Pre-election polls in Virginia showed the same pattern. President Joe Biden’s favorable rating was about 50-50, but Trump’s favorable rating was consistently negative by about 15 percentage points. In the most recent Fox News poll that asked about Trump and Biden, taken in mid-October, independents viewed Biden unfavorably by nearly 10 points, but they viewed Trump unfavorably by 25 points. As for Trump’s base—voters who express a strongly favorable view of him—they’re outnumbered two-to-one in Virginia by voters who express a strongly unfavorable view of him.

A survey taken two weeks ago by Cygnal, a Republican firm, illustrates the extent to which Youngkin relied on the anti-Trump vote. In that poll—which found that the Republican candidate had surged to a tie—McAuliffe was getting only 3 percent of his support from voters who expressed an unfavorable view of Biden. Youngkin, by contrast, was getting 16 percent of his support from voters who expressed an unfavorable view of Trump. Without those anti-Trump voters, Youngkin would have trailed badly.

When you measure the anti-Trump vote by how people voted in 2020, as opposed to the former president’s favorable ratings, you get the same result. In every survey of likely or actual voters taken in Virginia this year, people who said they had cast ballots for Biden in 2020 outnumbered people who said they had cast ballots for Trump. The margins ranged from 6 to 10 points. So how did Youngkin win? On average, in these polls, Youngkin got more than 7 percent of Biden voters, while McAuliffe got only 2 percent of Trump voters. Biden voters, not Trump voters, were decisive.