April 7, 2026

Just two months into her term of office, Gov. Spanberger’s approval polling is barely above water. Her win last year was supposed to be the victory of pragmatic moderation over the voices of the far left, but since then Virginia voters seem to have realized she’s a left-wing partisan, not a moderate. Today the Washington Post has a story about this sudden turnaround.

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s approval rating stands at 47 percent two months into the Democrat’s term, with 46 percent of voters disapproving and 7 percent expressing no opinion in a Washington Post-Schar School poll.

Virginia voters may have bought the “pragmatic bipartisan grown-up” package last year, but two months into Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s term, the return policy is looking brutal: her Washington Post-Schar poll sits at 47 percent approval and 46 percent disapproval, a far cry from the moderation victory lap that helped deliver her 15-point landslide. Instead of settling into the sensible middle, Spanberger has quickly earned the kind of sharp polarization that usually comes with choosing sides and then acting surprised when people notice, including by moving on issues like limiting police cooperation with ICE. The result is a near-even split that’s weaker than the early numbers of recent predecessors and has Virginia voters realizing, with all the charm of a late-night plot twist, that “moderate” may have been more campaign costume than governing instinct.

Leave a Reply