Terrific WP piece by Ray LaRaja and Alexander Theodoridis on how the VA GOP found its way to a more electable nominee for governor through the use of ranked-choice voting. The story does not highlight this additional fact: party leaders successfully managed to get the GOP to use a nominating convention, rather than a primary, to make the choice precisely to reduce the risk of ending up with a more extreme nominee. In other words, a combination of (1) party leader control over the method of nomination and (2) use of RCV played roles in Youngkin become the nominee. From the piece:
When there’s a national tide favoring one party, as there was for Republicans in this month’s elections, the key to victory can be as simple as picking a nominee who can ride the swell. This is not as easy as it sounds: The GOP in Virginia has conspicuously failed at the task before. But through sound decisions involving how they picked their nominee for governor — including the use of ranked-choice voting (RCV) by delegates to the statewide convention — Virginia Republicans made it more likely that they could take advantage of the opportunity before them.
What we, as political scientists, saw in this election was a strong and predictable national backlash against the party holding power in Washington — another case of the phenomenon that has produced losses for the president’s party in 11 of the last 12 Virginia gubernatorial elections. (The state’s contests have been called “correction elections” because of their timing relative to the presidential race.) But it is easy to squander a favorable national mood by picking a problematic nominee. In 1994, a very poor year for Democrats across the country, scandal-plagued Sen. Chuck Robb was spared defeat because Virginia Republicans chose Oliver North, a central figure in the Iran-contra affair, as their standard-bearer.
Something similar happened in the 2013 governor’s race, which otherwise had much in common with this year’s. At the time, President Barack Obama had a 52 percent disapproval rating, roughly the same as President Biden’s rating today — a result of strong opposition to the Affordable Care Act and the botched rollout of the health-care exchanges. But that year, McAuliffe managed to win, 48 percent to 45.5 percent, over the Republican firebrand Ken Cuccinelli II.
2013 and 2021: Two elections, same Democratic candidate, similar low polls for the president. The difference in outcome, we believe, came down to the Republican nominee. In 2013, the Virginia GOP selected Cuccinelli at a convention swarmed by right-wing tea party delegates. Seeing the writing on the wall, the mainstream candidate, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, pulled out before the convention.
To choose candidates for state office, the Virginia GOP sometimes runs a primary and sometimes holds a convention. To reduce the chances that a Trumpist candidate would run away with the nomination, party insiders this year pushed for a convention. (Because of the pandemic, it ended up being an “unassembled convention,” with delegates voting in 39 sites around the state.) To be sure, extremist candidates can also prevail at conventions, as such gatherings attract the most ideologically committed party members. But Virginia Republicans offset that tendency by instituting a system that let the delegates — some 53,000 — list their preferences in ranked order for all seven gubernatorial candidates, and requiring that the nominee secure a majority of votes (not just a plurality). That process forced candidates to reach out to the broadest possible spectrum of delegates, putting a thumb on the scale against the most extreme populism.