I’m a sucker for trying to find a silver lining when elections don’t go as hoped. In 2022, when the Republican wave didn’t materialize, the relief when the GOP officially won back the House was more than enough to celebrate. When Barack Obama was elected in 2008, and Democrats had majorities in the House and the Senate, I really couldn’t see a silver lining at all. It didn’t take a genius to know that our country was in deep trouble. In 2012, when Obama was reelected for some reason, it was little consolation that he’d won with fewer votes and with fewer states.
The recent off-year elections in Virginia were another disappointment where the silver lining is truly hard to find. I previously reported that Republicans were outspent in most of the key elections that took place on Election Day 2023. In Virginia, this was largely due to the Republican National Committee’s refusal to send money to the Virginia Republican Party. But that’s not much of a silver lining, is it? Is it possible we could have won a few more seats and the majority had more resources been invested there? Sure. But what good does talking about the "what-ifs" do for us?
We did recently learn that one Democrat state senator has been revealed to not meet the residency requirement, which, in theory, should invalidate her victory. However, if history has shown us anything, it’s that rules don’t apply to Democrats. Thus, I suspect the lawsuits challenging her residency and victory won’t change anything. I hope I’m wrong, and we’ll continue to monitor this story at PJ Media, but I woudn't get your hopes up.
Related: Did the RNC Lose Virginia for the Republicans?
However, according to Michael New at National Review, there is a silver lining that Republicans can celebrate. "An analysis of vote totals in the Virginia state legislative races is instructive,” asserts New. "Republicans received more than 49 percent of the two-party vote share in both the Virginia state-senate races and the Virginia house races. Interestingly, in the 67 Virginia house races where both a Democrat and a Republican appeared on the ballot, Republicans actually captured a majority of the two-party vote share."
"Granted, summing vote totals of local races is an imperfect measure of overall party performance,” New continued. "Incumbents in safe districts have less of an incentive to turn out like-minded voters than do incumbents in swing districts. That said, multiple datapoints from Virginia show that Republican candidates performed relatively well in a state that President Biden carried by more than ten percentage points in 2020."
New isn’t alone in thinking that Virginia wasn’t as terrible for the GOP as the media has made it out to be. He notes that Ramesh Ponnuru, Karl Rove, and Terry Schilling also agree that "Republicans fared better in the Virginia elections than many mainstream-media pundits indicate."
It’s a silver lining, for sure, albeit a small one.
