In this week’s episode of The Score [1] (scheduled to air on WINC-AM&FM in Winchester at 7:00 o’clock Saturday morning and to be posted here on Bearing Drift at about the same time), University of Mary Washington political scientist Stephen Farnsworth discusses recent public opinion surveys [2] his department has conducted and tells us that Republicans should be worried. The UMW polls this September [3] show similar results from their polls last September, which correctly forecast major losses in the Virginia House of Delegates.
In our Mary Washington survey this month, and in our survey last September (a year ago), we’re looking at a very similar environment. There were a number of Republicans in the House of Delegates who had been there for years, in some cases, who were defeated not really because of anything they had said as much as the fact that they had an “R” after their name in the age of Trump. Those voters who were most angry, it seemed, were women in the suburbs.
And so, if you look at what happened in Prince William, you look at what happened in the suburban precincts around Richmond, or in the Hampton Roads area, you see the same basic pattern: That if you have an “R” after your name and you have a district that has a significant suburban population, you’re likely to have a problem.
Here’s a brief audio excerpt from my interview yesterday with Dr. Farnsworth at his office in Monroe Hall on the UMW campus in Fredericksburg:
http://bearingdrift.com/wp-content/uploads/Farnsworth-excerpt-Sep19-2018.wav [4]That’s just short of three minutes from an extensive, 17-minute interview with Stephen Farnsworth, who is author of a new book (which we also discussed), Presidential Communication and Character: White House News Management from Clinton and Cable to Twitter and Trump [5].
Other guests scheduled to be on The Score this weekend include Charlottesville journalist Jackson Landers, attorney Elliott Harding, and three experts from the Cato Institute: Chris Edwards (tax policy [6]), Corey DeAngelis (educational choice [7]), and Colin Grabow (international trade and tariffs [8]). The final line-up may change between now and Saturday so be sure to come back to listen because there could be some unscheduled surprises.