The World’s Okayest VA/NJ Gubernatorial Forecast

let's squint at graphs!

Photo by Dan Dennis on Unsplash

Did you know there were elections coming up? Living under a rock sounds so peaceful sometimes.

First, Some Graphs

I went and grabbed recent statewide races in both places. Everything is converted to 2way Democratic vote share for convenience.

Here are two graphs on which you could hypothetically draw trend lines. Probably don’t, because they contain extremely few data points.

This is what I pull up in my brain when asked about these two upcoming elections, and so I have helpfully pulled it up in graph form for you.

So, looking at that: Are the Democratic candidates in these two elections going to win?

Maybe, but I wouldn’t put money on it.

The Logic

Biden won both states by a good margin, and then the subsequent Governor elections went far worse for Dems. However, that was during COVID, and a Democratic administration trying to handle the absolute chaos of 2021. However however, both states saw worse results for Harris than for Biden. But Harris didn’t win, which means that a Republican administration is running the current federal chaos, and that Republican administration is doing a terrible job. Neither state has an incumbent governor running.

Also there’s a government shutdown happening (which may or may not still be happening at time of posting), VA has a lot of exposure to the federal workforce, NJ has exposure to the now-threatened NY transit system, both of them have exposure to things like “planned federal grants”. I’d be a little surprised if the shutdown lasts until the actual election, but it could. It’s also extremely possible that more DOGE-type measures or impoundments come down as a result of the shutdown. We just have no idea right now.

Oh, and also Virginia’s GOP lieutenant governor candidate seems to be having a scandal involving his Tumblr use. Will that matter for the Governor election? Unclear!

In retrospect, you could read the 2021 results in NJ/VA as indicative of the unpopularity of the Biden admin, or even as a portent of the 2024 Harris loss. At the time, my vague memory is of people going “damn, folks are really mad about COVID, huh”. There’s a lot of posting (poasting?) trying to get narratives in place to explain a win or a loss. Given how the explanations of 2021 shifted and changed over the next cycle, that seems premature to me. Currently, I’d be inclined to read worse-than-expected results here as a bad sign for Democrats, but I’d find it difficult to pin down exactly what that sign meant. Ideally we’ll learn more by specific demographic breakdowns of the results! Once we, you know, have those.

An Informed Guess

If I had to guess, I would probably say that Sherrill is going to lose and Spanberger is going to win narrowly. Let’s say like Spanberger 52% in the 2way and Sherrill 49%.

NJ was one of the states where we saw markedly worse Democratic performance in the recent presidential, and seems to be one of the historically deep blue places that Democrats are starting to struggle. I’m guessing that trend holds up in this election. Combined with the state’s apparent distaste for electing Governors of the same party as the previous Governor, it seems like a rough path for Sherrill.

The logic for a narrow Spanberger win is similar. VA held up more in the presidential, and it’s a relatively college educated state (a population Dems have continued to do well with). It’s also a state that is positioned to care a lot about Trump’s interference with the federal workforce, and the shenanigans of folks like Hegseth due to the high military population.

I should note that this is *not* what the current polling says. The little polling that exists seems to have Sherrill up, and Spanberger roughly tied. That polling is super sparse, and given the miss in 2021, I’m not inclined to lean on it. I’m maybe being contrarian here and betting against the direction of the polls in NJ.

I could be wrong if: I’m overestimating the NJ trend. Murphy did win in 2021, albeit with difficulty, and both the presidential and senate elections in 2024 outperformed that race. It could be that NJ has leveled off after the steep 2020-2024 drop, and is going to stick around as a state where Democrats pull in 53ish%.

I could also be wrong if: It ends up being a really strong Democratic night overall. Maybe the lower turnout of an off-year election combined with anger at Trump drives Dems to the polls and both governor candidates win by a mile.

Why Write This Post?

Part of what I want to do with this blog is use it as a place to put things on the record. One of my biggest frustrations with forecasters (and pundits) is the rapid retconning of their opinions when they’re wrong. I’m wrong a lot! That’s fine! I think it’s healthy for me to write down even approximate guesses, as a measure of accountability and to promote the practice.

Also, I have found that people are interested in the logic of election forecasting. While complex models can help, sometimes they obscure what’s going on under the hood. You *could* stick all of the above data plus polling data into a model. I’m not sure you actually need to. In this data-first age,

Addendum

I was recently at a conference where folks suggested that people with high levels of political knowledge should be betting on that knowledge in prediction markets. I will not be doing that, because I don’t really like gambling. However, if you use the info from this post to bet and you win, you owe me 20% of your winnings, I take venmo, thank you for your time.