Polling out of Virginia shows Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump within the margin of error against Democrat presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris.
Before the Democrats executed their coup, Trump had jumped to a small lead over His Fraudulency Joe Biden in Virginia. With Biden out of the race, it was assumed (even by me) that Virginia would suddenly be out of Trump’s reach. It’s not, and the pollster, Roanoke, is not a right-leaning poll. In 2020, in the final poll of that presidential campaign, Roanoke had Biden up by 11. In the end, we were told Biden won Virginia by a full 9.4 points.
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A bare majority (51%) thinks Trump is a threat to democracy. Slightly fewer (47%) see the Democratic party process of replacing Biden with Harris as such a threat. Slightly more likely voters (56%) see Trump as strong enough to deal with adversaries of the United States, such as Vladimir Putin, while less than half (49%) say the same about Harris.
Just under one-third of respondents (29%) think criticisms of Harris are based more on her race and gender, while more think they are based on either policy differences (35%) or pure politics (35%). More than half (58%) think that criticisms of Trump are due to the large number of people who dislike him.
Regarding choices for vice president, likely voters are less than thrilled, as 44% are either dissatisfied or angry with the choice of Tim Walz (30% dissatisfied; 14% angry), and J.D. Vance fares even worse (32% dissatisfied; 18% angry).
On the question of favorability, both Harris and Trump are underwater. Trump is at 40/57 percent favorable/unfavorable. Harris is at 43/53 percent.
This poll is not skewed. Democrat incumbent U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine is safely ahead of his Republican challenger, Hung Cao, by 11 points, 49 to 38 percent. This means a lot of the same people voting for Kaine are voting for Trump.
What might be helping Trump is the popularity of Glenn Youngkin, the Republican who became governor in an upset win a few years back. Youngkin’s job approval sits at a healthy 59 percent. He also has the highest favorable rating of everyone polled: 54 percent.
Thus far, this is the first poll of Virginia after the coup. Before the coup, in mid-July, a New York Times/Sienna poll of Virginia had Harris up by five.
These polls should worry Democrats. Biden wasn’t booted because he’s too old and infirm. He was replaced because he was losing. Harris was supposed to fix this problem, and while she is undoubtedly polling better, she is not pulling away as expected. That might change after the Democratic National Convention (DNC), but, for right now, after almost four weeks of a near-perfect launch backed by billions of dollars in corporate media propaganda, the race is well within the margin of error. Best of all, all over the country, Trump is polling better today than he ever did in 2016 (which he won) and 2020 (which we are told he only lost by about 45,000 votes in three states).
Trump is a known factor.
Harris is unknown, and, if past is prologue, she does not wear well over time.
John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover and on Kindle and Audiobook.
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