Episode 21: VCU Poll and Campaign Finance Reports

Hi, everyone. I'm Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This episode, we will go over a new poll from the VCU Wilder Center, and then we will talk about the latest campaign finding finance numbers in Virginia.00:15.45Sam ShiraziAnd I think both of these things are really useful to get a sense of where the campaign is.00:20.79Sam ShiraziSo to begin, i will first go over this new poll from the Virginia Commonwealth University Wilder Center. And it's helpful to have this poll because I think it's been a while since we've gotten a poll, especially a nonpartisan poll.00:36.22Sam ShiraziAnd this just kind of gives us a sense of where things are. And I think it had some good data in there about the overall state of the race. So I'll just kind of give the big picture governor number, which is the one most people are interested in.00:49.67Sam ShiraziSo in the race for governor, Democratic nominee Abigail Spanberger is at 49 percent and Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earl Sears is at 37 percent.01:00.77Sam ShiraziSo obviously right now, a big lead for Spanberger. Keep in mind, i i think Winston Merle Sears, she is going to get more than 37% of the vote. So I think her share right now is a little bit low.01:13.37Sam ShiraziBut that also means that Spanberger could get more than 49% of the vote. And so she's already at 49% with a decent amount of undecideds. And so overall, I mean, this is obviously a good poll for the Democrats. And I wanted to talk about some of the other numbers in the poll besides the top line.01:31.80Sam ShiraziSo what I really liked about this poll is they also polled the lieutenant governor attorney general races. You don't always get these other statewide races polled, but it was really helpful to have these numbers. So for lieutenant governor, Democratic nominee Ghazal Hashmi is at 46 percent and Republican nominee John Reed is at 36 percent.01:51.36Sam ShiraziAnd then for attorney general, Democratic nominee Jay Jones, He is at 47%. forty seven percent And Republican Attorney General, the incumbent, Jason Muir, is at 38%.02:03.97Sam ShiraziSo I think that was a really interesting data point because it shows there really isn't that much ticket splitting, at least in this poll. I've told you many times, my theory is there's not going to be that much ticket splitting. This poll kind of confirms that that. Obviously, this is one poll. It could be off. But I just...02:21.11Sam Shiraziyou know the The trend has been there's been a lot less and less ticket splitting in Virginia, and I think this poll is starting to show that as well. A couple other interesting data points from this poll. So in terms of the Trump approval, he is at 40% approved, 55% disapprove in Virginia, and of the disapprove, 50% is strong disapprove.02:42.54Sam ShiraziSo that's obviously not a great number for President Trump. And then we have the Glenn Youngkin number and he's he's doing a little bit better. He's at 49% approved, 39% disapproved.02:54.03Sam ShiraziAnd I often get this question, you know, the Virginia Republicans aren't doing that great. You know, why does Glenn Youngkin have a positive approval? I mean, the reality is, If you look back the past 20 years, almost every Virginia governor always has positive approval.03:08.39Sam ShiraziAnd it doesn't matter if they're Democrat or Republican, for whatever reason, it's just the governor has positive approval. And I think here, Glenn Youngkin, while it's not ah overwhelmingly positive, he does have a positive approval.03:21.75Sam ShiraziAnd the reality is it doesn't really seem to be making that much of a difference because people are, and at least in this poll, backing Spanberger more than they are Sears.03:33.96Sam ShiraziAnd the reality is most people go off presidential approval. So even though this is a state election, I've often talked about how these elections get nationalized, how national issues are more important. And so I would say the Trump approval is much more important than the Youngkin approval.03:47.15Sam ShiraziAnd you know to me, this sounds about right. I mean, 40% approval in Virginia sounds about where President Trump would be considering the numbers he got in the last election and the fact that he's probably come down a little bit from the high of the election.04:02.50Sam ShiraziNow, having said that, Not everyone who disapproves of President Trump is going to vote for the Democrats. But I do think the 50% strongly disapprove is an important number because it's pretty unlikely if you strongly disapprove of the incumbent president that you would vote for that party in the election.04:19.80Sam Shiraziand so and And that's kind of reflected by the fact that Spanberger is at 49%. So I think almost everyone who strongly disapproves of President Trump's performance is voting for Spanberger. And if the President Trump's disapproval is at 50 percent strongly disapprove in November. I mean, that's going to be very difficult for the Republicans to overcome.04:39.06Sam ShiraziIt's one poll. I don't want to overthink it. It obviously could be off by a little bit. There's still a decent amount of time until the election, although honestly, early voting starts in a little over two months.04:50.42Sam ShiraziSo not a huge amount of time. And I thought it was interesting. So I wanted to read something that a former Republican Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, Bill Bolling, posted. He often posts on Facebook some of his thoughts. He's pretty much retired from politics, but he obviously You know, posts what he thinks is going on. And I would describe him more as an establishment Republican. He did vote for President Trump, but more on the establishment wing. And I find that oftentimes he gives his pretty objective assessment about how things are going.05:19.66Sam ShiraziAnd after he saw this poll, he said this race could be worse than 2017 when Republican Ed Gillespie lost by 9 percent to Democrat Ralph Northam. However, Gillespie was a better candidate than Sears and Spanberger is a better candidate than Northam, so the margin could be larger, end quote.05:37.74Sam ShiraziSo, I mean, I think he's kind of saying what most Republicans would probably tell you in private. I mean, he's more willing to say it out in the open. that, uh, you know, things are not looking great for the Virginia GOP. I mean, I tend to be cautious. I don't want to assume the Democrats are going to get this big blowout win, but you get this poll and, you know, it's not great news for the Virginia GOP and you don't want to be down this much in July when early voting is going to start in two months.06:06.09Sam ShiraziTime is not on the GOP side because every day that goes by and they're not catching up is a day when the Democrats are looking closer and closer to winning and looking like a win where they're going to win the governor's race, win the lieutenant governor's race, win the attorney general's race, and then probably pick up seats in the House of Delegates.06:22.32Sam ShiraziThat's what it looks like right now. That doesn't mean it's going to happen in November. There's still time. Things could change. But I thought it was a useful poll because... You know, frankly, people on both sides probably have the sense that this is where things were going. And it was good to get this poll to basically confirm what people are thinking.06:40.17Sam ShiraziI don't know about the exact margin of 12 percent. I don't know if that's going to be what margin will be in November. As I mentioned, I think Winston-Marie Sears, she's going to get more than 37 percent of the vote.06:51.31Sam ShiraziBut I think given everything, most people think since the Democrats are up and this poll basically confirms that. All right. Now let's talk about the other important piece of information that we got this week, and that was the campaign finance reports.07:07.46Sam ShiraziAnd again, the campaign finance reports are basically confirming some of our priors. And the reason there was a campaign finance report, so these were through the end of second quarter. So the first half of the year, and these are important because these are going to be the half Only campaign finance numbers I think we get until September. And so we're not going to get more information about the campaign funding for a while. So we might as well talk about it right now and see what's going on.07:33.31Sam ShiraziAll right. So the big picture number is Democratic nominee Abigail Spanberger has a big cash on hand money advantage. So right now she has more than $15 million dollars in the bank. And that compares to Lieutenant Governor Winston Earl Sears, a Republican nominee, who has a little over $4.5 million.07:49.99Sam ShiraziSo that means Spanberger has over three times the amount of money cash on hand. And frankly, Spamburger is mainly sitting on that cash right now, and she's saving it for the fall when she will be starting to run ads. And I'm sure we will all see a lot of ads in the fall in Virginia.08:07.64Sam ShiraziAnd it's just a lot of money that Spamburger has to work with over $10 million. dollars more than Winsome Earl Sears. And that's just the reality of where the money situation is.08:19.22Sam ShiraziLieutenant Governor Ghazala Hashmi has a big cash on hand advantage over John Reed, where she has over a million dollars, whereas Reed is far behind that in terms of the money that he has on hand.08:31.72Sam Shirazihe he John Reed only has about $163,000. So again, big cash on hand advantage for Ghazala Hashmi.08:40.78Sam ShiraziThe one advantage for the Republicans is the incumbent Jason Villarreal for attorney general. He has almost $7 million dollars cash on hand. That's a lot more than the Democratic nominee Jay Jones, who has about $1.25 million.08:53.87Sam ShiraziBut you have to keep a couple of things in mind. One, Jay Jones obviously had to go through a tough primary where it was getting really competitive at the end. So he had to burn through a lot of cash. That's part of the reason he doesn't have a lot of cash on hand. He had to run a lot of ads to win that primary.09:08.75Sam ShiraziSo that's one thing to keep in mind. The other thing to keep in mind is, you know, frankly, the top of the ticket is usually what matters the most. And it's pretty crazy to think about that the attorney general nominee, Jason Millares, has more cash on hand than the governor nominee, Wensimeral Sears.09:26.42Sam ShiraziNow, obviously, Miárez, having that money is good for him. He's going to be spending it on ads. I'm sure that will help him a certain extent. But the reality is, you know, if the top of the ticket is not doing what it needs to do, it doesn't really matter that much for Miárez. And again, i don't know what the margin of is going to be in November, but let's just say hypothetically, Abigail Spanberger is winning close to the 2017 number where Northam won by 9%.09:52.05Sam Shiraziand Spamburger is winning by 9%. I mean, you know at some point, it just doesn't really matter what's going on with the other races because it's just very it's very hard for anyone to overcome a nine-point margin at the top of the ticket if you're running for Attorney General. so and And I'm sure, you know, given that Jay Jones just got out of that primary, he had to spend the money.10:13.27Sam ShiraziI'm sure he'll be spending some time raising more money and we'll see what the next campaign finance numbers look like. And I also think this kind of reflects the fact that Republicans think that Jason Meyers has the best shot of winning. So they're more they've been willing to give him more money because.10:31.19Sam ShiraziThey think, you know, realistically, maybe the governor's race is looking pretty tough, but maybe we can salvage the attorney general's race. I think that's helped him raise money. And so the end of the day, like overall, things are looking better for the statewide candidates on the Democratic side, just purely by the fact that the top of the ticket has raised so much money.10:50.65Sam ShiraziAnd in some ways it's making up for maybe Miara's advantage at the attorney general race. All right, now let's turn to the House of Delegates. Again, i won't go through every single House of Delegates race because I think that will get pretty tedious. I will say that overall, the Democrats did raise more this period. So in terms of money since the last campaign finance reporting period, the Democrats in the House total raised a little over $2.3 million.11:20.84Sam ShiraziRepublicans were at one point over a little over 1.6 million. and So Democrats still have the money, money advantage. I will say that this is a better report for the Republicans maybe than last time, because last time the Democrats really blew them out of the water.11:34.10Sam ShiraziI think the Republicans in some of these races are keeping it close. But again, the Democrats have the advantage and There's a lot of these races where the Democratic challenger has more cash on hand than the Republican incumbent.11:48.12Sam ShiraziAnd usually that's not a great sign if you are an incumbent and the challenger has more money than you in the bank. So I looked into it and there are currently six seats where the Democratic challenger has more money in the bank than the Republican incumbent.12:04.18Sam ShiraziI mean, again, that's not a great sign for the Virginia Republicans in the House of Delegates. And these are all defensive seats. These are seats where they're trying to defend and they're already down on the money.12:16.55Sam ShiraziThey're already defending all these seats and they're already kind of down in some of these seats in terms of the money. And when that happens, there isn't a lot of time or money really to go on the offense.12:27.37Sam ShiraziAnd so I mentioned how the Republicans are much more on the defense in the House of Delegates this year. You know, they they make some signs that they're trying to compete in some of these districts. And I think there are a couple districts where they have candidates who've raised a decent amount of money challenging incumbent Democrats. But the reality is they just don't have the ability to spend that much money challenging Democrats.12:49.85Sam ShiraziDemocrats when they have all these Republican incumbents that they have to defend, especially when the Democratic challengers to those incumbents are raising a lot of money. And i you know I talk a lot about the Republicans problems in the House of Delegates by focusing on House District 21, which is in western Prince William County.13:06.61Sam ShiraziAnd the reason I spend a lot of time on this district So this district on paper should be the most competitive seat. That's because it was the closest Democratic-held seat in 2023, and it was the closest Democratic-held seat in 2024 in terms of the Harris margin. So if you're just looking at numbers and you say, okay, what seat the Democrats hold, which is the closest seat, you would say it's House District-Hourish.13:30.93Sam Shirazi21 in Western Prince William. The problem for the Republicans is their candidate who won the primary basically has no money. So if you look at the fundraising report for the Republican in House District 21, 21, he raised in the last filing period $117, $117,000. he raised And he has $248 in the bank.13:53.33Sam ShiraziAnd if you look at the Democratic incumbent, Josh Thomas, he has like a lot of money in the bank, several hundred thousand dollars in the bank. And this is D.C. media market, expensive race. And so, you know, $248 in the bank is not going to cut it.14:08.00Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, I was surprised by this partly because... When you have these primaries in House of Delegates races, people are holding back their money because they don't want to give money to someone who might lose the primary.14:19.22Sam ShiraziAnd especially that primary, it was really unpredictable. It wasn't clear who was going to win. And so you would think, OK, once the primary winner has been determined, the next day, everyone who is on the Republican side would want to be sending that person a check.14:35.21Sam ShiraziAnd that would help the fundraising. But basically no one sent this guy a check who won in that 21st house district primary. And so he didn't have any fundraising in the last reporting period.14:45.91Sam ShiraziAnd the problem with that is it doesn't, you know, if you're not competing in that seat, I mean, you're really not, uh, there is very, very narrow path for the Republicans to get a majority if they're not competing in that seat.14:58.60Sam ShiraziAnd I will have to bring up the T word because, If you follow these types of elections, you know that there's a word that is often dreaded when a party is facing a tough election, and that's called triage.15:12.51Sam ShiraziSo triage means we're not going win that seat. Let's just take it off the board and we're not going to waste money on that seat. And now, granted, this is a challenge.15:24.34Sam Shirazichallenger. So it's not an incumbent that they're triaging. they're They're basically triaging this challenger. But at least right now, it seems like they basically triage the 21st district for the Republicans. So that basically means they're not going to compete there.15:35.93Sam ShiraziSo I mean, it's, I don't want to say it's completely off the board. But I mean, if your incumbent, if if your challenger has that little money, and you're in the DC media market, and you're going against an incumbent that has a lot of money in the bank, I mean, at some point you have to be realistic and say this seat is not really competitive.15:55.53Sam ShiraziAnd so I don't want to say there's no chance Republicans could ever win this seat, but the reality is it's just, it's not there right now for them. And so I think it's interesting to look at these district by district numbers. That was the one that really jumped out at me. i mean, there are other districts where the Democrats have a big advantage, but not to the extent where you can kind of write off the seat. I mean, this is getting to the point in House District 21 where, again, I don't want to completely write off the seat, but I mean, at some point you have to be realistic about where things are going.16:27.52Sam ShiraziAnd so people often ask, like well, why are the Republicans having these money problems? And I think part of the answer is Glenn Youngkin. And the reason I say that is Over the last four years, Glenn Youngkin has really carried a lot of water for the Virginia Republicans, and he paper papered over a lot of problems Virginia Republicans had during the first Trump administration.16:47.86Sam ShiraziSo Glenn Youngkin obviously has his own money. He has a good network of donors. He's been able to raise a lot of money for himself and for the Virginia GOP over the last four years. And I think that's solved a lot of problems for the Virginia GOP.17:01.56Sam ShiraziAnd for various reasons, he's just not doing that this year. I think part of it is, you know, He's going to be gone at the end of the year. And at the beginning of the year, there'll be a new governor. And so I think he's just not as engaged this year in the Virginia elections.17:15.39Sam ShiraziI think the other reality is donors you know are are sensing where things are going in Virginia, and they might not be super eager to be throwing a lot of money into the Virginia elections. And so I want to talk about the 2023 cycle. So in 2023, Glenn Youngkin raised a lot of money through his PAC. And his PAC is called Spirit of Virginia, which And through that pack, he gave a lot of money to a lot of the competitive House races and really made the Virginia General Assembly, both the House of Delegates and the state Senate competitive in 2023.17:46.67Sam ShiraziAnd if you remember that election, you were following along. You know, everyone had the sense it was going to be tight and it was going it could come down to a few seats. You know, most people at the end thought the Democrats would be able to at least win one chamber of the Virginia House of Delegates, the Virginia General Assembly.18:03.04Sam ShiraziThey ended up winning both the state Senate and the House of Delegates, but it was close. There's a 21-19 majority in the state Senate. There's a 41, sorry, 51-49 majority in the House of Delegates. And a lot of that was because Glenn Youngkin was able to raise so much money.18:18.97Sam ShiraziSo 2023, his Spirit of Virginia PAC was able to raise over $25 million, dollars and he just gave a lot of that out in big checks. He'd write $100,000 checks to candidates in the competitive seats, and you you know that really helped the Virginia GOP fundraising in 2023.18:34.45Sam ShiraziThe problem is in 2025, the Spirit of Virginia PAC has raised less than $2.5 million, and it's given out even less than that. And so, you know, at some point, the Virginia GOP needs to find someone to donate to them. Otherwise, they may not have a lot of money left in the tank. And, you know, the reality is, unless someone comes in to save them, you know, some of these candidates are not going to have a whole lot of money going into the general election.19:02.39Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, I thought there was this interesting moment. you There's ah MAGA talk show host. He's big Trump guy, big on the Trump supporters. His name is John Fredericks.19:13.99Sam ShiraziAnd he often likes to talk about Virginia elections. He often has Virginia politicians on, more so on the Republican side, although sometimes he has Democrats on too. So this week he had Glenn Youngkin on his radio show.19:27.83Sam ShiraziAnd I was pretty surprised. i mean, he basically told two... Glenn Youngkin to his face, he needs to get more involved in the Virginia elections. And he basically said, until Glenn Youngkin personally gets involved in this race, takes it over, puts your political machine behind it.19:45.09Sam ShiraziI just don't see this thing getting any traction. So that was what John Frederick said on the air to Glenn Youngkin. So Glenn Youngkin was there and John Frederick told him that. Now, Glenn Youngkin, you know, didn't really give a clear answer. I mean, I think he said that Winston Merle Sears was a strong candidate and, you know,20:00.88Sam Shirazihe He didn't really directly respond to that, but I think there's a sense that Glenn Youngkin came in 2021, put a lot of money into the Virginia GOP, put in organization, put discipline, was able to win, and that was part of the success of the Virginia GOP in 2021.20:16.38Sam ShiraziAnd if you think about what's missing in 2025, part of it is Glenn Youngkin is not super involved in this election. And to be fair to Glenn Youngkin, I mean, he's not the candidate running for governor.20:27.33Sam ShiraziI think to a certain extent, he wants to give Winston Merle Sears some space to run her own campaign. but at this But the reality is, you know, things are not looking great for the Virginia Republicans.20:38.98Sam ShiraziAnd especially with this last fundraising report, I mean, i think Republicans are starting to think like something has to happen. Otherwise, you know, things are not going to be great for them in November.20:49.17Sam ShiraziAnd you know In terms of what could happen, I mean, one scenario you could see is that the Trump political organization and the RNC and the National Republicans in D.C.21:00.82Sam Shirazisay, look, we have to do something. They start putting money into Virginia. I mean, they've already put some money in, but that's more kind of matching Democratic money. In theory, they could put a lot of money into Virginia and try to catch up to their Democrats in terms of fundraising.21:14.95Sam ShiraziThe other thing that could happen is they could say, you know, Virginia is not looking great and it's not really worth us coming in and we might as well just, you know, save our money for next year when the midterms are going probably be tough for us as well. So I don't know. I don't know if that's what's going to happen. And obviously if the national Republicans start coming in heavy, national Democrats will start coming in The Virginia Democrats can use that and say, Oh, look, the national Republicans are going all in on, on Virginia. You know, we need more donations.21:44.34Sam ShiraziAnd that's, you know, something that Virginia Democrats could use to their advantage.21:48.04Sam ShiraziAnd i think the Virginia Republicans have to start asking themselves some hard questions. And I mentioned the triage and maybe House District 21 is the first victim of the Republican triage this year in Virginia.22:01.32Sam ShiraziAnd i wouldn't be surprised if it's not the last victim. i think, you know, in terms of how you're going to triage this thing, you're going to go first in the Democratic held seats and just say, look, it's not worth us trying to flip any of these because it's not going to happen and we got to defend our incumbents because incumbents always get a priority when you start the triage because, you know, they're going to ask for help and, you know, they've contributed money over the years.22:23.48Sam ShiraziSo you take the Democratic held seats off the table, then you look at your own seats and say which ones Do we have a realistic shot of winning? Which ones we don't have a realistic shot of winning? And then you just have to start triaging.22:35.24Sam ShiraziI'm not saying the Virginia Republicans are there yet. I don't think they've started triaging any incumbents to the extent they have triaged anyone. It's this one house district in Northern Virginia. And frankly, it makes sense.22:46.19Sam ShiraziYou have a strong incumbent with Josh Thomas. You have the DC media market. You have someone who's not raising a lot of money anyways. So, I mean, it makes sense that they would triage it. And I don't think it's the end of the world for them that they triage the seat.22:58.13Sam ShiraziBut it just shows you like they are having some issues in the House of Delegates. And the fact that maybe they aren't going to be getting a majority is becoming more and more reality. i I think there's still a narrow path to a majority for the Virginia Republicans.23:13.09Sam ShiraziBut I think most people realize at this point, the goal is really to minimize the losses and to maybe try to save some of these incumbents who are in tough spots. So overall, that's where things are.23:24.45Sam ShiraziI will try to keep my a sense on how things are going. I will try to be objective. I'm not trying to assume things are going to be 100% guaranteed Democratic victory this year in Virginia. But I also have to look at the data and report the data and report what People are saying and report what the Republicans themselves are saying about the state of the race.23:43.05Sam ShiraziAnd so we'll just have to wait and see how things go. i think it's always interesting following Virginia elections. This year is going to be a very interesting elections. That's why I did this podcast. I hope people enjoy some of my takes. And yeah, feel free to share the podcast with anyone who's interested in the Virginia elections or interested in politics in general.24:01.00Sam ShiraziI will try to have more interesting guests on. And yeah, it's going to be a sprint till November and I'm going to try my best to cover everything. So I appreciate everyone listening. And for now, this has been Federal Fallout and I'll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com