Democrats thought they had the Virginia and New Jersey elections in the bag.
Instead, they were delivered the upset of a lifetime.
And now, these two states just delivered a knockout blow to Joe Biden’s agenda.
At the start of the year, Democrats couldn’t have been more confident about the upcoming gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey.
They had won 13 straight statewide elections in the Commonwealth for the last 12 years, including a 10 point blowout in the 2020 presidential election in the state.
Driven by an explosion of growth in Northern Virginia near Washington D.C., Democrats had transformed the state from a once Republican bastion into one of the most liberal in the entire country, with the newly-minted Democrat majorities in the state legislature passing radical left-wing bills to curtail the state’s gun rights, raise taxes, and impose Critical Race Theory in the public school system.
Virginia was a model for other states that were transitioning towards becoming blue bastions as well.
This, combined with the rapid growth of the Federal workforce, a Republican collapse in suburbs, and a growing minority population led Democrats to believe they simply couldn’t lose in the Commonwealth.
But on November 2, they were delivered one of the most shocking defeats in Virginia’s history when former Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe went down in flames against Glenn Youngkin by around 2 points, representing a 12 point backlash against Joe Biden and his agenda since he carried the state a year ago.
Not only did Democrats lose the Governor’s office however, they were also completely swept out of power in all three statewide offices, losing the competitive races for Lt. Governor and Attorney General to Republicans Winsome Sears and Jason Miyares, who will now become the first Black female and Hispanic statewide elected officials in Virginia’s history.
In the state legislature, Democrats also lost 7 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates, flipping the chamber back to Republican control only two years after they lost it to the Democrats in 2019.
Meanwhile, in deep blue New Jersey, Republicans almost pulled off an even greater upset against the state’s left-wing incumbent Democrat Governor Phil Murphy, while Ed Durr, an unknown truck driver who spent less than $5,000 on his entire campaign, defeated the 20 year Democrat incumbent and New Jersey Senate President Steve Sweeney.
All of these results are now sounding off alarm bells across the Potomac, where Democrats are in full-panic mode after botching multiple elections that they once considered to be virtually impossible to lose.
“Even though Murphy was able to hang on Wednesday, the closeness of his race was in some ways more shocking to Democrats than their outright loss in Virginia. New Jersey has a long Democratic tradition and a strong edge for the party in voter registration; Biden’s victory margin in 2020 was substantial, and pre-election polls gave no hint that Murphy was in danger,” adds MSN.
As for the 2022 midterms, elections pundit David Wasserman writes that: “If Republicans were to outperform the 2020 Biden/Trump margin by 10.8 points (New Jersey) in all 435 House seats in 2022, they would pick up 44 House seats for a 257R-178D majority. If they were to outperform by 12.3 points (Virginia), they would pick up a mammoth 51 seats for a 261R-174D split — and that’s not even factoring redistricting, which could help boost GOP fortunes even more.”