The heat is on in Hampton Roads.
On the first day of early voting in Virginia, September 19th, Democrat Virgil Thornton sent shockwaves through Virginia politics when his campaign began airing an ad that calls incumbent Republican Delegate A.C. Cordoza “a dangerous predator.”
Cordoza is running for re-election in HD-86, a Harris +1.6 district with the eastern part of Hampton City, the southeastern part of York County, and all of Poquoson City. In 2023, he coasted to re-election with a 13-point win.
That’s unlikely to be the case this year. Cordoza is more likely to match his 2021 performance — not in margin of victory, but rather his electoral underperformance that year. In the current HD-86, which is almost entirely comprised of Cordoza’s old HD-91, Democratic candidates for the House of Delegates outran Terry McAuliffe by 3%.
The 86th is a working-class district in Hampton Roads that Democrats look positioned to flip back into their column. Last Wednesday, Virgil Thornton took the lead for the first time in the State Navigate Virginia House of Delegates forecast, albeit narrowly. As of this writing, Thornton has about a 1% lead in the forecast.
Over the weekend, State Navigate conducted its first-ever poll for a House of Delegates district with a bipartisan team that shares a deep appreciation for polling. We asked likely voters in HD-86 how they plan to vote in the upcoming races for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, and the House of Delegates. We also asked them whether they approve of the job President Trump and Governor Youngkin are doing, and who they blame for the ongoing federal government shutdown. The poll was weighted by race, education, age, 2024 presidential recall, and locality.
In the statewide races, Abigail Spanberger is poised to improve upon Kamala Harris’s 2024 margin in the district: she has a 5% lead over Winsome Sears in the race for Governor. In the race for Lieutenant Governor, Democrat Ghazala Hashmi has a one-point lead over John Reid. In the race for Attorney General, Democrat Jay Jones has a 1% lead over Republican Jason Miyares.
Most political insiders on both sides of the aisle believe that in most of the competitive House of Delegates races, Republicans will overperform Winsome Sears. That does not seem to be the case in the 86th: Virgil Thornton has a 6% lead over A.C. Cordoza.
Democrats sensed an opportunity here in September, and invested heavily in Thornton, according to recent campaign finance reports on State Navigate. Thornton has spent 3.5x more than Cordoza in his campaign.
State Navigate will be fielding at least one House of Delegates poll this upcoming weekend in HD-64, and may do another in HD-73, depending on funding availability. If you would like to help us poll both seats, you can click here to make a tax-deductible donation to our polling fund. Tomorrow, State Navigate will release its first-ever statewide poll for the VA election.
Full results of the poll for HD-86 can be found here. The sample size are 325 likely voters within HD-86, and the survey was conducted from the afternoon of Friday, October 17th through the end of October 18th.