Two of the big questions heading into Tuesday's gubernatorial race in Virginia centered on how people of color and college-educated whites would respond to Republican Ed Gillespie's naked appeal to racism and anti-immigrant nativism to win the election. Would it depress or energize black and Latino voters, in particular, and would it turn off suburban whites in northern Virginia? The answer is clear: It cut against Gillespie both ways, as Democratic pollster Geoff Garin told the Washington Post.
“There was a very negative reaction among college-educated voters and swing voters generally to his MS-13 ads,” he said. Meanwhile, some polling had shown the race-baiting might have energized Democratic constituencies.
Northam won college educated whites, people of color, and women, improving on Hillary Clinton's numbers
In his decisive 54-45 point win, Democrat Ralph Northam ran six points better than Hillary Clinton among college-educated whites, winning 51 percent to Gillespie's 48 percent. That's a rare win—Democrats usually lose college-educated whites in the state. In fact, Gillespie won the voting bloc by 10 points in 2014 and still failed to unseat Democratic Sen. Mark Warner that year.
Northam also crushed Gillespie among nonwhite voters, garnering 8 in 10, according to exit polls.
Finally, women gave Northam a huge 61 to 39 percent edge, a 22-point margin that exceeded Hillary Clinton’s already decisive 17-point margin among the bloc last year.
Other findings:
Late-deciders broke for Northam 62 to 36 percent, despite all that talk of Gillespie-mentum.
Also, take a look at these findings from an America's Voice/Latino Decisions election eve poll of likely voters with huge sampling sizes (1,700 voters: 500 white, 400 Latino, 400 Asian, 400 African American) that totally nailed the 54-45 Northam margin of victory (Question 4).
A couple key takeaways from that poll include numbers showing that Gillespie’s racist ads depicting Northam as a champion of the Latino gang MS-13 turned off voters across the board.
Voters who where aware of Gillespie’s racist messaging and saw discussions about it were much more likely to back Northam.
In the final weeks of the campaign, both black and Latino organizations launched a huge awareness campaign and turnout effort. BlackPAC released a digital ad campaign and the Latino group CASA in Action spent about $170,000 in Spanish-language radio ads and knocked on some 58,000 doors. That effort mattered in terms of informing voters about Northam’s immigrant-friendly policies. Here’s the change Latino Decisions’ polling picked up in the last several weeks.
As much as this race was a referendum on Donald Trump, it was also a lesson in turnout, writes the Washington Post.
Turnout, however, was the highest in 20 years for a gubernatorial race, five percentage points and 10 percentage points higher than the last two. [...]
Compared to recent races, turnout was higher in all six regions [of Virginia], a sign of widespread interest and enthusiasm.
Once again, however, Northam gained the advantage. The highest turnouts were in Central Virginia and Northern Virginia, areas he won handily. Shenandoah Valley had the next highest turnout, but the relatively small area could not come close to offsetting the higher turnouts in bigger areas.
Voters of color were a big part of that turnout story, running up the margin for Northam and helping to deliver sweeping Democratic victories in the House of Delegates. Also from the Washington Post:
“The biggest battleground for the House was Prince William, a Washington exurb where people of color constitute a majority of the population. A diverse group of five Democratic challengers hoped to channel demographic changes and Democratic energy to take seats held by white men — and all won.” (emphasis added)