CAN’T: The 2021 elections signal a GOP swing in 2022 — but not how much of one
For all the strong reactions to the New Jersey and Virginia results, however, it’s worth pointing out that it’s entirely normal for those two states to swing away from the president’s party — hell, it would have been strange if they hadn’t. In all but one of the two states’ 16 total gubernatorial elections since 1993, the party in the White House has performed worse than it did the year before in the presidential election. The one exception wasn’t exactly a dramatic one either, as the GOP lost the 2001 New Jersey governor’s race by about 15 points one year after losing by 16 points in the 2000 presidential contest.

Still, Virginia is a more competitive state at its baseline and has more regularly moved away from the president’s party, so observers tend to look at it as a potential indicator of future midterm results. But for all the focus on Virginia, since the early 1990s it’s been an inconsistent predictor of the next midterm result. From 1993 to 2018, the average difference between the swing in Virginia’s gubernatorial election from the state’s partisan lean and the margin in the midterm national popular vote for the House of Representatives was just shy of 7 percentage points. That error margin — and remember, our sample of elections here is relatively small; there could be an even bigger difference in 2022 — represents the difference between a “meh” or even OK year for Democrats in 2022 and a complete wipeout in both the House and the Senate.