Biden Botches Virginia Election History

Seeking to deflect the significance of Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s loss in the Virginia governor’s race to Republican Glenn Youngkin, President Joe Biden wrongly claimed that “no governor in Virginia has ever won when … he or she is the same party as the sitting president.”

In fact, McAuliffe, himself, was elected governor of Virginia in 2013, when Democrat Barack Obama was president (and Biden was vice president). In that race, McAuliffe edged out then-Republican state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.

And while it has been rare, there are other instances as well. In 1969, when Republican Richard Nixon sat in the White House, fellow Republican Linwood Holt won Virginia’s gubernatorial election.

Four years later, the Virginia governor’s race was won by Mills Godwin. Godwin served his first term as the state’s governor from 1966 to 1970 as a Democrat. But when he ran for a second stint in 1973, it was as a Republican. Nixon was still in office then, too.

Biden was right to note that the prevailing pattern has been that Virginia voters tend to elect governors from the party in opposition to the presiding president.

As Slate noted, Youngkin’s win “now makes it 11 out of the last 12 governor’s races in the state that the party not controlling the White House has won.”