(Falls Church) Republican Glenn Youngkin was elected governor of the state of Virginia on Wednesday, a scathing loss for Democrats and President Joe Biden who was personally involved in the campaign.
After the count of more than 99% of the vote, according to the projections of American televisions the businessman of 54 years, without political experience, is 2.2 points ahead of his Democratic opponent, Terry McAuliffe, 64 years old, former governor of this state in the eastern United States between 2014 and 2018.
“We won,” he said to his cheering supporters in the middle of the night, referring to a “defining moment” that would “change the trajectory” of Virginia after eight years of Democratic control.
Glenn Youngkin, who won the traditionally conservative rural vote, also scored well in Democratic strongholds in the northern part of the state.
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 heavyweight campaign support from the ever-popular former President Barack Obama to current Joe Biden.
“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 participated in the COP26.
Another disappointment for the Democratic camp, in the state of New Jersey, the Republican and Democratic candidates for the post of governor were neck-to-neck with only 35 votes of difference in the early morning, even as all the polls before the election gave Phil Murphy, the incumbent Democratic governor, largely victorious.
The vote in Virginia was seen as a barometer of support for the US president’s policy, even though he denied it.
Joe Biden’s popularity has eroded sharply since the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan
Now back in the United States, he is facing immense pressure to have Congress adopt his titanic projects for social, climate and infrastructure reforms, the objects of strong dissension within the Democratic camp, where no consensus has been reached. for the moment been reached.
Trump’s shadow
Glenn 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.
“We will introduce the possibility of choosing within our public school system” and “programs that listen to parents,” he promised his supporters after his victory.
He fiercely fights the teaching of “critical race theory,” a school of thought that analyzes racism as a system rather than at the level of individual prejudices and is now frequently used as a scarecrow by Republicans. Democrats assure that this theory is not part of the program in 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.
In the election of deputy governor, Republican Winsome Sears, an African-American, was also on track to achieve a historic victory by becoming the first female from a minority in that office.
In New York, however, Democrats won an expected victory with the election of Eric Adams, an African-American, former police officer and anti-racist trade unionist, as the next mayor of America’s largest city.