Gov. Abigail Spanberger — and perhaps Democrats in general — got a reality check over the weekend. A poll by The Washington Post in conjunction with the Schar School at George Mason University found that, two months into her term, Spanberger’s approval rating is surprisingly low.
The poll found that 47% of those surveyed approve of her handling of the governorship while 46% disapprove.
The key, though, is in the context. Her 47% approval rating is lower than the early-term average approval ratings for any of Virginia’s previous governors going back to George Allen, who was elected in 1993. It’s 1 percentage point lower than the early-term rating for Ralph Northam. The Post computes that her approval rating is 13 percentage points lower than the average for Virginia governors early in their terms.
This low rating is particularly striking when we consider that Spanberger won election last November with the highest vote share for any Democrat since Albertis Harrison in 1961 — 57.58% of the vote. Why such a plunge? Or is it really a plunge? Let’s take a look.
A vocabulary note first: Pollsters consider favorable ratings and approval ratings as two separate things, although the public often doesn’t. Think of it this way: I have a favorable opinion of my favorite baseball team (the Washington Nationals, that’s why they’re my favorite) but I definitely disapprove of many things they’re doing (such as not paying for a decent bullpen). Still, the two are so closely related that I think it’s fair to draw a line between pre-election favorability ratings and post-inauguration approval ratings. They both form a general positive vs. negative impression and usually aren’t too far off from each other.
Spanberger’s vote share was significantly higher than her favorable rating
While Spanberger won in what we can fairly call a landslide, her favorability rating was never at landslide levels.
In late October, in the final Post-Schar School poll of the campaign, Spanberger’s favorable rating was at 51%. Not all the polls last fall asked a favorable/unfavorable question but in a Roanoke College poll at about the same time, Spanberger’s favorable rating was 47%. An Atlas Intel poll toward the end of the campaign phrased the question in terms of favorable or unfavorable; in that format, 51% said they had a favorable view of Spanberger.
That means there was always a gap between how people felt about Spanberger and how they voted. That’s likely because elections are binary choices, and Republican Winsome Earle-Sears wound up being an unusually weak candidate. Spanberger was considered the better of the two options, but her favorability ratings were never as high as her vote share.
That means Spanberger’s favorable rating hasn’t really fallen, it just hasn’t grown
That is somewhat surprising because there’s usually a honeymoon period. A Christopher Newport University poll in January, just before Spanberger took office, found that 60% of those surveyed were optimistic about her governorship. While there’s some risk in making comparisons from one poll to another, it’s still striking that CNU found 60% were optimistic about Spanberger in January but the Post-Schar School found only 47% approve of her handling of the job now.
Spanberger’s approval may not have really fallen but it hasn’t lived up to her potential — at least not yet. Why not?
What’s changed is not a drop in Spanberger’s support, but an increase in her opposition
The Post’s final campaign poll had Spanberger’s favorable rating at 51% and her disapproval at 36% unfavorable. Now her approval rate is 47% and her disapproval rate is 46%. The share of people who like her hasn’t changed that much, but the number who don’t sure has — at least in this poll. When The Post compared Spanberger’s initial disapproval with the early-term average of former governors, there’s no comparison: Spanberger’s disapproval rate is far higher. The next-highest was Glenn Youngkin at 39%.
Other polls suggest that Spanberger’s unfavorables have always been fairly high. The last Roanoke College poll before the election had Spanberger at 47% favorable and 42% unfavorable. By those numbers, Spanberger’s negatives are up, but not as much. The Atlas Intel poll numbers had her at 51% favorable, 47% unfavorable, which suggests things haven’t changed much at all.
What we really need are more data points (i.e., more polls) about Spanberger’s approval rating now. In the absence of those, it’s probably safest to just compare Post poll-to-Post poll, so let’s do that. Why might Spanberger’s negatives have risen? Some reasons seem obvious.
Three reasons Spanberger’s negatives may have risen
a) Redistricting. Spanberger pitched herself in a bipartisan way but was immediately involved in one of the most partisan actions of all: a Democratic redistricting plan aimed at knocking out four of the state’s five Republican members of the U.S. House. While Spanberger has not been the driver of this plan (General Assembly Democrats are, particularly Senate Finance Chair Louise Lucas of Portsmouth), she’s gone along with it and has had to absorb the blame from those who see rank partisanship at work. Spanberger could have used her platform to call for other states to halt their redrawing of maps, but did not. The calendar forced the legislature to act quickly on redistricting; that did not help Spanberger.
b) Republican social media campaigns. Republicans ran a poor campaign last fall but have run a darned good one on social media portraying Spanberger as a leftist and not a centrist. Some of that commentary is completely unhinged. Conservative media personality Meghan McCain recently posted: “Abigail Spanberger is a radical, communist, psychopath cosplaying as a normal person.” This is what happens when getting likes and retweets on social media substitutes for actual public discourse. It’s hard to take that kind of schtick seriously, but, admittedly, some of that criticism does stick. (At the risk of being pedantic, let me just point out that if Spanberger were really a communist, she wouldn’t have signed bills this week to provide economic incentives for multiple companies, including the Avio rocket maker coming to Pittsylvania County and the Hitachi transformer company in Halifax County. She’d have issued an executive order seizing the means of production. Any politician is eligible for criticism, but let’s at least use the right words.)
c) The Democratic agenda. The fall campaign was largely issueless, but legislative sessions are all about issues. Thanks to that Republican social media campaign, Spanberger has had to absorb attacks for lots of things she didn’t introduce — lots of proposed tax increases, for instance. The irony is that Spanberger hasn’t done all that much yet (the actions she has taken were all predictable), but she’s had to take the blame for virtually everything that General Assembly Democrats have done. On that score, some of the Democrats in the legislature haven’t done the governor any favor by introducing bills that were easily parodied by Republicans. If there’s an upside for Spanberger, it’s that she can now remind General Assembly Democrats that some parts of their agenda may not be as popular as they think. The downside is, it’s hard to parse what’s popular and what’s not and General Assembly Democrats may not care — they don’t have to deal with statewide opinion and as long as their agenda is popular in their districts, that’s enough.
Now let’s look at who likes Spanberger and who doesn’t.
Spanberger has a much bigger gender gap than Youngkin did
We can’t ignore the fact that Spanberger is the first woman to hold the governorship. We probably couldn’t get a good reading on that in the fall since the choice for governor was between two women. And we still can’t say how much of Spanberger’s disapproval rating is due to gender and how much is due to policy — I’m sure Republicans would say it’s none of the former and all of the latter.
All we can do is look at the actual numbers.
Youngkin had a 53% approval rate from men in last September’s Post-Schar School poll and a 44% disapproval rate.
Spanberger has a 41% approval rate from men and a 54% disapproval rate.
Youngkin scored almost evenly with women: 49% approved, 48% disapproved.
Spanberger scores much better with women: 52% approve, 40% disapprove.
We often see gender gaps in politics, with Republicans performing better with men and Democrats doing better with women. What we see here is that Youngkin was +9 with men and +1 with women, while Spanberger is -13 with men and +12 with women.
Virginians are skeptical that her policies really will make things more affordable
Spanberger’s signature theme has been “affordability.” Virginians, though, are skeptical that she will deliver. Overall, the Post-Schar School poll found only 31% of those responding think her policies will make things more affordable, while 41% think her policies will make things less affordable. If voters are registering disapproval, it’s likely because they don’t believe what she’s doing will work. On the contrary, more think her policies will backfire than who think they will work. That seems pretty strong skepticism.
That’s the bad news for Spanberger. The good news is that affordability, however vague that term may be in a political context, is also something that can be measured and people’s minds may be changed if they do see her policies working. That’s good news for both parties, because Democrats think those policies will work and Republicans think they won’t.
Both have four years to find out. Or maybe less. State Navigate is in the field with a poll of its own that will be out sometime next week.
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