Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This is a special bonus episode where I will go over a bunch of polls that we have gotten in recent days just to see where the campaign is and specifically taking a look at the attorney general race, because I think that’s shaping up to be the most competitive race this year in Virginia.
00:19.64
Sam Shirazi
So before I go over some of these polls, I did want to caveat that there’s a lot of what I would call partisan or partisan aligned polls coming out from both sides. Frankly, it’s more on the Republican side. There have been a few Democratic ones, but typically these are more on the Republican side.
00:35.62
Sam Shirazi
And it’s not that I completely ignore these polls, but I often have some skepticism on either side when a poll is being put out, because obviously there’s a reason the polls are but being put out. Sometimes the poll method methodology isn’t very clear. Sometimes there isn’t a lot of information about the poll in terms of The crosstabs. And so I have more skepticism of these partisan polls.
00:58.46
Sam Shirazi
And it’s, again, not like I totally ignore them. I take a look. I try to think about, okay, what are they telling us? But I will be honest with you, I’m not going to go over all of those in this episode, because I just think that’s a lot of polls. And, you know, some of them are good. Some of them are bad, i think.
01:14.77
Sam Shirazi
Some of them have more thorough methodology and they explain kind of how they came to their results. Some of them really have very little information. So I just think it’s not really worth spending a lot of time, especially since we’re going to be getting a lot of these partisan polls in the last few days of the campaign to really dwell on them.
01:31.07
Sam Shirazi
What I’m looking for are the nonpartisan polls, particularly from places that have either history in Virginia or have polled Virginia before. I think that’s going to be really helpful. Because, you know, you can kind of get a more realistic picture on those nonpartisan polls as opposed to the partisan polls, which obviously have a little bit of agenda and there’s a reason they were putting out there.
01:51.34
Sam Shirazi
Whereas the nonpartisan polls typically, you know, they’re trying to give a more accurate assessment of what’s going on. So I will start off with a poll from State Navigate. So State Navigate is an organization, nonprofit created by Chaz Netticombe, who has been a guest on this podcast and Chaz has been doing Virginia election stuff for a while.
02:11.90
Sam Shirazi
He started in 2017. He did it in 2021. 2023, he did a really good job in predicting every single race in the General Assembly. So I think Chaz has a good sense of what’s going on in Virginia.
02:22.84
Sam Shirazi
He helped put this poll together and he helped try to make sure that it was balanced and there was a good representation of what’s going on in Virginia. And so while I think You never want to just focus on one specific poll. I did take a closer look at this one because it’s nonpartisan and I know Chaz knows Virginia really well.
02:42.84
Sam Shirazi
So I want to go over that poll. I will say, I think this poll is more favorable for for the Democrats compared to other polls that have come out. And I think Chaz is maybe assuming a slightly bluer environment as opposed to some of these other polls.
02:57.20
Sam Shirazi
And I think when you’re modeling and putting together a poll, you’re always thinking about, okay, what is the electorate of the people in the poll? Because you don’t want to just have Democrats in the poll. You don’t just want Republicans in the poll. You want to have a good representation.
03:11.51
Sam Shirazi
And there’s other kind of demographics you want to take a look at. You want to take a look at race. You want to look at college education. And I think Chaz has tried to put together this poll, what he thinks it might look like on election day in Virginia.
03:23.81
Sam Shirazi
And, you know, I just want to kind of caveat by saying this is kind of one scenario about what Virginia might look like on election day, which is maybe more of a blue wave type scenario.
03:34.57
Sam Shirazi
And I will say, I think a lot of pollsters are scared to kind of go there because in previous elections, particularly the presidential elections, they’ve been kind of burnt on what’s been going on in polling.
03:45.82
Sam Shirazi
They miss some of the Trumpier voters who are less likely to respond to polls. And I think Chaz has tried his best to, you know, get a poll that is accurate for this year in Virginia and specifically for this environment, not necessarily looking back to 2024, not looking back at 2021, but trying to figure out, okay, what’s going on in 2025 in Virginia?
04:07.74
Sam Shirazi
This is kind of the snapshot from the state Navigate poll, so I’ll go over that right now. All right, so for governor, it had Democratic nominee Abigail Smanberger at 55%, and it had Winston Merle Sears, the Republican nominee, at 42%.
04:20.91
Sam Shirazi
For lieutenant governor, it had Ghazal Hashmi 53%, and it had John at For Attorney General, the State Navigate poll had Democratic nominee Jay Jones at 50% and the current incumbent Republican Attorney General Jason Meares at 45%. And then for House of Delegates, it had the Democratic ballot, generic ballot at 53% and the Republican won at forty one at 41%.
04:46.54
Sam Shirazi
So obviously this poll got a lot of attention because it’s much more friendly to the Democrats overall than most of the other polls that have been coming out. Now, keep in mind, a decent amount of those polls are GOP-aligned polls. So it kind of makes sense that this more nonpartisan poll would be friendlier to the Democrats.
05:02.34
Sam Shirazi
And I think the big surprise was really the attorney general number, because we’ve had a lot of talk about how you know Jason Meares is now in the driver’s seat. He might win. i think there’s certainly a possibility that Meares can win. But I think the problem Meares is having, and even in most of the GOP-aligned polls, is he’s having a ceiling around 45%, 46%. And you see that in this poll. So Meares is definitely the best performing Republican.
05:28.30
Sam Shirazi
I think he’s going to do the best out of the three statewide Republicans running. The question just becomes, you know, is he going to hit 46% and that’s kind of his ceiling or can he get up to 50%?
05:39.88
Sam Shirazi
And typically in most polling, Meares is not getting up to 50%. I think the thing that was surprising in this poll was that Jones was able to hit 50%. So Meares is getting 45%. I think that’s pretty expected.
05:52.67
Sam Shirazi
There’s been a lot of questions about can Jones get up to 50% because we talked about it before. There’s the issue of ticket splitting. There’s the issue of undervotes. And so this poll is saying that enough people are or backing Jones that he’s able to get up to 50%.
06:09.70
Sam Shirazi
and And, you know, it’s it’s an unknown. i think I think there is a very strong tendency among voters to come home at the end of the day and just vote straight ticket, particularly if you’re partisan, particularly if you’re upset at what’s going on in D.C. and you’re upset at President Trump.
06:22.54
Sam Shirazi
There’s going to be a strong temptation to just fill in the deep, deep bubble in every single race. and i And I think in terms of the as Australian general race specifically, i will just be honest. i mean, we live and breathe Virginia politics. if you’re listening to this policy, if you’re you’re listening to this podcast, I’m sure you are well aware of everything going on in Virginia.
06:40.99
Sam Shirazi
A lot of voters are not as tuned into as we are. And frankly, some of them probably have not heard about the text. And even if they have heard about it, just have very vague idea about what’s going on.
06:52.79
Sam Shirazi
You know, I think a lot of us have to keep in mind, particularly younger voters, how they have a very different way of approaching elections. You know, they get tuned in at the very, very end.
07:04.05
Sam Shirazi
And if they show up, they typically don’t know much about any of the candidates. And you know they might not even, frankly, know much about the governor candidate, let alone the attorney general candidate. But the way it works for a young voter is you wake up on election day, you realize there’s an election, you go to the polling place, and then you just vote for whatever party you feel like voting for. so i think you know as much as the people...
07:28.16
Sam Shirazi
who are closely following this election really live and breathe and know all the nuances of every single story. i mean, there are a lot of voters who are not like that. The question becomes how many of them show up on Election Day. And obviously, young voters are notorious for not showing up in in elections, particularly non-presidential elections.
07:45.24
Sam Shirazi
So it’s possible a bunch of them don’t show up. It’s possible a decent amount of them show up and their same day orration registration in Virginia. And they just vote straight ticket Democratic because, you know, whatever reason they’re upset at what’s going on at D.C. or they want to send a message. and And they just are not thinking that critically about every single race.
08:03.15
Sam Shirazi
So, anyways, all that has to say is like, I think with the Attorney General race, you just have to keep in mind, you know, there are different types of voters and some voters are very familiar with the tech story and there’s some voters who might barely even know about it. So, anyways, that in terms of the State Navigate poll, I think it was a helpful poll. I think it’s helpful to have a poll that’s maybe modeled a little bit more.
08:25.88
Sam Shirazi
In a typical off year election in Virginia, which typically in these off year elections, the party out of the White House tends to do better, tends to get out more of their base. And so I think if if this is like a typical year in Virginia, this poll is kind of showing you that. And that’s one possibility this year in Virginia, where you kind of have a 2017 type scenario.
08:46.70
Sam Shirazi
where people are upset at what’s going on in D.C., they’re upset at Trump, they just want to send a message, they vote for the Democrats. I think if that happens on election night, this is kind of the scenario you’re you’re looking at. All right, now let’s take a look at the VCU poll. So VCU at the Wilder Center put out a poll and they do periodically polls in Virginia.
09:04.31
Sam Shirazi
I will say typically the VCU polls have a decent amount of undecideds. And so you’ll see that in this poll. And I think while it’s helpful to have the poll, it’s also a little bit difficult to kind of get a full read on the race when you have the VCU poll having so many undecideds.
09:17.54
Sam Shirazi
I think the VCU poll is more like a type environment where Democrats are going to do decent in Virginia because it slightly leans to a blue state, but it’s not going to be this crazy blue wave according to the VCU poll.
09:33.05
Sam Shirazi
It’s not going to be a red wave either. I think it’s more kind of a typical Virginia elections. Democrats have the advantage. And you’ll see some of these numbers. There are a decent amount of undecideds specifically below the top of the ticket.
09:43.48
Sam Shirazi
And i think that makes it particularly hard to figure out in this poll what’s going on in the attorney general race. So
09:49.86
Sam Shirazi
All right, so I’ll give you the numbers in this VCU poll. For Governor, Abigail Spanberger is at 49%. Winston Merrill Sears is at 42%. For Lieutenant Governor, Ghazal Hashmi is at 44%, and John Reed is at 43%.
10:04.58
Sam Shirazi
And then for Attorney General, Jason Meares is at 45%, and Jay Jones is at 42%. is at forty two percent Okay. And they also did a generic ballot for the House of Delegates, and that was 47% Democratic and 44% Republican.
10:20.95
Sam Shirazi
And again, we’re seeing a decent amount of undecided. I mentioned Miárez, he’s at 45%. Again, he’s kind of at the ceiling where he hits 45%, 46%. I think he’s going to get up to 45%, 46%. The question is, again, how much higher can he go?
10:35.49
Sam Shirazi
And there’s something that I haven’t talked about, which you know you hear thrown around, the idea of shy Jay Jones voters. So what that means is maybe in a poll, for whatever reason, they don’t tell the pollster that they’re going to vote for Jay Jones. Maybe that’s because they don’t want to admit that they’re voting for him.
10:51.07
Sam Shirazi
Maybe they are undecided, and then at the last minute they decide to vote for him. So there’s this... potential where, you know, if you’re at 45, 42% in a poll, obviously that there is going to be a decent amount of undecideds there, about 13%. So where did those people go? Do they go to Meares? Do they go to Jones?
11:09.99
Sam Shirazi
Do they get split? If there is this late movement towards Jones for whatever reason, because Democrats come home or maybe the late deciding voters are kind of out of it and they don’t even really know about the tech story and they just all go to Jones, I do think even if Meares is showing a little bit of a lead at the end,
11:25.60
Sam Shirazi
If he can never kind of get above the hump and get to 50%, there is this possibility that Jones is able to pull it off at the end. And obviously the top of the ticket margin for the attorney general race is the most important thing. So I think if Spanberger is winning closer to the VCU number of 7%, I think that is going to be tough for Jones. And that’s kind of the environment where Jason Mears might be able to win.
11:46.85
Sam Shirazi
If we’re closer to the state navigate environment where Spanberger is winning by 13%, I think that’s clearly more in the area where Jones is going to be able to pull it out and vrs is going to have a much harder time if we’re we’re looking about double digit win for Spanberger at the top of the ticket.
12:02.03
Sam Shirazi
And again, I wanted to give you these two polls. They’re nonpartisan. They’re kind of giving you different potential outcomes in Virginia. yeah it’s it’s never a good idea to kind of hyper fixate on one poll. It’s good to have kind of a sense of, okay, this is what one poll is showing. This is what another poll is showing. Again, i just wanted to kind of flag the nonpartisan polls at this time.
12:20.33
Sam Shirazi
You know, if you want to look it up, you can look it up all the partisan polls. I think it’s just too much. And again, some of the partisan polls, I trust a little bit more than the others. Some of them I’m very dubious about because they just don’t have a very clear explanation of how they reach those results.
12:35.12
Sam Shirazi
So, I think both State Navigate and BCU put out a bunch of cross tabs, put out their numbers. You can go look at it. I think, you know, it’s, I think what it’s telling us is Spamburger is definitely in the driver’s seat to potentially win this year in Virginia.
12:50.93
Sam Shirazi
the Question is, does she get a big win, a smaller win? I think the bigger the win for Spanberger, the bigger the down ballot implications are going to be. And potentially, Jay Jones could win for a Attorney General and Democrats can flip a lot of seats in the House of Delegates.
13:05.34
Sam Shirazi
The smaller the Spanberger win, obviously, you’re going to have the opposite effect. And, you know, we’ll just have to wait and see how things shake out. I did want to talk about the House of Delegates because it doesn’t get a lot of attention because so many people are focused on the governor’s race and now the you attorney general’s race. But the House of Delegates is super important. And I think for this week on Saturday, I will go through the House of Delegates races because I just think we’ve reached the point.
13:47.12
Sam Shirazi
So I think it’s really helpful to have that. And so this week, State Navigate released a poll regarding House District 86. So this is in the Hampton Roads area. It includes part of the cities of Hampton and Pocosin, and also includes a small part of York County.
14:03.01
Sam Shirazi
And this is a close seat in 2024. Harris barely won it by about 1.5%. The current incumbent Republican is A.C. Cardoza, and he is being challenged by Democrat Virgil Thornton.
14:17.02
Sam Shirazi
I will say, you know, Cardoza has some issues, and he he even before the issues came out, he is not considered necessarily the strongest incumbent, partly because he hasn’t fundraised a lot, partly because he hasn’t been there that long. He only won in 2021.
14:33.13
Sam Shirazi
And the other thing to keep in mind is the Democrats are spending a lot of money in this district. I think that was a big surprise in the campaign finance reports, how much money the Democrats were spending in this district.
14:44.77
Sam Shirazi
Because frankly, in 2023, it really wasn’t much of a battleground. It was kind of an afterthought. This year, very much the Democrats are targeting it. And I think the State Navigate poll shows that there’s a reason the Democrats are targeting it.
14:57.69
Sam Shirazi
And frankly, I’m sure the Democratic internals are also looking pretty good for them. Because they wouldn’t be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars if they didn’t think there was a chance they could win this seat. So I will go over the State Navigate poll now.
15:09.62
Sam Shirazi
All right. So in terms of the State Navigate poll for specifically the House District 86, for governor, it had Abigail Spanberger winning this district 52% to 47%.
15:21.07
Sam Shirazi
For lieutenant governor, it had Ghazala Hashmi winning the district 50% 49%. percent to forty nine percent For Attorney General, it had Jay Jones winning this district 50% to 49%. And finally, for the House of Delegates, the the two candidates running in this district, it had the Democrat winning 52% to 46%.
15:39.84
Sam Shirazi
And so there’s a lot going on in this poll. Generally, this is showing that... the environment is going to be bluer, at least at the top of the ticket, than 2024, because in 2024, Harris won this sheet by about 1.5%. Here, Spanberger’s winning the seat by 5%. I think the thing that was really surprising about this poll was the Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General race, specifically that in the Attorney General race, there wasn’t much ticket splitting.
16:04.90
Sam Shirazi
especially basically it was the same as the lieutenant governor’s race. Now keep in mind Hampton Roads, Jay Jones comes from Hampton Roads, so he’s probably going to be doing doing a little bit better there. This district is about a quarter black, and I think Jay Jones in terms of the voters most likely to stick with him. with with him They’re basically black voters in Hampton Roads.
16:21.62
Sam Shirazi
So a little bit of caveat there. I think the other thing obviously interesting in this poll is the Democrats, at least according to the State Navigate poll, are on track to flip this seat 52% to 46%. Partly, I think that’s because AC Cardoza is not a strong incumbent. Partly, I think it’s because the Democrats are investing a lot in this district.
16:40.00
Sam Shirazi
So, I mean, if they flip this seat, it’s going to be a very good night for them in the House of Delegates. You know, the one thing I wanted to caveat about this district specifically is I mentioned the district’s about a quarter black in Hampton, and most of those are in the city of Hampton.
16:55.43
Sam Shirazi
I think there is a scenario where the Democrats just don’t get the same amount of turnout potentially in the city of Hampton. And I mentioned another city in the district, Pocosin, that’s a much more Republican district district.
17:08.98
Sam Shirazi
people tend to come out in that part of the district. It’s not a huge city, but it just gets pretty high turnout. So I think there could be this turnout dynamic where maybe on a poll, if you just pulled the district, you think the Democrats would be able to win. But when the turnout ends up happening, more Republicans come out. So the Republicans are able to pull it out. So again, it’s one poll. I wouldn’t necessarily obsess over it. I think a lot of things on election night come down to turnout and,
17:37.49
Sam Shirazi
particularly down ballot.
17:39.21
Sam Shirazi
Okay, so one last thing I wanted to cover is just The idea of turnout versus persuasion, I think at the top of the ticket, it’s pretty clear that Spanberger is getting a decent amount of persuasion. I think she’s going to be the strongest performing Democrat.
17:52.40
Sam Shirazi
So, you know, we can put the governor’s race aside because I think both sides are kind of coming to the conclusion that’s going to be very unlikely that for the Republicans to win that race.
18:02.72
Sam Shirazi
I wanted to focus more on the attorney general race, to be honest, and you know to a certain extent, this also has implications for the House of Delegates. I think for those races, it’s going to be less persuasion because people are more kind of loyal to the party that they typically vote for down ballot. So I think there’s going to be less Republicans voting for the Democrats down ballot than potentially at the top of the ticket.
18:26.82
Sam Shirazi
And voters in the middle, if you if they lean conservative, they may vote for Spanberger, but I think they’re going to stick more with the party that they’re usually loyal to down ballot. So I think a lot of the House of Delegates and the Trade General is going to come down to turnout.
18:40.76
Sam Shirazi
Specifically, I’ve talked about this before. Black voters in Hampton Roads, both for House of Delegates and the Attorney General race. I also think increasingly for the Attorney General race, students are going to be important. Students are important in the House of Delegates as well.
18:54.40
Sam Shirazi
I say students, but really young people, college students. because those voters tune in very late. And like I said, they typically don’t think too much about down down ballot. And so you can see this scenario where there’s kind of a surge of Black voters, there’s a surge of young people at the end, and that will help the Democrats in the House of Delegates. That should help Jay Jones for a Attorney General.
19:15.99
Sam Shirazi
So I think that’s one scenario. And maybe the State Navigate poll is kind of thinking that’s going to be a more likely scenario. I think there’s this other scenario where For whatever reason, because it’s an off-year election or voters aren’t paying attention, that doesn’t happen. So the black turnout isn’t that great.
19:31.94
Sam Shirazi
Younger voters don’t come out. And I think that’s going to be tougher for the Democrats in the House of Delegates, tougher for Jay Jones. And so as we’re getting closer and closer to Election Day, I think it’s important to think about turnout.
19:43.58
Sam Shirazi
And I just wanted to note one last thing that happened. It was announced that the Saturday before the election on November 1st, there will be a rally in Norfolk with a former President Obama, who’s going to come to campaign for Spanberger.
19:56.89
Sam Shirazi
Now, some people are saying, well, why is Obama coming to Virginia if Spanberger is winning? i mean, he’s come to Virginia in every single election since 2005. So this is just kind of been a tradition. Obama comes to Virginia. If you’re a campaign, I said this, it’s pretty much malpractice to not have Obama come because why you get a lot of free earned media. So obviously a former president campaigning, you will get a lot of local news coverage. You’ll get national news coverage. So it’s just a bunch of free media. You know, it’s kind of obviously you’re going to want that.
20:25.81
Sam Shirazi
Also, your base is going to get enthusiastic. President Obama is very popular among the Democratic base. And then finally, specifically with black voters, i mean, he is a popular figure with black voters, and you would want them to get energized and to go out and vote and to tell their friends to vote. And so i think for all those reasons, it makes sense for Obama to come out. And it’s certainly going to be a boost for Smanberger. I think the question is, how much does it also boost Jay Jones for attorney general? Does it also boost some of the House of Delegates candidates? We talked about the 86th district.
20:53.97
Sam Shirazi
It’s one fourth black. It’s in Hampton Roads. Norfolk is obviously the same media market as Hampton, the city of Hampton. So all this is going on in order to kind of get that blue wave potentially for the Democrats. doesn’t mean it’s going to happen, but I think that is why you’re seeing certain things happening on the campaign trail.
21:10.77
Sam Shirazi
We’ll see if it happens. We’ll see if State Navigate, their poll ends up being right, or maybe we’re closer to a VCU environment. Who knows? I wanted to kind of lay out these polls as we’ve we’ve seen them.
21:21.56
Sam Shirazi
we there There will be more polls. I will typically only report on the good polls, the ones I think are nonpartisan, the ones I think have good methodology. I’m not going report every single poll. Just be weary when you see a bunch of random polls out there, especially from people and organizations that you you may not be super familiar with. you know i will I will flag the more important polls. in my final podcasts before the election.
21:44.94
Sam Shirazi
So I appreciate everyone who’s been listening a lot going on. As I said, I’m going to be putting out more episodes. Some of them are more interviews. Some of them are going to giving you my thoughts. You know, it’s, it’s the, it’s the final countdown until the election. It’s really exciting. I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. This has been federal fallout and I’ll join you next time.
