- The Crosstab
- Posts
- What is happening in Virginia
Polling average and seems to indicate things could be slightly better in Virginia for Republicans.
Virginia has been trending away from the GOP from when Romney only lost by 4 in 2012 to the historic 10 point margin for Biden in 2020.
Early voting and mail voting data indicates turnout could be down.
Too early to tell but it is one of the states that are acting out of expectations so far this cycle.
What the Polls Say?
RCP Average
The polling in Virginia has been interesting. First the usual caveat that we do not get much public polling outside the tier 1 Presidential states (PA,WI,AZ,NV,NC) so we have to read a lot more tea leaves here than in those states.
However if we look at the average of 4.5 that’s half the gap that Biden won by. At the same time it is worth looking at the Mary Washington survey and WaPo survey in more detail to understand the difference between a Harris +2 and Harris +8 electorate.
Demographics vs 2020 CNN Exits
Ugh public polling and how little demographics they release to us. Kudos to University of Mary Washington for a lot more transparency than WaPo did. But honestly I was surprised how similar the internals were with one notable exception which is gender where WaPo was ore along the traditional pollster 53/47 line whereas UMW was set on the exits of 51/49.
Partisanship isn’t all that different either at R+3 in WaPo and R+4 in UMW.
I will say the biggest surprise here was on education. I expected when I started this that WaPo would have been more educated than UMW. Really no good on explanation in the composition that would account for a six point movement.
In short choose your own adventure on where things stand via polling. We need more data points but early data would seem to indicate that relative to the country as a whole VA may be shifting a tad to the right.
Suicide by reading early voting tea leaves
One of the worst things you can do is read the tea leaves of early voting, so let’s do just that!
Michael Prusser from DecisionDesk has done a good job on this and worth checking out his stuff here.
The long and the short of it is it looks like mail + EV turnout will be off 2020. This is the first real data point we have nationwide that might indicate that overall turnoff will trend down. That would be the first downard trend since 2012, but you have to keep in mind that 2020 was the highest percentage turnout since 1960!
Year | Votes | % of VAP |
|---|---|---|
2000 | 106M | 50.3% |
2004 | 122M | 55.7% |
2008 | 131M | 57.1% |
2012 | 129M | 53.8% |
2016 | 137M | 54.8% |
2020 | 158M | 61.5% |
Seeking impartial news? Meet 1440.
Every day, 3.5 million readers turn to 1440 for their factual news. We sift through 100+ sources to bring you a complete summary of politics, global events, business, and culture, all in a brief 5-minute email. Enjoy an impartial news experience.