“Is Trumpism as potent as the man himself was in terms of its damage? I think if polling is accurate, the answer has to be no,” Quentin Kidd, dean of the college of social sciences at Christopher Newport University and academic director at the Wason Center, told Newsweek.

“For the last five years in Virginia, Democratic candidates have been doing better. The term I’ve used for it is ‘Trumpflation.’ Voters were reacting very viscerally to the man himself.”

Kidd said the polling as it is has posed a sort of “existential crisis” for Democrats, who might not have expected polling to be as it is. For Republicans, on the other hand, he said, “there is almost like a high” leading to more enthusiasm among their voters.

“This is the first big test and I think it seems pretty clear that Trumpism is less potent than the man himself was,” Kidd said.

“Democrats are going to have to find another path.”