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The Daily

A Rough Election Night for the Democrats

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 4 November 2021

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On a major night of elections across the United States on Tuesday, the Republican Glenn Youngkin claimed an unexpected victory over his Democratic opponent, Terry McAuliffe, to win the governor’s race in Virginia. As the night went on, it became clear that the contest in Virginia was not a singular event — Republicans were doing well in several unlikely places. What do the results tell us about the current direction of American politics? Guest: Alexander Burns, a national political correspondent for The New York Times.

Transcript

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0:00.0

From New York Times, I'm Michael Bolvaro. This is Adely.

0:10.2

Today, why Democrats fared so poorly in so many different parts of the country

0:18.3

in Tuesday's closely watched elections? I asked my colleague, National Political Correspondent,

0:25.4

Alex Burns. It's Thursday, November 4th.

0:38.4

Hey, Mr. Burns. It has been a really, really long time since you were on the show. In fact,

0:46.9

I did some math. It's been eight months. Has it really? Yep. I've counted every single day with

0:52.8

one of those dramatic X's on the calendar? And it's extremely fitting that after all that time

1:00.8

and all that bereftness on our part, you were turned on the day of the very first big election

1:09.3

since you left. I did not plan it out that way. No, but it did kind of work out. No. I just kind

1:15.2

of ran out of time off. But here I am just in time for these elections. So speaking of this

1:22.0

election, it felt like all of us were focused pretty much exclusively on the governor's race in

1:29.0

Virginia and the story there about an unexpectedly close contest. So how did that all unfold for you?

1:37.3

I think that's totally right. Going into the night really felt like Virginia was the main show

1:43.1

that's a state that's a trended towards Democrats over the last decade. But where you had a

1:47.6

Republican candidate, Glenn Youngkin, a newcomer to politics, a business guy, are running an

1:52.8

unexpectedly strong race against Terry McCallough, the former Democratic governor who's trying to

1:58.0

make a political comeback. And it really seemed like the question of hanging over the whole night was

2:02.8

can Glenn Youngkin pull off this distinctively strong performance in a tough state?

2:08.6

Right. And as the night went on, and as it became clearer and clearer that, yeah,

2:15.2

Glenn Youngkin probably was going to pull that off. We start to look beyond Virginia.

2:20.9

And we start to see evidence that maybe this isn't a singular event. Maybe there's something

2:26.4

happening here that relates to the larger fabric of American politics and the position of the

...

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