Three independent surveys put Virginia’s governor near even or underwater. Morning Consult has her at plus 17. The difference deserves scrutiny — not conspiracy theories.
By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
A new Morning Consult tracking poll has Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger sitting at 54 percent approval and 37 percent disapproval, a net positive rating of plus 17. Every other public poll on her this year says something closer to the opposite.
That gap is worth a second look, not because Morning Consult is some kind of front for Democratic donors — it isn’t — but because the actual number is such an outlier compared to three other independent surveys taken over the past six months.
The swapped-jerseys test
“Three different pollsters, three different methodologies, all landing within a point or two of each other. Morning Consult sits well outside that cluster.”
Run the numbers with the party labels removed and ask whether they’d still look normal. A first-term governor sitting at plus 17 net approval, six months into a term that began with a 15-point win, isn’t itself suspicious. What’s odd is that no other pollster working Virginia this year has found anything close to it.
- Virginia Commonwealth University’s Wilder School, released this week: 44 percent approve, 47 percent disapprove.
- The Washington Post and George Mason’s Schar School, released in the spring: 47 percent approve, 46 percent disapprove, the weakest early-term approval rating of any Virginia governor going back to George Allen’s administration in 1993, according to the Post’s own analysis. Fox News and other outlets picked up the same survey in their coverage that week.
- State Navigate, an independent Virginia-focused pollster, in April: 47 percent approve, 47 percent even.
Three different pollsters, three different methodologies, all landing within a point or two of each other in the mid-to-upper 40s on both approve and disapprove. Morning Consult’s Q2 reading of 54-37 sits well outside that cluster.
Maryland’s outlier has a paper trail. Virginia’s doesn’t.
“There’s no obvious financial or institutional relationship to point to, just a number that doesn’t match anyone else’s.”
MDBayNews has already covered the poll behind Moore’s 56-39 number in detail: it was built by Zenith Research, whose founder, Adam Carlson, has worked almost exclusively for Democratic candidates and party committees, for a client team, Blended Public Affairs, and the Annapolis lobbying firm Perry Jacobson, staffed by veterans of Maryland Democratic politics. That reporting also flagged that some of the outlets confirming the poll’s numbers, Maryland Matters and Baltimore Fishbowl among them, have their own leadership tied to a branded podcast the same sponsors underwrite. (Full details in “The Poll Saying Moore Is Up 27 Points Was Built by His Own Party’s Pollster,” Aug. 13.)
That’s a known, documented chain of partisan interest. It doesn’t mean Moore’s real numbers are fake; other pollsters, including UMBC and Gonzales Research, have shown him with solid, if softer, approval this year, but at least readers know who built the number and who’s paying for it.
Morning Consult’s Spanberger number doesn’t come with that kind of paper trail. It’s not built by a firm whose founder works exclusively for one party, and it’s not distributed through a podcast its sponsors underwrite. That actually makes the Virginia outlier harder to explain, not easier. There’s no obvious financial or institutional relationship to point to, just a number that doesn’t match anyone else’s.
On the funding question
“A single outlier reading, even a wide one, isn’t proof of a thumb on the scale.”
Morning Consult is privately held and venture-backed, not owned by a party committee or a partisan advocacy shop. Its funding history includes Advance Venture Partners, Susquehanna Growth Equity, and James Murdoch’s Lupa Systems, hardly a roster of Democratic megadonors. That said, its media partnerships lean the other way: the firm’s polling work is published through outlets like POLITICO, the New York Times, and Bloomberg News, all rated left-of-center by most media bias trackers, along with Fortune. That doesn’t make the underlying math wrong on its own, but it’s a fair thing for readers to know when they’re deciding how much weight to give any single Morning Consult number. Media Bias/Fact Check itself rates the firm nonpartisan, for what that’s worth.
That doesn’t settle the question of why this particular Virginia reading looks so different from everyone else’s. Online opt-in panels, which Morning Consult relies on, can behave differently from live-telephone or mixed-mode surveys, and house effects, a pollster’s tendency to consistently lean a point or two in one direction, are a real and well-documented phenomenon in the polling industry. A single outlier reading, even a wide one, isn’t proof of a thumb on the scale. It’s a data point that deserves to be checked against the field before anyone treats it as the last word on where Virginia stands.
“It’s a data point that deserves to be checked against the field before anyone treats it as the last word on where Virginia stands.”
The bottom line
Spanberger’s approval rating is a genuinely contested number right now, with most public polling putting her at or below water and one prominent tracker putting her comfortably above it. Readers weighing her standing heading into next year’s midterms should look at the full spread of polling rather than any single survey, this one included.
Sources: Morning Consult Virginia polling data (Q2 2026), prepared by Eli Yokley. Virginia Commonwealth University L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, Summer 2026 Commonwealth Poll, via Virginia Scope, Aug. 12, 2026. Washington Post/Schar School poll coverage via Cardinal News, April 8, 2026. State Navigate polling memo, April 15-16, 2026. University of Maryland, Baltimore County Institute of Politics poll, April 1, 2026, via Maryland Matters and WYPR. Gonzales Research & Media Services poll coverage via Yahoo News. Maryland Now poll, conducted by Zenith Research in partnership with Blended Public Affairs and Perry Jacobson, July 27-Aug. 3, 2026, via Fox Baltimore and Maryland Matters. MDBayNews, “The Poll Saying Moore Is Up 27 Points Was Built by His Own Party’s Pollster and Sold by a Podcast His Party’s Media Sponsors,” Aug. 13, 2026. Wes Moore campaign statement on Morning Consult polling, Feb. 2, 2026. Wikipedia and PitchBook entries on Morning Consult’s ownership and funding history. Media Bias/Fact Check profile of Morning Consult.
Keep MDBayNews Reporting Free
MDBayNews exists to help Marylanders understand decisions made by state and local leaders — especially when those decisions affect daily life, rights, and public services.
If this article helped clarify what’s happening or why it matters, reader support makes it possible to keep publishing clear, independent reporting like this.
Have a tip or documents to share?
We review submissions carefully and confidentially. Anonymous tips are welcome when appropriate.
Discover more from Maryland Bay News
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.