How does someone go from winning the Virginia governor’s race by a 15-point landslide in November 2025 to being 3 points “underwater” in her approval rating just 9 months later, as today’s new VCU poll finds Gov. Abigail Spanberger to be (44% approval-47% disapproval)? See below for eight thoughts on this, including items which are (or were) mostly within the control of Gov. Spanberger and her team, and items which she really couldn’t do much about.
- First off, it’s crucial to point out that Spanberger’s 15-point landslide win was not – repeat, NOT – all or even mostly about her appeal, or her focus on “affordability” or whatever, but about a massive backlash to Donald Trump’s presidency among Virginia voters. Evidence for that assertion? Note that on the exact same day that Abigail Spanberger was elected in a landslide here in Virginia, Mikie Sherrill was also elected in a landslide in New Jersey. Also note that Democrats have been winning special elections, often by big margins, basically since Trump was elected president. So unless you’re going to argue that all or most of those candidates were superb, and perhaps all or most of their opponents were Winsome Earle-Sears-level bad candidates, you really need to look at structural factors to explain the Democratic surge in 2025 and 2026 generally, and Abigail Spanberger’s huge win in Virginia in November 2025. By the way, it’s also worth noting that Ralph Northam won in a landslide (9 points), albeit not quite as large as Spanberger’s 15-point margin (note that Northam faced an arguably much stronger opponent in Ed Gillespie), in the November 2017 Virginia governor’s election, a year after Trump was elected the first time. So again, was Northam an amazing candidate, or was it mostly anti-Trump backlash? I’m going with anti-Trump backlash as the obvious “Occam’s Razor” explanation here.
- Second, I’d argue that to some extent at least, it’s at least theoretically possible that Gov. Spanberger’s low approval rating is related to people’s general dissatisfaction with the direction of the country and the Commonwealth. In the VCU poll, note that 47% “believe the commonwealth is headed in the wrong direction” – the exact same percentage as the 47% who disapprove of Gov. Spanberger’s job performance. Whether it’s prices at the grocery store and the gas pump, lots of anger/rage on a bunch of fronts, whatever – maybe that’s helping to drag Spanberger’s approval numbers down somewhat? Of course, we can compare Spanberger’s approval numbers with other states’ governors to see if this is a general trend or one more specific to Spanberger; according to the latest from Morning Consult, the only governor who was “underwater” as of December 2025 was Kim Reynolds in Iowa, with all other governors in positive net approval territory (e.g., CA Gov. Gavin Newsom was at +26, PA Gov. Josh Shapiro was +34, MD Gov. Wes Moore was +33, NC Gov. Josh Stein was +31, etc). So maybe it IS specific to Spanberger and Virginia? Hmmm…
- Third, I’d argue that Spanberger’s communications team got off to a REALLY bad start from the outset of Spanberger’s governorship, allowing right wingers/Republicans to run amok spreading vicious, false rumors and “memes” about Spanberger basically being evil incarnate, a Communist, fascist, Nazi, you name it, who was raising a gazillion taxes (FALSE!) and doing all other horrible things to them (banning leaf blowers! taking their guns away! pushing a far-left agenda on every front!). So instead of pushing back on this crap, Spanberger’s comms team in its infinite wisdom just let the disinformation run amok. And did that help their boss at all? Uhhh…I’m thinking NO??? 😉 Seriously, though, would it really be SO hard to actually have a comms strategy (including pushing back against crazy disinforomation about your boss!), put some resources behind it, implement it effectively, etc? Or is that too much to ask for these communications “professionals?” And no, I don’t buy the argument that by pushing back, Democrats just give the false crap “oxygen.” Fact is, it already HAD oxygen – so the question was whether to put up a strong, coherent, compelling COUNTER narrative, or just sit back and let them pound the crap out of your boss. In this case, the Spanberger comms team chose the latter option, and we see the results.
- Fourth, the VCU poll makes clear that Spanberger is wildly out of step with the Virginia public on the issue of data center tax breaks, and probably data centers in general. According to VCU, this isn’t a minor issue, either, with a massive 76% saying “they had heard or read about data centers in the commonwealth.” Also, a massive 81% (!) “support requiring data centers to pay additional fees to offset increased electricity demand associated with their operations,” while 72% “oppose allowing data centers to receive a sales tax exemption as an incentive for locating in Virginia, including nearly half (49%) who strongly oppose the proposal.” So for months, Gov. Spanberger has been on the opposite side of this issue specifically with regard to the sales tax exemption component. And with regard to the additional tax on data centers’ power consumption, Gov. Spanberger (apparently) reluctantly agreed to the General Assembly’s compromise proposal on taxing data centers’ electricity consumption. But she definitely didn’t appear to take the lead on this, and only agreed to it at the last minute before the budget deadline, with disaster looming and perceptions of Democratic dysfunction – plus a LOT of sniping at Gov. Spanberger by top Virginia Democrats like Sen. Louise Lucas, Sen. Scott Surovell, etc. for perceived poor leadership. Not good for Spanberger AT ALL.
- Fifth, just to emphasize and expand upon that last sentence, Virginia Democrats were given a massive “mandate” in November 2025, both in the statewide sweeps for Governor, Lt. Governor and Attorney General, as well as the massive increase in Democratic seats in the House of Delegates, on top of the narrow Democratic majority in the State Senate. With that “trifecta” in place, voters could reasonably expect that Democrats would turn to getting sh*t done (which they did, passing hundreds of bills, the vast majority of which Gov. Spanberger signed into law…yet the vast majority of “mainstream” media and social media seemed to be more about the disagreements, vetos, argumens, etc.), without a lot of internal disagreement, and definitely didn’t want to see Democrats fighting amongst themselves, certainly not while the country is such a mess, people are anxious about a ton of things, etc. And yet…unfortunately, we’ve seen a fair amount of Virginia Democratic infighting the past few months, whether it was over the redistricting referendum, data center tax breaks, public sector collective bargaining (labor unions are NOT happy with Spanberger right now), prescription drug affordability, collective bargaining, legalized retail cannabis marketplace (which she initially vetoed; it was saved in budget “overtime,” basically), etc. This infighting theoretically might not have helped matters for Spanberger among her “base,” but in this poll, she still maintains strong (77%-14%) approval there. When it comes to independents, though, Spanberger’s at just 20% approve-40% disapprove; this compares to a June 2018 Quinnipiac Poll, which had Gov. Ralph Northam at 49%-25% (+24 points) overall approval, including 51%-23% (+28 points) among independents. As for Republicans, they really don’t like Spanberger, with 6% approving of her job performance, compared to 89% disapproving (75% strongly); this compares to a 23%-48% approval rating for Ralph Northam among Republicans in the Quinnipiac June 2018 poll. In short, Abigail Spanberger has similar approval ratings to Ralph Northam among Democrats at this stage in their governorships, but Spanberger’s far lower among independents and Republicans, with much more intense disapproval among those two groups. Not great; my personal view is that if you’re going to have strong DISAPPROVAL from Republicans, you’d better have strong, intense APPROVAL from our “blue team,” and hopefully no worse than a “wash” with independents. Instead, Spanberger has decent approval from Democrats combined with strong disapproval from independents and Republicans.
- Sixth, it’s hard to say how much of an impact the redistricting referendum had on Spanberger’s approval ratings, but it certainly was a major distraction for the first few months of her governorship, at a time when she wanted to relentlessly focus on the agenda she ran on – not on a battle over U.S. House district lines. Then, in the end, after months of debate and campaigning on the redistricting refererndum, it narrowly passed, only to be struck down by the Virginia Supreme Court. So all of that definitely might have left a sour taste in people’s mouths, but probably more to the point, it was a major distraction for Spanberger in the first few months of her governorship, as she was trying to get her bearings in a place (Richmond/General Assembly) where she really didn’t have any previous experience, having previously been in the U.S. House, CIA, etc. This is an item, by the way, that I’m not sure Spanberger could have done much about.
- Seventh, as former VPAP director David Poole wrote in a post yesterday (“Spanberger as Editor-in-Chief”), “The governor and her chief of staff played an unprecedented hands-on role in marking up legislation this spring, riling fellow Democrats with a record number of rewrites and vetoes.” Among the comments in this article were stuff like “they may have been right about a bunch of stuff, but I think it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how to work the process” and “some questioned whether she and her chief of staff made best use of their time.” So…chalk this item up as a combination of inexperience, management style (I keep hearing words like “micromanager,” “indecisive,” “doesn’t communicate,” “thinks she knows everything,” etc.). Hard to say how much any/all of this has had on Spanberger’s approval ratings, but it seems to me it certainly could be part of the problem.
- Eighth, I’d argue that Spanberger’s relentless focus on being in the “center,” “moderate,” etc. leads to her not really being seen as fiercely fighting back against Trump, at a time when Democratic voters – and probably many independents as well – are angry and anxious, whether about the economy, assaults on our democracy by the Trump administration, the vicious/deadly war against immigrants, you name it. Where has Spanberger been on this stuff? I mean, I follow her press releases and public statements closely, and I haven’t really heard her talk much about Trump’s (and DOGE’s, Musk’s, etc.) depradations; to the extent she DOES talk about what’s going on at the federal level, she often “short hands” and does the “both sides”/false equivalence thing as “chaos coming out of Washington”…instead of specifically calling out the Trump regime and his Republican allies/lapdogs in Congress as overwhelmingly (99%-100%) the source of the country’s problems. I presume she thinks that stance works for her, but the polling really doesn’t bear that out, as she has VERY bad approval ratings among Republicans, bad approval ratings among independents, and decent-but-not-anything-to-write-home-about approval ratings among Democrats. Also, as we’ve seen from Democratic primaries across the country this year, there’s a lot of anger among the Democratic “base,” anti-incumbent feeling, desire for fighters (against Trump, ICE, etc.) – and that’s not really Spanberger’s style…so again, she’s kinda out of sync with where a lot of voters’ heads and hearts are at right now. As one smart Virginia politico commented to me, “I think Spanberger has to show she’s ‘fighting for Virginia’ and ‘putting Virginia first’ in terms of standing up to Trump” – and she hasn’t really been doing that.
Anyway, what are your thoughts? Anything else I should add to this list? Do you think Spanberger still can recover, politically, from her rough start as governor? To do so, should she mostly just “stay the course,” or should she shake up her approach, staff, etc? Have the first six months of her governorship seriously harmed her future prospects for U.S. Senate, VP or even president? Or will this all be nothing but a “blip” in a year or two? And will any of this have an impact on the crucial midterm races here in Virginia, or on the 2027 races for House of Delegates and State Senate? (I’d argue NO on the former, POSSIBLY on the latter…)
