Note: An earlier version of the politics and political opinions section below was originally released prior to the 2024 election. The section has been updated to reflect on the survey results relative to the 2024 election results.
Political party affiliation among respondents to the survey continued to lean substantially toward the Democratic Party, in line with past Life in Hampton Roads’ surveys, but also continued to track a decline in overall party identification. Less than 26% of respondents (down from more than 31% last year) said they felt closest to the Democratic party when asked the question “Do you generally feel closer to the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, or do you consider yourself to be an independent or something else?” Approximately 20% (19.8% up from 16 percent) responded Republican Party. This difference from the previous year is partly due to a change in survey weighting methodology. This year LIHR was weighted on the basis of education in addition to other variables. If the survey was not weighted on education, Democratic identification would have been slightly higher (27.8%) and Republican identification slightly lower (18.4%).5 Affiliation with both parties remains lower than in several recent years. In addition, as in 2022 and 2023, more respondents identified as independents than with either party alone, with less than half of respondents affiliated with the major parties.
5 Inclusion of weights brings LIHR more in line with current national practice and adjusts for the tendency of more educated individuals to be more likely to respond to surveys.
In 2024, incumbent Democratic Senator Tim Kaine faced Republican challenger Hung Cao. The last time Kaine ran for Senate (in 2018) Kaine won statewide by a wide margin, winning 57% of the vote versus Republican Corey Stewart’s 41%. Within the seven Hampton Roads cities, Kaine won 63 percent of the two-party vote.
The 2024 survey asked respondents about their preferences in the Senate race. Overall, the results suggested that the Kaine campaign was positioned to win Hampton Roads, and the Senate race, but with a margin somewhat smaller than in 2018. Thirty-nine percent (39.6%) of all respondents indicated that they planned to vote for the Democratic candidate (61% of those who expressed a two-party preference), while 25.3% indicated that they would vote for the Republican candidate (39% of those with a two-party preference). Overall, these results were good news for Kaine, who appeared to be on track to win another Senate term. And the survey was quite accurate in relation to the final vote totals in the seven cities of
Hampton Roads. On November 5, Kaine received 60.2% of the two-party vote, and Cao received 39.8%. Thus, the survey predicted the final margin in Hampton Roads to within one percentage point.6
Roughly a third of respondents (34.9%) indicated that they currently would vote for someone else, would not vote, did not know who they would vote for, or refused to answer the question.7
6 As noted previously, the 2024 LIHR survey data were weighted by education as well as race, age, gender, Hispanic ethnicity, and phone type. Education was a new weighting variable relative to previous years. Had we used our ‘classic’ weights without education, the survey would have overstated Kaine’s support to a much greater degree. The results when education was not included among the weighting variables had Kaine at 64.1 percent of the two-party vote, and Cao at 35.9 percent, which would have been much less accurate than the results with weighting by education.
7 The figure includes all survey respondents, including non-registered voters. Thus, it does not add to 100 percent.
Survey data collection took place during a span of time that included the decision by Joe Biden to remove himself from the contest for the Democratic nomination. After Biden withdrew, a question was added to the survey that gave the final 237 survey respondents a chance to weigh in on that decision. This additional question asked: “Given recent events, do you support President Joe Biden's decision to not run for re-election in the 2024 election?”
More than 82% of respondents supported Biden’s decision, with opposition concentrated among Republicans, only 11.6% of whom opposed Biden’s decision, versus the 92.5% of Democrats who supported the decision.
Polling the presidential race itself was complicated by the changes at the top of the Democratic ticket and in the dynamics of the race. The survey ultimately included three versions of the question: a question asking about support for Joe Biden, a question asking about support for “the Democratic candidate” and a question asking about support for Kamala Harris. The analysis below basically merges responses to all three of these questions, but also includes an examination of shifting support.
In the most recent Presidential election, Donald Trump lost the seven cities of Hampton Roads by a substantial margin to Joe Biden. Biden won 60.6% of the two-party vote, while Trump won only 39.3%.
In the overall survey data, the Democratic candidate (again this combines Biden and Harris) received 56 percent of the regional two-party vote, with Trump winning 43.8%. The election results were fairly close to the survey totals, but the survey somewhat overstated support for Trump. Within the seven cities of Hampton Roads, Trump won 41.2 percent of the two-party vote while Harris won 58.8 percent.8
A likely explanation for the way the survey somewhat overstated Trump support is that the analysis above includes the period before Biden dropped out of the race, and many responses were collected during the period when Biden was a wounded candidate following a disastrous performance in the June 2024 presidential debate. In addition, some of the post-Biden-drop responses were collected before Harris was the official nominee, and the data collected once Harris was the nominee were from the initial weeks of her candidacy before she began to surpass Trump in national polling in early August.9 Thus, it is arguably not surprising that the survey somewhat over-stated Trump’s standing in Virginia relative to the final election result.
8 As noted previously the 2024 LIHR survey data were weighted by education as well as race, age, gender, Hispanic ethnicity, and phone type. Education was a new weighting variable relative to previous years. Had we used our ‘classic’ weights without education, the survey would have overstated Harris support instead of under-stating it. The results when education was not included among the weighting variables had Harris at 60 percent of the two-party vote, and Trump at 40 percent, which would have been slightly more accurate than the results with weighting by education.
9 Several individuals said they would vote for “some other candidate” during this period, and then responded with Kamala’s name. These were recorded as supporting the Democratic candidate.
This year’s survey included two questions about election security. The first question asked respondents how satisfied they were “with the election security at your polling place?” More than 80% indicated that they were very or somewhat satisfied and less than 9% were very or somewhat dissatisfied.
The second question asked, “In the past 10 years, has anyone tried to intimidate you when you voted in person at your polling place?” This question also indicated low levels of security issues at polling places, with less than 5% of respondents answering yes.
