Swing Voters in Virginia

 Here is an interesting piece on some researchers who did focus groups of Biden-to-Youngkin voters in Virginia.  Major findings:

It's still the economy, stupid.  The economy isn't actually that bad.  Growth has been healthy and job recovery has been impressive, and people are shopping fit to beat the band.  But that is the problem. We do appear to have overstimulated the economy, so that people's consumption is outrunning our capacity to produce or even import and is causing inflation and shortages.  Help wanted signs are everywhere, but businesses are curtailing hours for lack of workers. Swing voters don't see Democrats as focused on the economy, or as doing anything about it.  They also saw Democrats as focused only on advancing marginalized groups and not on people like themselves.

Two things you don't want to see made -- laws and sausages.  Democrats have responded to winning the triple crown by trying to pass as much legislation as possible, on the assumption that nothing will pass once the Republicans win the midterms.  The result is much the same as what happened when Democrats focused on passing Obamacare -- voters got a good look at sausage making and wanted none of it.  The substance of what is being passed just doesn't matter.  These voters just saw endless fighting instead of doing anything about the economy.

Education was important, especially school shutdowns.  Education was the primary local issue, but swing voters' biggest concern was not Critical Race Theory, but school shutdowns and general resentment of schools for not not taking parents into account.  That made McAuliffe's comment about not letting parents tell schools what to do bad -- but not necessarily decisive.  It just encapsulated what they believed anyhow.  They did also see schools as being politicized in general and CRT as part of that, although they did not blame either side exclusively.

They still disliked Trump, but it was personal and did not apply to all Republicans.  Presumably some o the nuttier Republicans would not go over with these voters, but Glen Youngkin seems likeable and relatable.  Not asked -- whether it bothered them that Youngkin would not say outright that he accepted the results of the 2020 election.  In short, Youngkin was successfully doing what so many Democrats in Republican-leaning districts did in 2018 -- he personalized the election and localized it.  He also proposed to fight rising prices by removing the tax on groceries, and to increase school funding and give parents more say.

So my general advice to Biden would be -- quietly and discretely work on getting out tests and treatment for COVID.  (This includes reclassifying home tests to free them from the FDA).  Work loudly and publicly on supply chain issues and make sure everyone sees it.  My advice to Congress is -- raise the damn debt ceiling.  Nothing else matters.

Also of note:  Megan McArdle is warning Democrats that inflation and COVID restrictions can cost them the Black, Hispanic, and Asian working class and leave only college educated voters -- no more than a third of the population.  In short, McArdle thinks Republicans will soon outnumber Democrats by 2-1.  I am somewhat skeptical.  Warnings to Democrats that Black and Hispanic voters, who they see themselves as representing, are actually more moderate than the party's white, upscale base are well-taken.  But I think the same will apply to Republicans. I expect Republicans to find Black and Hispanic voters also to be more moderate than the MAGA base, and a program consisting mostly of being performatively obnoxious, offending liberals as much as possible, banning abortion, and flooding the streets with ever more guns will also have its limits.