An exclusive early exit poll commissioned by BizPac Review shows Republican Virginia gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin holding a strong lead over Democratic opponent Terry McAuliffe.

Youngkin has a 6.9 percent lead over McAuliffe, 52.5 to 45.6, according to the results and the Republican is confident that he’ll defeat his Democratic opponent, saying Tuesday that voters are “sick of recycled and divisive politics.”

“This is about the government going to work for Virginians and getting the taxes down and making sure we have great schools and great jobs and safe communities. It is these issues that impact people’s lives every single day,” he told Fox News.

According to RealClearPolitics’ polling average, Youngkin is up by +1.7 points in the race, and he holds a commanding 53-43.4 favorability lead according to the BPR exit poll. Even more troubling for McAuliffe is that 56.3 percent of those responding viewed him unfavorably — on a side note, a majority of voters polled had unfavorable opinions of both President Joe Biden [54.9] and former President Trump [55.8].

Virginia Statewide Exit Polls by Kayla Gowdy

Youngkin’s campaign is looking to a small number of high-population areas in the state to decide the outcome.

According to reports, the campaign will be closely monitoring the results in these areas after polls close at 7 p.m., and is confident that if they do better than former President Donald Trump in Loudoun County, Fairfax County, Virginia Beach, and Richmond, Youngkin will be the next governor of Virginia.

“All of those are largely urban or suburban areas where Youngkin has tried to woo voters by distancing himself from Trump’s style of politics,” Fox News reported. “Further, Loudoun County specifically is a hotbed of debate over parents’ role in schools and debates over critical race theory in classrooms. Youngkin centered his campaign on parents’ rights in schools and promised to ban critical race theory in schools.”

Suburban areas may prove to be Youngkin’s strongpoint, as education has proven to be a winning issue for him with McAuliffe relying heavily on a racially divisive approach to spur voters into action — the Democrat put a bow on that approach Monday when he declared that there are too many white teachers in Virginia.

During a September debate with Youngkin, McAuliffe said parents should not be telling schools what they should teach and he has never lived down the controversial remark. He has also insisted again and again that toxic critical race theory is not taught in the state even though the Virginia Department of Education instructed public schools to “embrace critical race theory” in order to “re-engineer attitudes and belief systems” when the Democrat previously served as governor of Virginia from 2014 to 2018.

A recent poll by Cygnal, which is ranked as the most accurate national polling group, showed Youngkin with a significant lead among parents of K-12 children, receiving 56 percent of the votes among parents of school-age children, while McAuliffe lags 17 points behind at 39 percent.

In the BPR commissioned exit poll, voters were asked: “How much did the issue of parental control and involvement in education factor into your decision making when casting your ballot?”

More than 63 percent of those responding said the issue mattered — 50.1 said a lot, 13.5 said a little. Only 36.4 of voters said not at all.

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Tom Tillison

Senior Staff Writer
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The longest-tenured writer at BizPac Review, Tom grew up in Maryland before moving to Central Florida as a young teen. It is in the Sunshine State that he honed both his passion for politics and his writing skills.

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