Democrats’ big problem: How to win without Trump to run against

Democrats had some blockbuster years in Virginia during Donald Trump’s presidency. 

In 2017, Ralph Northam won the governorship by almost 9 points, more than tripling former Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s margin from four years earlier. Democrats flipped three of the state’s 11 congressional seats in 2018, and in 2019 took control of the state legislature for the first time in over two decades. In 2020, President Joe Biden won Virginia by 10 points.

So in this year’s gubernatorial race, Mr. McAuliffe, the Democratic nominee, hewed to a familiar message: A vote for Republican Glenn Youngkin, he said, would be a vote for Mr. Trump. 

It didn’t work.

On Tuesday night, Mr. Youngkin captured the governor’s mansion here, in a 2-point win that reflected a dramatic shift statewide in the GOP’s direction. Republicans also appeared poised to take control of the Virginia House of Delegates. The swing was even bigger in New Jersey, where Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy was clinging to a narrow lead in a state that elected Mr. Biden by 16 points. As of deadline, that race remained too close to call, according to the Associated Press.

The results can be attributed to everything from historic trends to candidate quality to a national mood clouded by the pandemic and economic woes. But it was also the first time in four years that both parties found themselves campaigning in a political universe where Mr. Trump was no longer at the center of things. And his relative absence appears to have helped Republicans – and hurt Democrats.

Antipathy toward an opposing party’s candidate has frequently proved to be a better motivator for voters than affection for their own, a phenomenon known as negative partisanship. In recent years, Democrats found opposition to Mr. Trump and his bombastic style of politics to be an extremely powerful force for turning out their base. But with a few exceptions, that effect now seems to have waned, and it’s President Biden’s plummeting approval ratings that are instead giving Republicans an edge. 

As both parties look ahead toward the 2022 midterm elections, analysts say Democrats will need to sell voters on a more positive message that focuses on their own vision and accomplishments. Still, in an era dominated by negative partisanship – in which Americans seem caught in a nonstop cycle of rejecting whichever party is in power – that’s not necessarily an easy task.

“Negative partisanship worked great for Democrats when Trump was in the White House,” says Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University and author of several papers on negative partisanship. “But Republicans were much more motivated to turn out and vote than Democrats this year. ... It’s tough to be the ‘in’ party when voters are in a sour mood.”

A vote against, not for

Historically, the party that loses the White House often does well in off-year elections. Following Mr. Trump’s win in 2016, Democrats captured seven gubernatorial seats previously held by Republicans and gained a net total of 40 seats in the U.S. House in 2018. Indeed, Virginia, which holds gubernatorial elections in the year following every presidential race, has only once elected a governor from the sitting president’s party in the past 45 years: Mr. McAuliffe in 2013, after then-President Barack Obama was reelected to a second term. 

Voter enthusiasm – or a lack thereof – was clearly on the minds of Democrats in the final days of the race. Campaigning for Mr. McAuliffe in Richmond 10 days before the election, Mr. Obama used the word “tired” 17 times in his 30-minute speech. 

“Look, I know a lot of people are tired of politics right now,” the former president said. “We don’t have time to be tired. What is required is sustained effort.”

Mr. Biden’s current approval rating is hovering around 42% – lower than any president at this point in his first term other than Mr. Trump. Early exit polls in Virginia found that 28% of voters cited opposition to Mr. Biden as a reason for their vote, compared with 20% who cited support for the president. 

In 2020, Mr. Biden didn’t generate particularly high levels of enthusiasm among Democratic voters, but that hardly mattered: Their anger with Mr. Trump was more than enough to bring them to the polls. According to a January 2021 Pew Research poll, two-thirds of voters said excitement to vote against Mr. Trump was a “major reason” for the outcome – more than double the share of voters who said Mr. Biden won because he ran a better campaign.

Some experts see the 2016 election as a hinge point in moving the nation’s politics toward a more permanently negative framework. 

In that year’s presidential race, both parties’ candidates were among the most disliked in history, according to polls. Many Republican voters didn’t especially like Mr. Trump but voted for him out of strong opposition to Hillary Clinton, and vice versa for Democrats. And while that campaign may have been an anomaly, it changed the political landscape in ways that have lingered. 

“Many political pundits kind of assumed it would go back to politics as usual once Trump was gone,” says Alexa Bankert, a professor of political psychology at the University of Georgia who studies negative partisan identity. Instead, “negative partisanship is here to stay, because it has proven to be such a successful campaign strategy.”

Education, economy dominated turnout

Of course, negative feelings toward President Biden – or less-negative ones toward Mr. Trump – don’t fully account for Mr. Youngkin’s win.

The former private equity executive and first-time political candidate ran a strategic campaign that was a good match for his state. He accepted a Trump endorsement and was careful not to disparage or insult the former president. But he also kept Mr. Trump at arm’s length, never campaigning with him in person and subtly distancing himself in a variety of ways. He focused heavily on education as a way to peel off moderate suburban voters who had drifted away from the GOP under Mr. Trump. Exit polls indicated education was the No. 2 issue for Virginia voters, after the economy.

In the final month of the campaign, almost 80% of Mr. Youngkin’s advertisements mentioned schools or education, according to the ad tracking firm AdImpact. Comparatively, almost half of Mr. McAuliffe’s advertisements in the last month mentioned Mr. Trump; he spent more money on advertisements about Mr. Trump than any other topic, including COVID-19, education, and the economy. 

Mr. Youngkin effectively flipped the suburbs, winning them overall by a margin of 53% to 47%, after Mr. Biden won them by 53% just last year. 

The suburban vote on Tuesday was not a monolith – and there’s some evidence that Mr. McAuliffe’s efforts to tie Mr. Youngkin to Mr. Trump actually worked as intended in certain spots. In the northern Virginia suburbs outside Washington, Mr. McAuliffe almost matched Mr. Biden’s 40-point margins. Although Mr. Youngkin narrowed the gap in Loudoun County, shrinking the Democrats’ 25-point win in 2020 to an 11-point victory Tuesday, Mr. McAuliffe still outperformed himself there, more than doubling his winning margin from 2013. 

By contrast, in suburbs outside the beltway of Washington politics, Mr. McAuliffe struggled. Mr. Youngkin handily flipped Chesterfield and Virginia Beach counties after both had gone for Mr. Biden by several points last year.

Perhaps even more impressive, Mr. Youngkin outperformed Mr. Trump in rural areas, surpassing the former president’s double-digit margins in southwest Virginia’s longtime Republican counties.

“Youngkin was able to make himself appealing enough in suburban places, but primarily he really benefited from the environment,” says Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “The primary driver here is the national dynamic.”

Tuesday’s results have already brought finger-pointing to Washington, with some moderate Democrats blaming Mr. McAuliffe’s loss on progressives holding up the bipartisan infrastructure bill, and with progressives blaming a few Democratic senators who have taken issue with the president’s big social spending bill.

“Now that Trump as this unifying force may no longer be in the foreground, we may see a crack in Democrats’ partisanship,” says Ms. Bankert.  

Approval for congressional Democrats has already nose-dived in recent Gallup polling, from a 55% approval rate in September to 33% in late October. In many ways, it’s reminiscent of 2009 – the last time Democrats had trifecta control of the White House, Senate, and House, and when party infighting was high as Democrats worked on passing the Affordable Care Act. Democrats lost the Virginia governorship that year. And in the following year’s midterms, the party lost control of the U.S. House. 

But even passing both bills now may not be enough, say some experts.

“If Biden can get his approval rating back up above 50, that will help Democrats in the midterms. But that will rely on improving the economy, keeping COVID cases down, and passing their agenda,” says Mr. Abramowitz. “To turn out voters now, Democrats need to show their ability to govern more effectively.”