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Is there an enthusiasm gap in Virginia? Early voting data suggests, yes

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The enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans in Virginia has been well-chronicled by pollsters.

Wonder what early voting numbers might have to say about enthusiasm?

A lot that’s not good for Democrats, is what.

The 2020 cycle had 59.9 percent of the 4.5 million votes cast in Virginia – 2.7 million in all – cast as absentee, which would encompass traditional absentee votes and early votes, both in person and by mail.

This was just under five times the total number cast in the 2016 presidential cycle.

As of Monday, we’re at 724,965 early votes, according to the Virginia Public Access Project.

A little more than a fourth of what we ended up with last year.

Now, that’s with five days left to vote early in person, and eight to get ballots in the mail and on their way to where they need to be, though if you want to make sure your vote is counted, probably best not to wait until Election Day to get that done.

We’re not going to come close to making up the roughly 2 million vote difference from last year’s early voting, not that we have to.

Presidential years see the most turnout, for obvious reasons. Turnout was 75.1 percent of all of those registered in 2020, up from 72.1 percent in the 2016 cycle.

The last gubernatorial cycle to get above 50 percent was way back in 1993.

The last three – 2009, 2013 and 2017 – barely got past 40 percent.

The 2017 cycle had 2.6 million votes cast. Assume a similar number in 2021, and assume a similar percentage of early votes as in 2020, and we’d expect 1.6 million early votes.

We’re just under halfway there right now.

Why it matters to Democrats that early voting is not anywhere near where it was last year: early votes, last year, broke significantly to the D side.

For instance, in deep blue Fairfax County, Joe Biden, in 2020, received 76.9 percent of the absentee votes, 7.0 percent ahead of the 69.9 percent he received in the county overall.

Even in bright red Augusta County, Biden did better absentee – receiving 37.4 percent of those votes, 11.8 percent ahead of the 25.6 percent he received in the county overall.

Back to Fairfax: 69.5 percent of the votes cast in the 2020 cycle – 417,571 – were absentee.

As of Monday, according to VPAP, just under 100,000 early and mail votes had been cast in Fairfax County.

About a fourth of what we saw last year, in a county that Terry McAuliffe absolutely needs to run up not just a big victory points-wise, but raw numbers-wise.

Biden won Virginia, in terms of raw votes, by 451,138 votes in 2020. More than half of that margin – 251,542 votes – came in Fairfax.

Just under 225,000 votes from that margin in Fairfax County came from the absentee sector.

I’m dazzling you with numbers here, but the grand point is: the early GOTV isn’t going well at all for Democrats in 2021, relative to 2020.

Early votes aren’t dependent on the weather, aren’t influenced by a last-weekend surprise.

They’re locked in, and allow Election Day GOTV efforts to narrow in focus.

The way McAuliffe way underperformed the polls in his 2013 win over Ken Cuccinelli – the RealClearPolitics final pre-election average had McAuliffe winning by 6.0 points; he won by 2.5 points – the way the various polls out right now have the race too close to call has to have you worried that this one is trending away.

Story by Chris Graham

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