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Let’s start with the stipulation that the current government shutdown could hardly have been designed to be more damaging to Republican candidates in next month’s off-year gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey.

The White House is trumpeting another round of deep federal layoffs even before voters had forgotten about the pain from the Department of Government Efficiency cuts that hit Northern Virginia so hard this spring. And the move to punish Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) by trying to kill the New York Gateway project will cause just as much pain in New Jersey as it will in New York, since the project is supposed to ease congestion for commuters.

President Trump’s job approval in Virginia, according to the new poll conducted for The Hill by Emerson College, sits at 42 percent. Not coincidentally, that’s exactly the share of the vote that Republican state Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears gets in her match-up with former Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.), who clocked in at 52 percent. Those numbers closely track the results of a mid-September survey from Christopher Newport University, suggesting this isn’t an outlier.

Not only does Trump’s approval rating in Virginia pretty closely match his national average, it is identical to the number in the most recent high-quality poll on the New Jersey race. The bipartisan polling team at Fox News found Trump with a 42 percent approval rating in the Garden State and Republican gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli clocking in at, you guessed it, 42 percent of the vote against Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill.

The big difference in New Jersey compared to Virginia, though, is that the Democrat has had trouble breaking away from a Republican opponent bogged down by their national party’s brand. A September Emerson poll, also conducted for The Hill, showed Sherrill and Ciattarelli dead even. There have been three worthwhile polls of the race since the start of September and Sherrill leads by an average of 5.3 points, almost half of Spanberger’s average lead in Virginia polls over the same period.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris won New Jersey and Virginia by almost identical 6-point margins last year. That was substantially narrower than the 2020 presidential margin in both states, but it was New Jersey that closed the most: a 10-point swing in just four years, compared to 4 points in Virginia.

Add in the fact that Ciattarelli substantially overperformed preelection polls four years ago when he tried to knock off incumbent Gov. Phil Murphy (D) — losing by 3 points instead of the expected 9 points — and you see why Republicans are convincing themselves that New Jersey is trending their way.

A less satisfying answer for Republicans is that New Jersey is just a lot more politically elastic than Virginia. Democratic performance in New Jersey has swung up and down repeatedly this century, while the trend line in Virginia has gradually transited from light red to light blue. Arguing in that direction is Murphy’s unique unpopularity four years ago because of his hard-line COVID-19 stances. While he’s still underwater with voters by a single point in the Fox News poll, Murphy has rebounded from the depths of 2021 and 2022. But whether it's because of volatility or a genuine move to the right, Republicans have to like their chances better in New Jersey than Virginia.

You can typically tell which side thinks it is losing an election by which party is leaning into the culture war or personal attacks more. And the Republicans in both Virginia and New Jersey pretty clearly know they’re behind with a month and a day before the votes are counted.

In New Jersey, Ciattarelli has gone all in on a familiar attack from the 2024 election: stolen valor. Like the attacks on Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) over his National Guard service, Ciattarelli is trying to turn a positive for Sherrill — her Annapolis education and long Navy service — into a negative.

The Trump administration released Sherill’s largely unredacted service record, which made its way to the Ciattarelli campaign as part of an effort to tie her to a cheating scandal when she was at the Naval Academy. Sherrill admits she failed to turn in the cheaters and wasn’t allowed to walk with her graduating class 31 years ago but did........

© The Hill