Politics
LIVE UPDATES: Here’s What Happening In The Virginia Governor’s Race
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RICHMOND, Va. — An incendiary off-year gubernatorial race some see as a referendum on the Trump presidency appears too close to call in the final hours of voting, though Democrats are cautiously optimistic about exits polls and turnout data.
The incumbent Democratic Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam will spend election night at George Mason University in Fairfax, while Republican nominee Ed Gillespie, a former chair of the Republican National Committee and aide to President George W. Bush, will monitor results from the Hilton Richmond Hotel.
The campaign degenerated into an ugly culture war in the final stretch, betraying the dramatic convulsions of a state whose identity is in flux. Long a bastion of Republican politics, explosive economic and population growth in Virginia’s northern counties has attracted a major influx of young, college-educated voters, recasting the political identity of the Old Dominion.
The Gillespie campaign effectively elevated the issue of illegal immigration and crime to the forefront, launching numerous attack ads tying Northam’s legislative record on immigration and sanctuary cities to the expansion of the violent central American gang MS-13 in and around Virginia communities. Northam has accused his opponent of artificially inflating the issue of sanctuary cities, pointing out that no Virginia municipality is currently in open violation of federal immigration law.
Tensions came to a head in mid-October when a progressive PAC, Latino Victory Fund, ran an ad in which a Gillespie supporter attempts to run down a group of frightened minority children in an imposing black pickup truck adorned with the Confederate battle flag. The ad, which was pulled following a late October truck attack in New York City, appeared to backfire. Gillepsie told The Daily Caller’s Vince Coglianese that campaign donations tripled in the wake of the ad’s launch.
6:30 p.m.
Polls close in the marquee gubernatorial race of 2017 in 30 minutes. Late turnout reports suggest a mixed bag for Northam. As of 5:00 p.m., turnout in Fairfax County reached 46.8 percent, according to the local board of elections, suggesting a surge in turnout among white, college-educated voters in the Washington, D.C. suburbs, the core of the Democratic coalition. Charlottesville, Va., home to the University of Virginia, also posted strong turnout. Other reports, however, noted that black turnout appears low in several locales, including the city of Petersburg, just south of Richmond.
This trend would mirror returns from other off-year contests in the post-Obama era, where anti-Trump college-educated whites went to the polls in significant numbers, while turnout dipped among other key Democratic constituencies, including African Americans and Hispanics.
Preliminary exit polls indicate that roughly one-quarter of voters identified as liberal, while roughly one-third identified as conservative. These figures are almost on par with 2016 identification numbers, with conservative identification down slightly.
Returns are likely first to report from the state’s rural stretches, followed by the Richmond metropolitan area. The heavily populated Democratic strongholds in the northern part of the commonwealth will likely report last.
This is breaking news. Check back for updates.
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