Virginians approve of many of Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s key policies by broad margins but disapprove of her handling of the governorship by a small margin, according to a new poll by Virginia Commonwealth University.
Why the difference? Many men, especially those in the western part of the state, have strong negative opinions about the first woman to be Virginia’s governor, according to the polling data supplied by the Commonwealth Poll from VCU’s L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs.
However, Robyn McDougle, the school’s associate dean of research and outreach, said it’s impossible to cite gender alone as the driving factor between Spanberger’s approval/disapproval numbers when there are so many other unique variables during the first part of Spanberger’s term, such as the budget stalemate and redistricting. And, I might add, the passage of new gun laws, which I suspect — but cannot prove — are behind some of these low numbers in the western part of Virginia.
We’ll dig more into that data shortly. Let’s first walk through some of the poll’s other findings.
Virginians are strongly skeptical of data centers
Given the current political climate, these findings aren’t a surprise, but at least now we do have some numbers to attach to them: 78% of the registered voters surveyed support making data centers pay “additional fees to offset increased electricity demand” and 69% of them oppose the state’s tax incentives for data centers even if they create jobs and spur local economic development.
Those tax breaks were at the center of the state’s recent budget stalemate, which was eventually broken by the creation of a new tax on data centers’ electricity consumption.
Poll numbers get less reliable once we start looking at smaller samples, so we must tread carefully and will describe them generally rather than pretend the numbers are precise. However, the poll finds that the opposition to the data center tax breaks is consistent statewide, although somewhat stronger in Northern Virginia (which has a lot of data centers) than in the western part of the state (which doesn’t). Supporters of both major political parties oppose the incentives, although Democrats feel more strongly about getting rid of them than Republicans do (although that could also simply be a function of the geography I just cited). It seems fair to conclude from this poll that data centers are the one thing that unite people across the political spectrum.
Virginians like paid sick leave
The General Assembly passed a law requiring paid sick leave for employees in this year’s session; the measure passed on party-line votes. However, the concept is broadly popular with voters: 83% support the bill, only 10% oppose. In the poll, even a majority of Republicans said they support paid sick leave. This is where we run into the limitations of polling: Would those majorities be the same if those respondents heard the full arguments pro and con? In this case, the pro side seems obvious; the con side would argue that the bill imposes a tax to pay for the program and will lead employers to be more reluctant to expand hiring.
Virginians like the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative
Under Spanberger, Virginia has rejoined RGGI, as it’s typically called. RGGI operates as a cap-and-invest program that’s intended to harness market forces to reduce carbon emissions. Critics say it creates costs that are passed on to consumers. The poll question noted those criticisms, but 57% of those surveyed support the idea anyway. That support was more split along political and regional lines, with a majority of Republicans against rejoining RGGI. The only part of the state where more people opposed the move than supported it was western Virginia.
Virginians think the state is headed in the wrong direction
This is a big clanging discordant note. VCU does not appear to have asked this question before but Roanoke College typically has in its polls. What Roanoke College always found was that people generally felt the country was headed in the wrong direction, but the state was headed in the right direction. This was consistent no matter which party was in charge. Here, VCU finds that 45% of those surveyed felt the state is headed in the wrong direction, only 39% in the right direction.
The only region in the state where more people felt the state was headed in the right direction than the wrong direction was Northern Virginia; all the others felt it was headed in the wrong direction, with the strongest feelings in western Virginia. We should not hold too tightly to any specific number at this level, but just to give a sense of the feelings, 59% of those in western Virginia think Virginia is headed in the wrong direction.
Those with a college degree were more inclined to see the state headed in the right direction than those without, who generally saw the state headed in the wrong direction.
This is also a category where we start to see a gender divide: 50.9% of men think the state is headed in the wrong direction, 35.9% in the right direction. Women feel differently: 43.0% see it going in the right direction, 40.2% in the wrong direction. More broadly, women were divided while men were more emphatic believers in the wrong direction.
We also see that divide show up in other ways: 53% of Black Virginians surveyed think the state is headed in the right direction, while 53% of white Virginians think it’s headed in the wrong direction.
Not surprisingly, there’s a big partisan divide, with Republicans overwhelmingly feeling the state is headed in the wrong direction, Democrats in the right direction. That’s to be expected; parties in power almost always feel things are going well while those out of power feel they’re not. What is surprising is the overall score, with more on the wrong direction side than on the right direction side. The poll numbers can’t tell us why they feel that way, just who they are. Clearly, a lot of them are white men in the western part of the state, but that’s not enough to get the plurality we see statewide.
Spanberger is ‘underwater’ with her approval ratings; that’s unusual for a Virginia governor
Now we finally come to the headline item, much like how at a concert you have to sit through the opening acts.
The poll finds that 44% approve of the job Spanberger is doing, while 46% disapprove. VCU has only asked that question on a consistent basis since 2022, but we know from other state polls that it is unusual to find a Virginia governor with higher disapproval than approval. Ralph Northam went “underwater,” as the polling lingo goes, after the yearbook scandal broke in early 2019 but by August of that year was back in the approval range.
Spanberger has not had the “honeymoon period” typically accorded new officeholders. A Washington Post-Schar School poll in April found that 47% approved of the job Spanberger was doing, while 46% disapproved — meaning that she started out lower than any of the eight previous governors for which we have similar polling. A State Navigate poll the same month found almost exactly the same numbers: 47% approve, 47% disapprove.
Now VCU finds her at 44% approval, 46% disapproval. Statistically speaking, all these numbers are painting the same picture.
So why is Spanberger scoring so low compared to her predecessors? Republicans might say it’s because she’s doing unpopular things, except that doesn’t seem to be the case. The poll numbers above show that voters approve of some of her signature policy positions by wide margins. The one exception is data centers, where Spanberger argued against abolishing the tax break for data centers on the grounds that Virginia should keep its word. However, she did propose the tax on the electricity that data centers use — and that also seems popular.
Does gender hurt Spanberger’s approval ratings? Here’s why it’s hard to say
Is it because Spanberger is a woman in a post that previously has been occupied by 74 men in a row?
McDougle, who oversaw the poll, cautioned against that interpretation. “There is no way to tease out the confounding variables,” she said. Yes, Spanberger is unique as governor because she’s a woman, but she’s also faced unique circumstances. “We didn’t have a budget until June 29,” McDougle says. “There was a lot of fighting with fellow party members.” And then there was the special election on redistricting, where opponents used Spanberger’s previous quotes against redistricting in many of their ads. Put another way, Republicans were attacking Spanberger in ads before her first legislative session was even done. “We’ve never seen that before,” McDougle says.
It’s entirely possible that some male governor facing the same circumstances — a party split over a key issue, a budget stalemate, Republicans running negative ads featuring the governor — would have also seen approval ratings suffer. However, since we can’t peer into some alternative universe, we have no way of knowing that for sure.
Spanberger’s approval ratings haven’t really changed; her disapproval ratings have
Spanberger’s current approval numbers may not be really different from what she had during the campaign. A Roanoke College poll just before last year’s election put her approval rating at 47%. The difference between 47% then and 44% now is within the margin of error. What’s changed is her disapproval rating. The last Roanoke College poll before the election put Spanberger’s disapproval numbers at 42%. Now VCU finds them at 46%. While it’s tricky to compare one poll with another, that gap is right about at most margins of error. It’s possible nothing has changed; more likely, Spanberger’s approval ratings are about the same but her disapproval ratings are up. Since voters last fall knew Spanberger was a woman, it would seem that if her disapproval ratings went up they must have gone up for some other reason — redistricting, data centers, the budget stalemate, other actions, take your pick.
However, while we don’t know why Spanberger’s approval/disapproval ratings are the way they are, we do know who is responsible for her not scoring as well as Youngkin: It’s men, specifically white men in the western part of the state.
Men score Spanberger poorly
When we dig into Spanberger’s approval/disapproval numbers, here’s what we see.
On a regional basis, Northern Virginia approves of Spanberger. Hampton Roads and the Shenandoah Valley are divided. The Richmond area is slightly disapproving. However, western Virginia is strongly disapproving: 63% disapprove of the job Spanberger is doing. Maybe that shouldn’t be surprising. The western part of the state is bright red politically, with a few blue islands here and there. Given that, it would be surprising if we didn’t see numbers like this.
So let’s look at another part of the cross-tabs: gender.
More than half the men surveyed — 52.5% — disapprove of Spanberger while 37.4% approve.
By contrast, a slight majority of women surveyed — 50.1% — approve of Spanberger while 38.9% disapprove.
These are almost mirror images. If you’re looking for the definition of a gender gap, there it is. Furthermore, the men who disapprove of Spanberger’s handling of the job do so intensely — 40.9% strongly disapprove, while 11.6% somewhat disapprove. Women generally like Spanberger, but not with the same intensity with which some men disapprove.
When we overlay these gender results with geography, what we get is a cluster of men in western Virginia (and white men in western Virginia) who strongly disapprove. As a white man who lives in western Virginia (but not one who was surveyed), I can surmise some reasons for these feelings. This is a part of the state where gun ownership is taken seriously and many people see the gun laws that the legislature passed (and that the governor signed) as unconstitutional. Whether those laws really are unconstitutional, only a court can say in a legal sense, but that hasn’t stopped many people from simply assuming they are. We’ve seen many sheriffs and commonwealth’s attorneys in the western part of Virginia say they simply won’t enforce those new gun laws because they don’t think they’re constitutional.
The poll did not ask about gun issues, but the results would have been fascinating to see if it had. Let’s put it this way: If men in western Virginia are strongly opposed to the governor, I doubt it’s because of her views on menhaden research.
If I’m correct and gun rights issues are what’s driving these numbers, then the results might have been the same no matter what the gender of the governor might be. Whatever the reasons, these are the numbers — until a new poll comes out and shows whether they’ve changed or not.
Want more political news and analysis? Sign up for West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that goes out on Friday afternoons. This week I’ll be taking another look at the early voting trends in the Aug. 4 primaries (and more).
