Roanoke College came out with a poll last week that flashes a big red warning sign for Republicans.
Not the political poll that showed Democrat Abigail Spanberger leading Republican Winsome Earle-Sears by 15 percentage points in the governor’s race. That’s not exactly good news for Republicans, but we’re still more than eight months out from the election, and I’d expect the numbers to be pretty volatile this early on. There’s plenty of time to turn those numbers around, although Earle-Sears’ ability to do so may depend on a lot of factors beyond her control.
No, the more important poll was the economic poll that came out a day later, a regular Roanoke College survey on consumer sentiment in the state — in other words, how people are feeling about the economy.
It found that, since the last such poll in November, consumer sentiment in Virginia has, in the words of the Roanoke College analysis, “plunged almost 13 points” to the second-lowest score in the survey’s history, which dates back to 2011. The only time it was lower was May 2022.
This ought to worry Republicans more than the poll on the governor’s race. Indeed, it ought to worry everyone, no matter what political persuasion you are. Some people simply don’t care who the governor is (that’s why voter turnout in gubernatorial races is a lot lower than presidential races), but we all have to care about the economy at some point. Furthermore, the economy isn’t really driven by what politicians or big corporations do, it’s driven by how consumers feel about what they do — 68% of the nation’s gross domestic product last year was based on consumer spending. A whole business school full of economists can testify that the economy is great, but if consumers don’t feel great, they’ll scale back on spending — and the economy slows down. Many a politician has learned this the hard way. Just last year, many Democrats insisted that the economy was in fine shape, and there were certainly some statistics they could cite to support that. But that’s not how voters felt, which is why Donald Trump is now forced to deal with the price of eggs and Kamala Harris isn’t.
Indeed, the November version of this poll found consumer sentiment in Virginia to be pretty high — 77.6% on Roanoke College’s scale, where 100% is deliriously happy, so much so that people are willing to throw money to the winds. That was the highest it had been since May 2021. Of course, we need to remember that Virginia is a state that didn’t vote for Trump. Still, people’s moods were going up, at least as far as their wallets are concerned. Now, they’re going down — and down in a big way. What’s happened between November and February to make people change their minds so much? Well, Trump has happened. More inflation has happened, too. The inflation rate hit a low of 2.4% in September but then started rising again and was back at 3% in January, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
We can argue all day about how people should feel, but this is how they do feel. Any incoming president gets a “honeymoon” period of some length. Trump can’t be blamed for the state of the economy now because he just got his hands on the wheel. However, at some point this will become his economy and right now people are feeling pretty pessimistic. The Roanoke College poll finds that 61% of those surveyed think that now is a bad time to buy big-ticket household items — up from 51.4% in November. Republicans, as the party in power in both Washington and Richmond (at least as far as the governor’s office is concerned), need consumers to feel better about things. They need them to be confident enough to spend money. But they’re not. In fact, they’re becoming less confident. In November, those surveyed were nearly split over how they thought things would go over the next five years: 50.7% thought things would get worse economically, 47.2% thought things would get better. But now, Roanoke College finds that 60.2% think things will get worse, while those expecting better times now comprise just 38.4%.
As with many polls, there’s both good news and bad news here for both parties. The immediate bad news is for Republicans: If people act on those pessimistic sentiments, then we’ll see them spending less money, which will ripple through the economy in unfortunate ways. Virginia Democrats would be the likely beneficiaries of that in November. After all, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin promised them a “rip-roaring economy” but if consumers aren’t feeling that, they’ll probably blame Republicans — even if Virginia Republicans had nothing to do with that.
It’s not just polling data about the economy that should worry Republicans, it’s the actual economy: The Commerce Department released data Friday that showed consumer spending in January had dropped, and dropped at its fastest rate in four years. Cold weather may have played a role in much of that, but that capitalist organ Fortune magazine reported that “Trump’s policies — including plans to drastically cut federal spending and downsize the workforce — also had their fingerprints on it.” More worrisome, the Atlanta Federal Reserve, which not long ago was forecasting steady economic growth, has reversed course and now reports that the nation’s Gross Domestic Product is now headed toward a -1.5% contraction for the first quarter. Some economic trends are based more on perception than reality. If people think the economy is headed toward a recession, they’ll become more cautious about spending more, which only accelerates downward trends. The short-term prospects certainly don’t seem encouraging, either for the economy or the party now in charge of the federal government.
The longer-term effects could go either way, though. Consumers right now are probably reacting to uncertainty all around. There are lots of predictions about what Trump’s tariffs will do. Slapping tariffs on goods from our two biggest trading partners — Mexico and Canada, in that order — seems likely to simply drive up prices for American consumers, or cause them to reduce spending, or find alternative domestic products or some combination of the three. However, we don’t really know what tariffs will do until they happen, and are in place for a while. Maybe we don’t need to eat as many Mexican avocados as we do. Maybe we can simply buy Highland County maple syrup instead of Quebec imports. Those changes are easy to make; changing the integrated cross-border construction of automobiles is more difficult, though. If consumers are still feeling pessimistic in the fall of 2026, that’s bad news for Republicans in the midterms, when elections typically break against the party in power anyway.
There’s another scenario, though, one that’s a lot more optimistic for Republicans and less so for Democrats. People are expecting things to be so bad that it’s entirely possible the reality will surpass their very low expectations. That’s the opening for Republicans, who can then warn that Democratic fears were overblown. That might come too late to help Virginia Republicans in this November’s election but could be right on schedule to help them in 2026 — with eyes on the state’s most vulnerable member of Congress, Rep. Jen Kiggans, R-Virginia Beach.
The economy is like a leviathan dwelling partially submerged in the ocean. It often turns slowly but fitfully, and those riding it have only minimal control over its movements. Trump has some control over it, although not exclusive control — consumers, as we’ve seen, have more. However, our candidates for governor (whose number has now grown from two to four) have absolutely no control over it, yet both party’s nominees will be at the mercy of its temperament.
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What happens to the economy is one big question hanging over the governor’s race. Here are some other questions, the answers to which will also shape the campaign.
What will Trump’s cuts to the federal government mean for Northern Virginia?
This is a subset of the economy question, but it’s a pretty big subset. Northern Virginia accounts for 42% of Virginia’s gross domestic product; state services ultimately depend on tax revenues from an economically healthy Northern Virginia. During an appearance in Roanoke last week, Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax County, said that his constituents are “terrified” of what Trump’s cut will do to the local economy. “When you see uncertainty, people stop spending,” he said. Even if the rest of Virginia hums along just fine, we don’t need 42% of it to slow down.
Will people feel the effects of Trump’s government cuts and, if so, what will they think?
Surovell said that in his ZIP code, 1 in 5 people work for the federal government. They’re worried about losing their jobs and even if they don’t, they likely know people who have or will. Farther out from Northern Virginia, these cuts are more abstract, and will continue to be unless and until people feel some impact that they don’t like: Are services at the VA Medical Center in Salem cut? Will income tax refunds be delayed? One canceled appointment or one delayed check means a lot more than reading about somebody else losing their job. Southwest Virginia could be ground zero for some of these cuts: So far, the Hurricane Helene disaster relief money that Congress passed hasn’t arrived yet. Vice President JD Vance came to Damascus and promised that the Trump administration would be speedier about disaster relief than the Biden administration. So far it hasn’t been. This early on, Trump gets a pass but before long, if that money doesn’t show up and things don’t start moving, people are going to draw a connection between the government job cuts and the slow delivery of disaster relief. If or when that happens, they start feeling they’ve been conned.
Will Earle-Sears’ prospective challengers actually make the ballot?
The governor’s race was rocked last week when not one but two candidates said they’d run against her for the Republican nomination: Former state Sen. Amanda Chase (then of Chesterfield County, now of Appomattox County) and former Del. Dave LaRock (then of Loudoun County, now of Clarke County) both contend that Earle-Sears isn’t sufficiently loyal to Trump. That’s a philosophical complaint but here’s the practical problem: It’s getting awfully late to meet the April 3 deadline to gather the required 10,000 signatures. Historically, candidates need to gather far more because many people sign even though they aren’t registered voters.
There’s also the tricky Virginia requirement that at least 400 of those be from each congressional district. Some presidential candidates in the past have run afoul of that proviso. You can’t just stand outside a Northern Virginia Metro stop and collect signatures (although a Northern Virginia Metro stop may not be the best place for a Republican to be collecting signatures these days anyway). Instead, you’ve got to reach into some rural districts, such as Southside’s 5th and Southwest’s 9th, where there’s no real population center to make collection easier. Chase has run before so has a statewide profile that should make the task easier for her; LaRock does not. It’s not a given that these two challengers will actually qualify for the ballot.
Does Trump get involved in the campaign?
Chase styles herself as “Trump in heels.” Both she and LaRock claim more fealty to Trump than they say Earle-Sears has displayed. What will Trump himself say, if anything? A Trump endorsement of either Chase or LaRock would certainly change the calculations, but he may also not want to associate himself with a longshot. All that’s for the primary; what about the fall? That best thing for Earle-Sears might be if Trump doesn’t do anything in either the primary or the general. Virginia is a state that he lost three times in a row; the Roanoke College poll — the political one — found his disapproval rating in Virginia at a record high. It’s hard to see how a close association with Trump helps a Republican nominee in Virginia this fall. A close association with Youngkin, however — that’s a very different matter. Youngkin is popular in Virginia in ways Trump can only dream of.
One of these questions (the ballot access question) will resolve itself in about a month. The others will play out over the course of the rest of the year (and in some cases more).
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