The Republican candidate for governor of Virginia was in the lead Tuesday evening, according to the partial results of a poll considered a test for Democrats and for Joe Biden, weakened by polls at half mast a year before the US parliamentary elections at high risk.
With three quarters of the ballots counted, Glenn Youngkin, a 54-year-old businessman with no political experience, was eight points ahead of Terry McAuliffe, 64 and former governor of this eastern United States (2014-2018 ) who received heavyweight support from the party during the campaign.
“We are going to win” this election even if it is “close”, had affirmed before the closing of the polling stations Joe Biden from Glasgow, where he participates in the COP26, calling on the Democrats to “move to vote”.
The turnout appears significant with nearly 1.2 million voters having already voted in advance, six times more than in 2017 when Democrat Ralph Northam was elected, according to the NGO Virginia Public Access Project.
“It’s been a long time since it is no longer an election campaign and that it started to become a movement led by all of you,” Youngkin assured his supporters when the first results were announced.
Even if Joe Biden denies it, this election is considered as a barometer of support for the policy of the American president.
Donald Trump’s shadow
Its popularity has crumbled since the chaotic American withdrawal from Afghanistan and its major investment plans – one in infrastructure, the other on a social and climate component – are blocked in Congress, victims of dissension between the Democrats.
A victory for Mr. Youngkin would offer Republicans a strategy to win back Congress, where Democrats have a fragile majority, in the midterm elections in November 2022.
Terry McAuliffe’s large lead melted in a few weeks and the two men were neck and neck Tuesday morning in this state which had voted overwhelmingly for Joe Biden in the presidential election a year ago.
“I hope we finish first but it’s a close election,” Kaela Rose-Murdock, a voter from Falls Church in northern Virginia, a Democratic stronghold, told AFP.
“I see a lot of support here for Mr. Youngkin, and that worries me a lot,” she added.
Terry McAuliffe, whose electorate is predominantly urban, warned of a Republican victory that would rhyme with “four years of conspiracy theories and extremist politics”.
Glenn Youngkin is banking on the popularity of Donald Trump, whose support he has received, with the rural electorate of this state, without repeating the most outrageous positions of the former president so as not to frighten the moderates and the independents .
School programs
Opposed to the compulsory wearing of masks and compulsory vaccination for children or for certain professions, he successfully focused his campaign on education, ensuring that parents should have an influence on their children’s school programs.
He fiercely opposes the teaching of “critical race theory,” a school of thought that analyzes racism as a system rather than at the level of individual prejudice, even though Democrats point out that this theory is not part of the program. Virginia.
He is accused of seeking to ban certain books by black authors from schools, such as Toni Morrison’s classic “Beloved”, which the Republican denies.
The question of racism is very sensitive in this state whose slave past is regularly the subject of hot debates.
Catherine Jimenez, local leader of the Republican Party in Falls Church, told AFP that opponents of Mr. Youngkin wanted to portray him as “someone to be hated”.
In the deputy governor election, Republican Winsome Sears, an African-American, also led. Her victory would be historic because it would be the first time that a woman from minorities would take up this post.
The governorship is also on the line Tuesday in New Jersey. The first results gave incumbent Democrat Phil Murphy neck and neck with his Republican opponent Jack Ciattarelli.
Democrats won a victory, however, with the expected election of Eric Adams, an African-American, former police officer and anti-racist trade unionist, as New York’s next mayor.