Didn't one or two of them also double down on schools deciding what is best for your children and the hell with what parents think? I heard someone suggesting that issue was a big part of the swing in voting.
yes, McAuliffe pretty much doubled down on that, and that turned a LOT of parents against him.
But that happened in September at the last debate.
At that moment Youngkin was still a point or two behind and IIRC it had been pretty stagnant for a few weeks.
That means that McAuliffe, who had been playing the Trump card the whole race to that point, had stalled with that messaging and was, in fact, losing ground on that message. Polling after the election pretty much showed that no, people were no longer recoiling in horror at the spectre of Trump because, well, he's no longer in office...
But when Youngkin took McAuliffe's statement on parents should get no say in what their kids are taught... well, we all know how that ended up.