President Joe Biden said Tuesday that he expects Democrat Terry McAuliffe to pull out a win in the hotly contested Virginia gubernatorial race, despite polls showing the one-time governor of the commonwealth tied with or trailing Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin.
"We’re going to win. I think we’re going to win in Virginia," Biden said at a press conference in Scotland before acknowledging that "We knew from the beginning this is going to be a tight race and it is tight."
The president added that the winner of the election will likely be based on which voters showed up to the polls to vote.
Biden shot down concerns that the result of the Virginia election is reliant upon his performance as president, arguing that off-year elections are oftentimes unpredictable.
"I don’t believe, and I’ve not seen any evidence that whether or not I am doing well or poorly, whether or not I’ve got my agenda passed or not is going to have any real impact on winning or losing," Biden said. "Even if we had passed my agenda, I wouldn’t claim we won because Biden’s agenda passed."
He also expressed that he believed New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) would win reelection in the Garden State's gubernatorial election against Jack Ciattarelli, a former Assemblymember and small businessman. If victorious, Murphy would become the first Democrat to be reelected as the state’s governor in 44 years.
And while Tuesday's elections include multiple state and local races, and some special congressional elections, the bulk of the attention will be on Virginia, a state Biden won in 2020 by 10 percentage points.
Recent polls going into Tuesday's election have had Youngkin tied or with a slight edge over McAuliffe. The biggest disparity is a Fox News poll from last week that gave the Republican an eight-point lead.