INSTITUTE INDEX: Politics of racial division backfired in Virginia governor's race

Number of likely Virginia voters polled on the eve of the Nov. 7 election by Latino Decisions, a Seattle-based political opinion research firm, with an over-sampling of non-whites to ensure their views were properly reflected: 1,600

Percent of all poll respondents who said they planned to vote in the governor's race for Democrat Ralph Northam, currently the lieutenant governor, over Ed Gillespie, former chair of the Republican National Committee: 54

Margin by which Northam defeated Gillespie, who ran a racially charged campaign that focused on restricting immigration and defending Confederate statues: 54-45

Percent of Asian-American, Latino and African-American poll respondents, respectively, who preferred Northam: 69, 73, 89

Percent of white respondents who preferred Gillespie: 57

Month in which Gillespie's campaign began running the first negative ad in the general election, making a connection between violence committed by the MS-13 street gang to Northam's tie-breaking vote in the Virginia Senate against a ban on sanctuary cities: 8/2017

Percent of poll respondents overall who said the MS-13 ad made them less enthusiastic about Gillespie: 69

Percent of Asian-American, Latino and African-American respondents, respectively, who said so: 58, 67, 83

Percent of white respondents who agreed: 52

In response to what it called Gillespie's "fear-mongering," date on which the Latino Victory Fund — an outside political group unaffiliated with either campaign and a co-sponsor of the Latino Decisions poll — began running an ad in Virginia featuring a child dreaming that a Gillespie supporter in a Confederate flag-adorned pickup truck was terrorizing brown-skinned children: 10/30/2017

Number of days later that the group pulled the ad following a deadly terrorist truck attack in New York City: 1

Percent of all poll respondents who said they'd seen ads or heard discussion about Gillespie's anti-immigrant views: 47

About racism in his campaign: 61

Of all respondents who had neither seen an ad nor heard discussion about racism in the governor's contest, percent who favored Gillespie: 58

Percent of white respondents similarly situated who did so: 69

Of all respondents who had seen an ad or heard discussion about Gillespie and racism, percent who favored Northam: 66

Percent of white respondents similarly situated who did so: 57

Percent of all poll respondents who said Northam's support for in-state tuition for immigrants brought to the U.S. as children made them more enthusiastic about his campaign: 58

Percent of white respondents who said it made them more enthusiastic for Northam as well: 51

(Click on figure to go to source. Most of the numbers in this index are from Latino Decision's Elections Eve Poll, which was co-sponsored by AAPI Victory Fund, the African American Research Collaborative, America's Voice, CASA in Action, Latino Victory Fund and NextGen America.)