The Era Of 'This Is Not A Debate' Ended In The Virginia GOV Debate Last Week
And the effect is already showing up in the polls
A survey of 1,066 Virginia voters taken just after last week’s debate between Republican Winsom Earle-Sears and Democrat Abigail Spanberger shows Sears catching up to her opponent. According to the Trafalgar Group, the gap between the candidates has narrowed to 2.6 percent, less than the margin of error, a statistical tie. A September poll by Trafalgar had shown Spanberger leading by 7.1 points.
Two months ago, Spanberger had a 12-point lead over her opponent. The Trafalgar survey data trends very white and female, the demographic intersection where Spanberger ought to still have a comfortable lead. As I said in my piece for Genspect on the Virginia race last week, I expect Sears to overperform on Election Day, even if I do not expect her to win. Now Trafalgar Group says that she might just win, after all.
During the first half of the debate, Earle-Sears interrupted long answers from Spanberger to take note that her opponent was not giving clear responses to ‘yes or no’ questions. Sears received criticism from her own side in the ‘instant feedback’ of social media, and also from the moderators, but it turned out to be a devastating tactic.
During the second half of the debate, the local news moderators began to call out Spanberger’s non-responses. Debate was therefore had on topics where ‘this is NOT a debate!’ was the rule of the day — until now. Something has snapped in Virginia, and the days of ‘no debate’ are over. Video and analysis are below the paywall for premium subscribers.
Sears’s tactic bore fruit during Spanberger’s non-response to questions about the violent fantasies of Jay Jones, Democratic candidate for attorney general of Virginia. In a series of text messages and a phone call during 2022, Jones told a Republican legislative colleague that he would prefer to shoot her fellow caucus-member, and also their children, rather than Hitler. Jones also appears to have committed fraud on a traffic court by counting his 2022 campaign time as community service.
Pressed for an answer on her continued endorsement of Jones, Spanberger was unable to distance herself from her fellow Democrat, instead blaming the source of the revealed text messages for not reporting them to the world more promptly. Sears once again talked over her opponent, calling out the dodge. Spanberger exudes contempt and weakness — voter repellent.
Spanberger tried the same evasion in response to a question about males in girls’ sports and restrooms in Virginia schools. “Nude men in locker rooms, that’s what this about”, Sears said over Spanberger. “That’s a yes or no [question]”, Sears said over Spanberger. “The girls need privacy.” The moderator admonished Sears, but remained relentless: Would Spanberger rescind the Gov. Glenn Youngkin administration policy mandating single-sex sports and restrooms — the very policy that the five most woke Virginia school districts are flouting — or not?
Spanberger’s answer is the one focus-grouped by Third Way and other center-left idiots who imagine a way forward on the issue when Democrats are on the wrong side of a supermajority opinion that only grows more firmly oppositional over time. “In each local community, decisions should be made by parents, educators, and teachers in each community”, Spanberger burbled.
Translation: Spanberger thinks the policy should remain captured in those five northern Virginia school districts until the Democrats hold power over both the federal and state government again, or until hell freezes over, whichever comes first. Spanberger finally acknowledged that naked men do not belong in a girls’ locker room only after intense questioning from the moderator and the badgering of her opponent.
Democrats deny that this issue stance hurts them but it clearly does. It hurts them by undermining all their pretensions to be the party that defends the working class, women, and children. Rather than override and complicate the question of ‘gender identity’ in sports and spaces, the Jay Jones scandal merely adds more fuel to the grassfire in Virginia politics. For while Jones has nothing directly to do with transgender politics, his disturbing communications have been fuel dumped on the grassfire that was sparked by the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
According to the bipartisan nonprofit Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP), at the time of this writing, early ballot collection from 23 September 2025 until the first weel of October was almost twice the record level set in 2021. Early ballot submissions are currently still running almost 60 percent higher than four years ago, with a notable uptick this week that maintains the trend. Their data also suggests a very high turnout in the exurban counties of Virginia, places that the state’s colleges give less weight in their own polls, which consistently show Abigail Spanberger leading by double digits.
Earle-Sears immediately claimed victory over the Democratic Party’s “juggernaut” after the debate. Spanberger was in fact supposed to win this race by a country mile, and she would be running away with a victory right now if she could only manage to say ‘I oppose letting males in women’s locker rooms, restrooms, and sports’. She cannot say those words, so she struggles.
Until they can reject the demands of the transgender lobby in unambiguous, clear language, Democrats will struggle to communicate their kitchen table ideas to anyone. Spanberger was ahead by double digits and now she is fighting just to keep her head above water. Win or lose, she has already lost too much to escape notice by her fellow Democrats. Moreover, Spanberger’s evasiveness around locker rooms is matched by her evasions of questions about her endorsement of Jay Jones. Voters see the pattern.
The question is how many will care, of course, because at the end of the day Virginia is very blue, especially the northern part of the state where 147,000 federal workers face unemployment in the federal government shutdown. Put another way, every voter cares about some things, less about other things, and feels the difference in their gut.
Democrats look at issue ranking alone — “the economy” is always number one — and conclude that voters do not care about men like Richard Cox accessing public female facilities, stripping naked, and forcing the women and girls to see him while they change, or the terroristic fantasies of Jay Jones. Democrats are clearly wrong, but unable to see how they are wrong.
The Trafalgar Group survey last week found that Jones is actually losing his race to Jason Miyares. Over the weekend, there was some grousing on the right that Miyares ought to be the one running for governor based on the assumption that he would be running ahead of Spanberger right now. I see little evidence for that assumption. Instead, the fact that he has already surpassed Jones in the polls, while Earle-Sears continues to gain on Spanberger and tracks with her party’s lieutenant governor candidate, tells me that the entire state of Virginia is shifting red this season.
Now comes the question of presidential endorsement. Donald Trump has so far withheld his endorsement, likely because he prefers to back winners and wants to wait until he is sure Sears can win. Weirdly, Democrats seem to care much more about whether Trump endorses Sears than she does. I suspect they are whistling past the graveyard while they talk about it. They think a Trump endorsement would energize those federal workers of northern Virginia and stir the spirit of #resistance.
Virginia voters are evidently turning against the Democratic Party message of tolerance for pedophiles in girls’ locker rooms. Abigail Spanberger was forced to finally disown Richard Cox in the only debate of the race, and only after the moderator refused to let her get away with a third evasive non-answer. It was Spanberger who insisted on local news moderators instead of CNN, a format demand that she likely now regrets.
History will say that the era of ‘no debate’ came to an end with the Virginia governor’s race debate. Real journalists asked a highly-favored Democratic Party candidate hard questions about the real impacts of ‘transgender inclusion’ on children in public schools, questions that the Republican candidate has centered in her own campaign messaging. A week ago today, Virginia Democrats insisted they had the independent voters locked up for Spanberger. New polls strongly suggest that is not the case, that the more Democrats are called upon to defend their ‘gender identity’ policies, the less voters like them.
I will update on this story again at least once more before Election Day.
Dems Still Don't Understand Why They Have Lost Ground In VA Gov Race
Adam Jentleson, former chief of staff to Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, tells the New York Times that the Democratic Party has lost its way by putting “too much emphasis on issues like climate change and L.G.B.T.Q. rights” while giving “far too much deference to the powerful liberal organizations championing those causes at the expense, some argue, of appealing to voters in battleground states.”