The final early-vote tally in Virginia ended up past the 1 million mark, but is still just 40 percent of what we saw in terms of early votes cast a year ago.
You could look at that and say, OK, voting in a gubernatorial election is usually about 40 to 45 percent of the electorate, so, we’re right on course.
Right?
Fine.
We were at 75 percent turnout a year ago. Unless turnout this year is on the bottom end of where it normally is, the early voting, which we know from last year trends blue, is a sign of a disaster in the making for Terry McAuliffe and the Democratic ticket.
Vote-rich, and deep blue, Fairfax County, for instance, ended up with 163,246 early votes, barely half the 321,219 early votes cast in Fairfax County in the 2020 cycle.
Fairfax County went 69.9 percent to Joe Biden last November.
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.
Another key county to watch is Loudoun, with a second, silent -u, which went 61.5 percent to Biden in 2020. There were 109,335 early votes cast in Loudoun in 2020; 56,716 this year, like Fairfax, barely over 50 percent.
McAuliffe and the D ticket need to run up large raw-vote margins in Fairfax, Loudoun and elsewhere in Northern Virginia to offset expected heavy losses in the west, southwest, south-central and the DC and Richmond exurbs.
McAuliffe, who is trailing in all of the recent, and presumably final, pre-election polls, by a narrow margin, needs turnout to be in the upper 40s or near 50 in NoVa.
The early-vote numbers in Fairfax and Loudoun would seem to portend overall turnout in those two localities on the low end of a typical gubernatorial cycle, in the low 40s, at best.
The McAuliffe campaign, considered the best bet, the most “electable” just a few months ago, has tried mightily to register with Democratic voters, who largely seem just apathetic and unenergized, particularly in relation to their Republican counterparts, who are rallying behind Youngkin over a mutual weariness over COVID restrictions, lingering resentment over gun control legislation and misguided concern over a push from Richmond for an embrace of LGBTQ+ equal rights.
The tailwind is on the side of Republicans, definitely, to the point that it would be an upset for McAuliffe and the Democratic ticket to come out ahead late tomorrow night.
The apathy and lack of energy in NoVa foretells that Virginia is about to take a few steps in the direction of being Texas.
Story by Chris Graham
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