Today, voters in Virginia cast their ballots for their next governor, choosing between Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin. As David wrote in his column for Roll Call last week, education has become one of the factors shaping the election, particularly in the wake of McAuliffe’s comment during a debate that, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach”.
A survey released last week looked at the question in a little more detail. Released October 26, the USA Today/Suffolk University survey asked voters whether parents or school boards should have more of an influence on a school’s curriculum. One in two voters (50%) said it should be parents, with 39% saying it should be the school boards. By party, only Democrats said it should be the school boards (16-70 parents-school boards), while Republicans (79-12) and independents (57-32) were more in favor or the parents exercising this control.
In the USA Today/Suffolk survey, among those voters that said education was their top issue Youngkin was leading McAuliffe by 12. In a recent Washington Post survey, among those voters that said education was their top issue Youngkin led by 9. However when the entire electorate was asked who could best handle the issue of education it was basically tied (McAuliffe 47-Youngkin 46). This is a noteworthy outcome, given that Democrats traditionally lead on education issue handling nationally, as our own past work for Winning the Issues has shown.
Finally, education in the USA Today/Suffolk survey was among the top issues voters cited as mattering the most in their decision for governor, behind only the economy and jobs. In the Washington Post survey education (24%) and the economy (23%) were virtually even. Clearly this reflects that education is a key issue on many voters’ minds, which may have implications beyond Virginia.
