The Virginia gubernatorial election won by Republican Glenn Youngkin , the former CEO of the private equity firm The Carlyle Group, confirms that Donald Trump s presidency inaugurated a new era of high-turnout elections.

He did so with a kind of racially coded appeal that Republicans have used to forge their winning coalition over the past 50 years but have updated for the Trump era. The issue of the teaching of critical race theory a post-civil rights era legal theory that racism is systemic in American law and institutions in public schools provided an ambiguous enough target to mobilize the rural Trump base to go to the polls while overlapping the issue with other education-related anxieties for persuadable suburban voters.

In Virginia, the critical race theory issue did not focus on the teaching of actual critical race theory, which is almost exclusively taught in universities and law schools. Nor did it solely focus on clumsy anti-racist teachings or the ideas that some anti-racist consultants promote that stem from critical race theory concepts .

But the issue still helped Youngkin turn out the base without scaring off swing voters in the way needed to win amid high turnout.

Finding an issue to do both was needed to win amid high turnout. Every election since Trump took office has seen increased turnout from a more motivated electorate. The 2017, the Virginia gubernatorial race saw turnout hit a record that was broken again this year. The 2018 midterms also saw record-high turnout, as did the 2020 presidential race. Each election appears to be building on the one that preceded it and any lingering doubts that Trumps effective absence from the political scene would dampen turnout have been quieted.

Though high turnout was once thought to confer an advantage to Democrats , with their base of support among lower-propensity voters, Trumps mobilization of the electorate, on both sides, means that Republicans remain as competitive in a world of high turnout as they were when voter numbers dropped precipitously, as they has in elections prior to Trumps election.

Youngkins win and the unexpectedly close New Jersey gubernatorial election, which had much lower turnout, also show that the GOP can do it without Trump on the ballot.

The main effect of Trumps two presidential election campaigns has been radical polarization along lines of educational attainment. Not only did he reveal and turn out a whole new batch of non-college-educated white voters who lean to the right, but he also converted some non-college-educated Latino voters (and non-college-educated Black voters, to a much lesser extent) to vote Republican. At the same time, college-educated voters of all races went Democratic at the presidential level at higher rates than ever before.

Youngkins win is a warning to Democrats that Republicans have a strategy for maintaining sky-high support from non-college-educated white voters, especially in rural areas, that doesnt deter them from persuading some suburban voters who had swung hard to Democrats. This augurs very poorly for Democrats in next years midterm elections unless the party finds a way to turn President Joe Biden s low poll numbers around and mobilize their base.

Sky-High GOP Turnout