The Republican Party’s great hope sat scrunched in the back of his gubernatorial SUV, acknowledging the high-stakes gamble he has undertaken. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has put all his political capital on the line in Tuesday’s statehouse elections, hoping to prove that a bluish state can be persuaded to go for conservative governance and restrictions on abortion.

“I don’t know how to hedge my bets,” said Youngkin, the lanky, affable former private-equity executive elected in 2021. “I don’t believe in it. I think that we are driving towards an outcome that I think is best for Virginia, and therefore I’m going to go to work with everything I have in order to try to deliver.”

Despite not being on the ballot himself, Youngkin has gone all in on the off-year vote that will determine which party controls the state Senate and House of Delegates and that tends to serve as an early sign of the national political mood. He has made it a mission to recruit, endorse, fundraise and campaign for the GOP’s legislative candidates, and has spent the final days before the election encouraging voters to elect a supportive “team” to back him up in Richmond. At the time he spoke, he had spent an unseasonably warm Saturday energetically stumping for Republican candidates in swing districts in Northern Virginia and was preparing to wade through the crowds shopping for saris and samosas at a Heritage India Festival near Dulles Airport.