Republican Glenn Youngkin managed to win the post of governor of the state of Virginia on Wednesday, according to US television projections, after a poll considered a test for Democrats and Joe Biden.
After the count of more than 95% of the votes, the 54-year-old businessman, with no political experience, is 2.7 points ahead of his opponent, Terry McAuliffe, 64, former governor of this state of the Eastern United States (2014-2018).
Glenn Youngkin, who won the traditionally conservative rural vote, also scored well in Democratic strongholds in the northern part of the state.
“It’s been a long time since it is no longer an electoral campaign and that it started to become a movement led by all of you,” Youngkin assured his supporters when the first results were announced.
Until the end, the Democrats wanted to believe in their victory: “we will continue to count the ballots because all the inhabitants of Virginia deserve their vote to be counted”, affirmed Terry McAuliffe in front of his supporters at the end of the evening ,.
“The fight continues,” said the veteran of politics, who received the support of the heavyweights of the party during the campaign.
“We are going to win” this election even if it is “close”, had still affirmed before the closing of the polling stations Joe Biden from Glasgow, where he takes part in the COP26.
This poll was considered a barometer of support for the American president’s policy, even if he denied it.
Trump’s shadow
Its popularity has waned 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.
Mr Youngkin’s victory offers 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 in this state which had yet massively voted for Joe Biden in the presidential election a year ago.
Terry McAuliffe, whose electorate is predominantly urban, warned against a Republican victory that would rhyme with “four years of conspiracy theories and extremist politics”.
Glenn Youngkin bet on the popularity of Donald Trump, whose support he received, without taking up 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 which analyzes racism as a system rather than at the level of individual prejudices, even if Democrats assure that this theory is not part of the program. Virginia.
And 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, in the north of the state, 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.
A Republican also led the election for governor of New Jersey, according to partial results. Jack Ciattarelli was three points ahead of Democrat Phil Murphy, who is running for a second term.
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.