Democratic nomination for governor, but Spanberger’s cash advantage has to be daunting if he wants to gear up a competitive campaign for a June primary.
Meanwhile, Earle-Sears has come out swinging — which is what you might do if you thought you were an underdog. She’s been using every opportunity possible to pound the drum that Democrats would endanger the state’s so-called “right-to-work” law, which means that workers don’t have to join a union or pay union dues just because there’s a union in the workplace. To me, this is all about the political equivalent of the military “shaping the battlefield.” Ditto, some of the Republican measures we’re now seeing in the General Assembly dealing with trans athletes and scholarships for students to attend private schools. Whether those are good policy measures depends on your political preferences, but the reality is none of those are likely to pass the Democratic-controlled General Assembly. However, Republicans see how potent the trans issue was for Donald Trump in November and are keen to replicate that in Virginia.
One thing to keep an eye on in the governor’s race: The CNU poll shows independents almost evenly split, with a 37% to 35% tilt toward Spanberger.
Also of note: There’s been speculation about whether Earle-Sears might make inroads with Black voters, who normally vote Democratic. This poll doesn’t show that yet but does show that white voters prefer the Black woman over the white woman by 47% to 41%.
CNU did not poll for the lieutenant governor or attorney general races.
Youngkin remains popular.
Youngkin consistently polls well in every survey, and this one is no exception. The CNU poll shows that 53% of Virginians approve of the job he’s doing, while 33% disapprove. Republicans naturally like a Republican governor, but some of Youngkin’s popularity comes from non-Republicans. Independents approve of Youngkin 54% to 29%. That’s why Earle-Sears now talks about the “Youngkin/Earle-Sears administration” — to associate herself with the good feelings that voters, especially independents, have about the governor. A significant number of Democrats give Youngkin a thumbs up, too: 19% of Democrats approve of the job he’s doing.
I’m curious how much of this reflects Youngkin’s personality, because while Virginians like him, they also like a lot of policies he’s opposed to.
Virginians also think the state is doing well.
One key indicator in any poll is the traditional right track/wrong track question. In this poll, 49% of those surveyed think the state is headed in the right direction, while 31% say it’s headed in the wrong direction. Republicans are more optimistic than Democrats — likely because there’s a Republican governor — but independents overwhelmingly think the state is headed in the right direction: 49% of independents say right direction, 28% say wrong direction.
This is another thing in Earle-Sears’ favor and one that complicates Spanberger’s messaging: If Virginians like how the state is doing, why would they make a party change in the governor’s office?
These feelings about the state are in direct contradiction to how Virginians feel about the nation: 58% say the nation is headed in the wrong direction, 31% in the right direction. Independents are especially unhappy about the national direction: 63% say it’s headed in the wrong direction. However, it’s impossible to say whether they think that way because Joe Biden is in office or because Donald Trump is about to take office, or some other reason entirely.
Virginians don’t think much of Biden — or Trump, either.
Biden gets low marks as he prepares to leave the presidency: 38% said he was “definitely worse than most” presidents, and 25% said he was “not as good as most” — although 28% said he was “better than most.” Still, the weight was on the negative side.
As Trump gets ready to take office again, 36% said he would likely be unsuccessful, while 31% predicted he’d be successful and another 31% said it was too soon to tell. That doesn’t strike me as a lot of enthusiasm for the incoming 47th president. Contrast all these numbers with the generally positive vibes that Virginians feel about their governor.
Virginians want to spend the surplus. They’d consider one-time tax relief but not permanent cuts.
Here’s one place where our popular governor seems out of step with public opinion. He’s been consistently pushing for tax cuts. Virginians aren’t nearly as keen on those as he is. The state is looking at a budget surplus of $2 billion or more, and one of the big questions before this year’s General Assembly session is what to do with that.
Given three choices in this poll, 46% say “the surplus should go primarily towards government services such as K-12 school spending, childcare and infrastructure,” while 40% say “the surplus should go toward one-time tax rebate for individuals, with the remainder going toward government services such as K-12 school spending, childcare and infrastructure.” Only 11% say “the surplus should go primarily towards long-term individual and corporate tax cuts.”
There are other options available — a combination of spending and permanent cuts, for instance — but the poll didn’t ask about those, so, as with any poll, we know what we know and don’t know what we don’t know. It is curious to me that only 23% of the Republicans surveyed opted for the permanent tax cut option. Instead, 50% want a combination of spending and one-time cuts. Not surprisingly, 59% of Democrats favored the spending route, but so did 51% of independents. On other questions, independents sided with Republicans; here they sided with Democrats. This is part of what makes them, well, independent.
Virginians would approve constitutional amendments on abortion rights, civil rights restoration.
Three proposed amendments to the state constitution are moving through the General Assembly; the CNU poll asked about two of those. If these amendments pass this year’s session (they will), they’d have to pass again next year before going to a referendum. This poll gives an early look at how they might fare:
The abortion rights amendment would pass easily: 43% say they strongly support it, another 18% support it, so that’s 61% on the “yes” side, while 32% are on some shade of the “no” side.
The amendment to automatically restore civil rights to convicted felons would also pass: 63% are on some variation of the “yes” side, while 32% are on some variation of the “no” side.
The poll did not ask about the amendment to guarantee the right to a same-sex marriage in case the U.S. Supreme Court ever changes its mind, but I wrote about some of the electoral history in Thursday’s column.
Virginians don’t much like data centers.
The poll asked four questions about data centers, those computer warehouses that make the internet “go.” Virginia (mostly Northern Virginia) has become a global center for data centers, but not everyone is happy about their growth. The poll shines some light on the depths of those feelings.
- 67% said they’d support a law that would ban data centers within a mile of a national park, state park or other historically significant site. These feelings were strongest in Northern Virginia, where 76% said yes, but found majority support across the state. It’s also notable that there were strong majorities for this bill across the political spectrum, although Democrats were somewhat more supportive. Still, 62% of Republicans were in favor, a landslide by any measure.
- 77% said they’d support a law to require data centers to promote energy efficiency. Once again, that received strong support across the political and geographic spectrum, with Democrats and Northern Virginians the most supportive but even Republicans backing it by wide margins.
- 57% said they opposed expanding state and local tax incentives for data centers. This is still a healthy majority, but notice it’s lower than on the other questions. Also, this opposition was consistent across both parties. Of note: Geographically, the opposition was strongest in Northern Virginia at 64% but fell to 51% in Southwest Virginia. While geographical crosstabs have a higher margin of error, I do wonder if the lower opposition in Southwest Virginia is because that region might be more open to data centers for the jobs they provide.
- 48% support abolishing the tax incentives that data centers currently get; 39% oppose. You’ll notice this has a lot less support, so it seems that Virginians don’t want to expand tax incentives but aren’t quite as sure they want to abolish them. Democrats and Republicans were once again in agreement, but we also continue to see Southwest Virginia as an outlier: Northern Virginia and Richmond both had majorities in favor of abolishing tax incentives; Hampton Roads had a plurality. Southwest Virginia was reversed: It’s the only region where there was a plurality against doing away with tax incentives for data centers: 37% there wanted to do away with such incentives but 48% did not.
My reading of this: Northern Virginia is definitely souring on data centers, but Southwest Virginia might be open to a conversation. There are technical issues to locating data centers in Southwest Virginia in terms of sufficient internet connections, but if those can ever be overcome, Southwest Virginia might be a more welcoming part of the state.
More on campaign finance reports
In this week’s West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter, I’ll look more closely at this week’s campaign finance reports to see what they tell us about the 2025 elections taking shape. You can sign up for that or any of our other free newsletters below:
