Youngkin overstates his 2021 vote from Virginia cities

Gov. Glenn Youngkin recently told New York Republicans that their underdog nominee for governor, Lee Zeldin, was facing the same doubts that Youngkin encountered during his 2021 campaign.

"Here we stand in a moment just like I was last year," Youngkin said during an Oct. 31 Zeldin rally in Westchester, New York. 

"All these smart pundits said … ‘a Republican can’t win in New York,’ and that’s exactly what they said in Virginia last year: ‘No Republican can win for governor in Virginia. The suburbs are too blue, the media is too strong,’" he said. "They forgot to do one thing: Ask the voters."

Youngkin said his embrace of parental rights and strengthening education standards — similar to what Zeldin was calling for — turned Virginia’s race around. Among Youngkin’s  claims about the vastness of his victory was this: "We won cities that no Republican had ever won."

Youngkin won 50.6% of the vote in his 2021 victory over Democrat Terry McAuliffe. He and his two running mates — Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears and Attorney General Jason Miyares — became the first Republicans to win a statewide election in Virginia since 2009. (Zeldin lost his 2022 New York gubernatorial race to Democrat Kathy Hochul).

But did Youngkin win "cities that no Republican had ever won?" We fact-checked his claim and found it was wrong.

Youngkin won 14 of Virginia’s 38 independent cities: Bristol; Buena Vista; Chesapeake; Colonial Heights; Covington; Galax; Hopewell; Lynchburg; Norton; Poquoson; Radford; Salem; Virginia Beach and Waynesboro.

In 2009, Republican Bob McDonnell won 13 of those cities while winning the governorship. The exception was Covington, which was won in 2017 by Republican Ed Gillespie in a losing bid for governor.

In other words, every city Youngkin won had been won by another Republican since 2009. 

And if you go back to 1993, when Republican George Allen was elected governor in a landslide vote, every city Youngkin won had been won at least twice before by a Republican. 

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We asked Youngkin’s office to back up the governor’s claim and got an email from Kristin Davison, a private political consultant for Youngkin. She switched the subject.

Davison said, "Gov. Youngkin received the highest raw count among governors in every locality except Danville and Petersburg."

She sent a chart going back to McDonnell’s election in 2009.

Indeed, Youngkin had received the most raw votes in all but those two of Virginia’s 133 cities and counties at least since 2009. But that’s not all because of popularity. Virginia has made early voting and mail-in voting easier, and the state’s population has increased. In 2009, 2 million voters cast ballots in Virginia’s gubernatorial election compared with 3.3 million voters in 2021. That’s a 65% increase. Youngkin received 43% more votes than McDonnell.

Another way of looking at it: McDonnell got 58.6% of the vote compared with Youngkin’s 50.6%. 

But again, this is a diversion. Davison’s explanation dealt with raw votes and did not address Youngkin’s claim that he had won cities Republicans hadn’t won before.

Youngkin said that in his 2021 election as governor, "We won cities that no Republican had ever won." 

State voting records disprove him. Youngkin won 14 Virginia cities. Each of those cities had been previously won at least once by a Republican gubernatorial candidate since 2009. Each had been won at least twice by a Republican gubernatorial candidate since 1993.

We rate Youngkin’s statement False.