Did Gillespie ads turn off African American voters in Virginia?

By Gregory S. Schneider November 16 at 12:00 PM

Surveys of African American voters leading up to Virginia’s recent elections found that Republican gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie had surprisingly strong support among black voters in October but that he lost their votes in the final weeks of the campaign, according to a coalition of minority advocacy groups.

Democrat Ralph Northam won partly on the strength of overwhelming support from African Americans, who made up about 20 percent of the Nov. 7 electorate. The surveys and analysis released Thursday by the African American Research Collaborative in partnership with Latino Decisions said Northam drew that support partly because of two factors: heavy get-out-the-vote efforts that reached more than half of black voters in some locations, and racially charged advertising from Gillespie that played particularly poorly with African Americans.

“The messages that {Gillespie} was driving home, apparently to try to energize a base vote, really very clearly backfired,” said Henry Fernandez of Fernandez Advisors, a consulting group that coordinated the survey and analysis.

Gillespie had drawn criticism for ads that connected illegal immigration with the violent Latino street gang MS-13. He also aired spots late in the race that defended Confederate statues and heritage, and that promised a harsh position on illegal immigration. The group’s surveys showed that all those spots were viewed more negatively by black voters than by any other groups - even worse than among Latinos, who were the subjects of the MS-13 ads.
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Greg covers Virginia from the Richmond bureau. He was the Post's business editor for more than seven years, and before that served stints as deputy business editor, national security editor and technology editor. He has also been a reporter for the Post covering aviation security, the auto industry and the defense industry. Follow @SchneiderG