Politics: 2021 Election Results

I promised that I would have this post or another one ready by this month. I could have given myself more time by going to a later service which would have put Survivor’s posts on Thursday and delayed this blog’s post until all the way to the 24^th which would have been the first time that a Thursday would have been available this month for this blog. It would change things in the off chance that there is only one church service during Lent, but you’ll find out more then.

 

Anyways, let’s get to the actual important part of this post. I realize that I could have done a post after the primaries to better prepare you for the general elections, but that never happened and it is far too late for that now anyways. I didn’t even think of doing it until too late and wound up more focused on other things anyways.

 

What you probably heard from this election was that it was a huge red wave as they were only focused on the state of Virginia and not the two other states electing governors or the results of the Georgia senate race runoffs which seem like a lifetime ago even just the very next day after it. But I’ll start with Virginia before going to anything else.

 

The Virginia attorney general race did have incumbent Democrat Mark Herring in the race. That party actually had a primary by the voters. The Republican Party did not have a primary that way. It did get Jason Miyares elected in the general election, defeating Mark.

 

Meanwhile, the Virginia governor race was the one that made everyone lose their minds. I do have to wonder why this was seen as referendum on Biden. They did that in 2009 with the same state, made that governor’s election link to Obama. But in 2013, they didn’t mention what role Obama had with getting a Democrat elected governor there or how the Democrats win in 2017 reflected negatively on Trump.

 

This race proved once again that Republicans can win based on campaigns filled with lies. The Republican, Glenn Youngkin, rallied against such things a critical race theory, something that is only taught in law schools and is not being taught to minors in any state in this country. He also ran against Ralph Northam, even though his real opponent that he beat was Democratic Terry McAuliffe. Glenn also ran against a lot of already ended covid protocols and the state could wind up with a worse response to the pandemic than the good one it has now.

 

The California recall was kind of a laughable attempt at trying to change things. I’ll admit that Gavin Newsom could have wound up forcing the hands of Republicans because he did make a mistake by doing the dinner against his own covid protocols that let the recall move forward. But he easily defeated the recall with over 60% of the vote.

 

New Jersey’s governor race got kind of lost in the whole news coverage since the results were delayed. Incumbent governor, Democrat Phil Murphy, ran against Republican challenger, Jack Ciattarelli. Phil won reelection. This was actually a big deal since no Democratic governor of that state won reelection since 1977, no candidate of either party won after a president of their party won the previous year since 1985, and no Democrat did that since also in 1977. Indeed, we have yet to see a pandemic era governor lose reelection, although that is probably statistically unlikely to happen again in 2022. Indeed, we may see a record number of governors next year lose renomination to other people in the primaries.

 

There are lesser elections that aren’t something I’m keeping track of, although maybe they should be kept track of by other people. While people think that it was a red wave, I think that a lot of context is missing that would make that true or more true. Still, we might have to be a bit more cautious going into the 2022 gubernatorial races. Polls are saying that it might favor the Democrats, pending the outcome of several tossups. Indeed, the last time any Democrat lost reelection to a Republican in a gubernatorial race was in 2014. We’ll see what happens next year in the end.