Hi, everyone. i’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Feroa Fall Out the Virginia Elections. This episode, we will go over the election day here in the Commonwealth of Virginia as voters go to the polls to cast their ballots in this redistricting referendum.
00:13.62
Sam Shirazi
And then at seven o’clock, we will start to see the results. So certainly an exciting day and the culmination of a... an Interesting campaign that is something that was unique in Virginia history, a redistricting referendum in the spring. And first I want to go over the vibes, see where we are, and then I’ll talk about what to expect as the results start to come in this evening. Adam So to begin with the vibes, I think this has certainly been a vibes election. And what I mean by that is we haven’t gotten that many polls.
00:40.70
Sam Shirazi
Honestly, in terms of the high quality polls that I trust, we only got two of them really with the ballot language. One of them was from the Washington Post-Shar school. The other one was from State Navigate. And they both roughly show the same thing about a five point lead for the Yes campaign in a likely motor likely voter model.
00:59.86
Sam Shirazi
And I think that is kind of where the vibes are. The vibes are there’s a single digit lead for the Yes campaign. This isn’t overwhelmingly a slam dunk for Yes. I think it’s certainly closer than 2025 in terms of the governor’s race.
01:15.45
Sam Shirazi
And so... I think the thing that’s been a little bit challenging as a political analyst is we don’t have a lot of data. I’m going to talk about the early vote a little bit, but obviously you like to get polls. You like to get multiple polls from multiple different sources to get a little bit of a range. And we haven’t gotten that. We’ve essentially got these two polls.
01:33.71
Sam Shirazi
I think both of them are solid polls. We had Chaz Naticom on talking about State Navigate. State Navigate was obviously very accurate in 2025. And so I trust they navigate Washington post. Sure also has a solid track record in Virginia. There’s been other polls and I haven’t really mentioned them. a lot of them have kind of been, you know, partisan junk that’s been put out there. And so I don’t want to spend too much time on it because I don’t think they’re super trustworthy.
01:58.90
Sam Shirazi
But there are not a lot of polls to go off of. So that’s challenging. I think the other set of data that we have to go off of are is the early vote. And, you know, I certainly like looking at early vote in Virginia. But I think there’s a lot, as I said, often an over extrapolation about early vote. And the really the thing we don’t know about early vote is how is how is it breaking down? We have a sense of, OK, these people probably are Democrats. These people are are probably Republicans, but we don’t know, are they voting yes or no? They could be voting more for yes than we’re expecting. They could be voting...
02:33.03
Sam Shirazi
for no more than we’re expecting. And there’s no way of knowing that until the results start coming in. So while I will talk about early vote a little bit, I am always hesitant basically every election to overanalyze early vote. So for example, in 2025, if I saw the early vote, I’d say, yeah that’s pretty good for the Democrats, but it didn’t look like a landslide purely off the early vote.
02:54.82
Sam Shirazi
And so If you showed me the early vote and then you showed me the final results in 2025, I wouldn’t be able to predict that just off the early vote because it showed the Democrats were doing well, but not that they were going to get a 15 point win in the governor’s race. There’s really no way of extrapolating that from the early vote.
03:10.95
Sam Shirazi
And again, there’s no way of really extrapolating what’s going to happen in this election off the early vote. I can give you some initial thoughts based on some modeling that State Navigate has done and that L2 has done in terms of the early vote.
03:26.34
Sam Shirazi
And most people are comparing the early vote to 2025. And I think that’s a fair comparison. And I think there are some things you can learn from the 2025 comparison. However, I’m also a little bit hesitant because I think it is a little bit of apples and oranges. So i I don’t want to go too crazy with the early vote analysis. What most of the modeling has shown is that the early vote compared to 2025 is a little bit redder, maybe two to three points redder, at least if you’re just kind of purely modeling party ID.
03:55.51
Sam Shirazi
you know I think there’s a few reasons for that. i I do think the Republicans are more energized this year than they were in 2025. You can see that in some of these counties, like rural red counties in southwest Virginia, where there hasn’t been any change to satellite voting locations. And the early vote is up in those counties. So I think i the early vote, you can say there’s a little bit more enthusiasm on the Republican side compared to 2025.
04:34.73
Sam Shirazi
And I think if you look at the turnout in some of the blue areas in Virginia, I think it’s pretty much matching 2025 with some minor exceptions. And I think those minor exceptions, for the most part, you can explain by changes in satellite voting locations. And you hear me talk a lot about the satellite voting locations issue because in some localities, it can make a big deal. So I’m going flag Chesapeake.
04:56.74
Sam Shirazi
Chesapeake is a locality in Hampton Roads, pretty big actually, even though you don’t always hear about it. Tends to be a swing county. Democrats did well there in 2025. There were a bunch of satellite voting locations in Chesapeake in 2025.
05:10.71
Sam Shirazi
There were zero satellite voting locations. There was only one early voting site in Chesapeake, which is a big county population-wise, big county geographically. And so naturally, we’ve seen a big fall in the early vote in Chesapeake this election.
05:24.89
Sam Shirazi
That doesn’t mean those people aren’t going to vote. It just tells me Because there were no satellite voting locations, those people are probably going to vote on election day. And so I think that’s where you start getting this apples to oranges type comparison where you can’t just purely compare 100% to 2025 because there will be in some places more election day turnout than there was 2025. So the fact that the early vote is a little bit redder than 2025. While I do think part of that is the Republican enthusiasm, I think part of that is also the reduced satellite voting locations. And another indication that might be the case is on Saturday was the last day of early voting. We got a lot of early voting, over 99,000 early votes Saturday didn’t quite hit the number of early votes we got in 2025 on the final day, again, because of the satellite voting location issue. But in a couple localities, I’m thinking about Arlington and Loudoun.
06:17.68
Sam Shirazi
Those two locations, which are generally, Arlington is very blue and Loudoun leans blue. Those two locations had the biggest day of early voting ever. So that includes presidential elections. So Loudoun and Arlington had more early votes on a single day on Saturday than they’ve ever had before. And that is telling me there’s something going on with the satellite voting locations. And I think that is part of the story. And so long story short, I do think there is a possibility on election day, we see more more votes coming out of blue localities that didn’t have as much satellite early voting as they did in 2025.
06:54.02
Sam Shirazi
I think when you when you take that all into account, I think the early vote is perhaps a little bit redder when you’re looking at some of these counties. There’s a little bit more enthusiasm for the Republicans. so But it’s not to the point where I can tell you who’s going to win or I can give you a confident number based on the early vote. I think we can say... It’s going to be closer than 2025 governor’s race. I can say that pretty confidently based on the polls, based on the early vote. It is going to be closer than 15 points, which is not a super surprise. and i And I think this is where the vibes analysis comes in.
07:49.25
Sam Shirazi
And, you know, why do I say that? I will say this just kind of honestly. i think the Republicans are more fired up than they were in 2025. yeah you know For most of that year in 2025, the Republicans were in pretty bad shape. I think at the end with the Jay Jones story about his text, there was a little bit more enthusiasm, something a little bit more to wake up Republicans. But even then, i think it was it was not...
08:12.45
Sam Shirazi
that great. And you could just tell the the Democrats in 2025 were much more energized, much more before i fired up. I think this time, the Republicans have more energy. think There’s more grassro grassroots kind of activism to try to push the no vote. so And you see that a little bit in some of these early vote in some of these rural counties being a little bit higher than 2025. So I do think in terms of pure vibes, the Republicans are doing a little bit better I think Democrats certainly have energy as well. The question becomes, you know besides the hardcore partisans, how excited are kind of the soft Democrats for this? and I think the Democrats have had to do a lot more persuasion. They’ve had to spend a lot more money. I think in 2025, Spanberger as a governor’s candidate was a pretty easy sell. I think she appealed to soft Democrats. She appealed to independents. I think it was just easy for someone to spamberger for someone like Spanberger to get a 15 point win in Virginia in 2025. I don’t want to say easy, but I could see how it happened because of her candidacy and the energy that was on the Democratic side. I think this time it’s a little bit of a harder sell to say we’re going to gerrymander Virginia.
09:18.66
Sam Shirazi
i think it was an easier sell for the Republicans to say don’t gerrymander Virginia. So I want to say that in terms of the vibes. I think that’s why we’re seeing a closer election than 2025.
09:29.49
Sam Shirazi
And the question really becomes, how close is it going to be? Is this going to be five-point race? Is it going to be a one-point race? It seems like this is kind of a default election in Virginia. And what I mean by that is 2025 was a little bit of the anomaly where It was a blowout. And, you know, if you look at most Virginia elections, they tend to be relatively close.
09:52.80
Sam Shirazi
The last time it was not super close was in 2020 when President Biden got about a 10 point win in Virginia. And so even on a good night for the Virginia Democrats in 2020, it was a 10 point win. So if you think this is kind of a competitive election, maybe not, you the most competitive election ever in Virginia, but certainly a competitive election, it’s going to be less than 10 points just by default. Like Virginia is just not the type of state where you’re going to see these huge blowouts very frequently. I think that’s why 2025 was such a big deal because we did see a blowout and it’s pretty rare. Like if you think about 2021,
10:29.02
Sam Shirazi
twenty twenty one Glenn Youngkin won in Virginia. He only won by two points. 2017, there was a bit of a blue wave, but even at that blue wave, it was a nine-point win for Ralph Northam. 2023, it was a close win for McAuliffe.
10:43.97
Sam Shirazi
And really the last time the Republicans got a landslide in Virginia was in 2009. So you see that in in Virginia... It tends to be a middle of a road type state. And I think something like partisan gerrymandering is not going to have the landslide type of victory you saw in California. And the other thing I should say is Virginia is a pretty polarized state. There are a lot of rural areas, a lot of white working class voters. i think Chaz and Natico mentioned this. Parts of Virginia have voting patterns like the South that is very racialized voting. And so all that’s to say is like, it’s just hard for the Democrats to get these big wins in Virginia. And, you know, 2025 was a little bit of a perfect storm.
11:37.75
Sam Shirazi
And so all that’s to say is I think the vibes most people’s gut is telling them it’s going to be a single digit victory for yes. You know, I think that is probably the most likely outcome based on the polls, based off the early vote, based off the vibes. So, you know, if I was betting, I would say that it’s going to be a single digit victory for yes. However, I think there is a universe where no could win.
12:01.04
Sam Shirazi
I think what would have to happen would be really good election day turnout in rural areas and really bad election day turnout in more blue Democratic areas.
12:11.79
Sam Shirazi
And then we would, on top of that, need to see a lot of persuasion, a lot of independence, and even some soft Democrats moving over to no. And essentially, it would be kind of a redo of what Glenn Youngkin was able to do in 2021, where he juiced up turnout in rural areas, and he kept the margin in suburban areas close, and he was able to get a two-point win.
12:31.22
Sam Shirazi
I think it’s not out of the question we see that. I don’t think it’s the most probable outcome, but I do think there’s a path for no. Conversely, I do think there’s a path for yes, maybe not to get to 15 points, but maybe to get to 10 point win where we do break double digits. I think what you’d see is a lot of turnout on election day in more democratic areas, perhaps just kind of okay turnout in rural areas.
12:54.76
Sam Shirazi
And then the final late deciders who are kind of the soft Democrats, they go towards yes. And so we see kind of a bigger than expected win for yes. I think that is also on the table. So so we’re seeing that range. And, you know, I don’t, there’s really no way of me telling you what’s going to happen. I think we’re just going to have to wait for the results. So I think, well, it’s interesting to look at the polls, look at look at look at at the early vote, look at at at the vibes.
13:19.65
Sam Shirazi
I think at this point, you know, we’re going find out soon enough. So, you know, just wait and we’ll see what the results are on election night. Okay, so on that note, let’s turn over to what to expect on election night. You know, essentially...
13:32.72
Sam Shirazi
In my opinion, the nice thing about Virginia is that they report results relatively quickly. So I think we’re not going to be waiting around for weeks trying to figure out what happened unless it’s super, super close. I think we should have a good sense fairly early on what is going to happen. So polls will close at 7 o’clock.
13:50.67
Sam Shirazi
That first hour, we will start seeing results. Typically in Virginia, more rural counties, rural areas report first. So you may see some... David Buhlman- Lead initially for the no campaign and then later on, the more urban and suburban county counties start reporting. David Buhlman- want to give a shout out to Chaz Netticombe State Navigate and his team for their what’s called nav casts, so I would recommend looking at that i’m going to be looking at that on election night and what nav cast is essentially a program where.
14:20.05
Sam Shirazi
they are inputting the data as it’s coming in, in terms of the results. And then based on their model, going to see which side is more likely to win. So, you know, even if, if, if no is winning a rural County, let’s say 60, 40, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good thing because perhaps the model had expected the rural County to be 60, 40. And so it’ll show, okay, yes, still has a 75% chance of winning or or whatever. So I’m just kind of making up numbers, but you see what I’m saying? It’s, It’s less anecdotal based on you know random reports and more based on a systematic analysis of all the reports coming into Virginia. So definitely give a shout out to NAVCAST.
14:57.80
Sam Shirazi
im getting I typically like to look at the official results through the Virginia Department of Elections website because you can see where are the votes coming in, which counties are they coming in.
15:08.70
Sam Shirazi
And then within the counties, you can see, okay, the votes are – early votes versus election day votes versus mail votes. and And all those are slightly different. And so it’s important in a county to realize where the votes are coming from.
15:22.79
Sam Shirazi
So you may have, and even within a county, there are some parts of the county that are red, some part county that are blue. So even if you see, for example, a county where no is up or yes is up, you have to kind of figure out where are the votes coming from. Is it election day? Is it early vote?
15:39.36
Sam Shirazi
I will say, here are my expectations. I expect the in-person early vote to be slightly for the yes campaign. I expect the mail votes to be for the yes campaign very strongly.
15:51.81
Sam Shirazi
And then I expect the election day to be slightly for the no campaign. and then So those are the things we will get on election night. And unless it’s super, super close, we should get a sense of who’s who’s won on election night. I expect we’ll get a good a batch of votes by eight o’clock. And then usually by 9, 10, I don’t know if officially it’ll be called by the AP, but it’ll be basically we all kind of sense of what’s going to be going on.
16:15.51
Sam Shirazi
And then in terms of when are the final, final votes going to be counted, there are two batches of votes that get counted after the election, after election night. Those are the provisional ballots, which are typically same day registrations.
16:39.41
Sam Shirazi
at the local election offices until Friday at noon, if they’ve been postmarked by election date. So you have those final batches of votes. Typically, they’re not massive amounts of votes, maybe in the tens of thousands, which obviously in a close election are going be really important.
16:53.77
Sam Shirazi
But if it’s not super close, we don’t necessarily have to wait for those votes to make the final call. And typically, those last batches of votes tend to be Democratic. So if it is super close, then we’ll have to keep a close eye on it. But my guess is that on election night, we should know And I’m guessing we should know hopefully by between 10 and 11, unless it’s super close. And if it’s super close, you know, it’ll really come down to some of those final votes.
17:19.33
Sam Shirazi
I don’t anticipate it being that close of an election. And even in... 2021, which is an election that was within 2%, we were able to call that on election night. And even before the formal call, I think most people get a sense of, okay, we we kind of know where this thing is going. and And, you know, the nice thing about Virginia reporting so quickly is pretty quickly you have a sense of the night. And and I’ll talk about the infamous Loudoun moment in 2024, which was a bad news for the Democrats. And then in 2025, Loudoun’s results were good news for the Democrats. So in 2024, Virginia is one of the first states in the country to close its polls.
17:58.00
Sam Shirazi
And there were some results that came in from Loudoun County that showed it, which showed President Trump doing better than expected. And I think Loudoun is usually pretty good for a big county and and somewhat of a swing county or at least a a somewhat competitive county. It usually reports pretty quickly.
18:14.24
Sam Shirazi
And so I think once we get the Loudoun results, we’ll have a good sense. In 2024, we got the Loudoun results in. It showed that Harris was gonna win Virginia, but it was closer than I think a lot of people expected.
18:26.09
Sam Shirazi
And I think that was an indication of how the night was going to go for the Democrats. Conversely, in 2025, we got Loudoun in relatively quickly and it was looked very good for the Democrats. Spanberger got a huge win and Jay Jones was getting a bigger margin than Harris got in 2024. And I think once Loudoun came in in 2025 for Jay Jones, I think we had a sense of he was going to win. And I could see something similar this time with Loudon, depending on how the number comes in for Loudon. And my benchmark for Loudon is about 60-40. I think if Loudon comes in sixty forty for the Yes campaign, that’s a good sign for them.
19:02.44
Sam Shirazi
Probably that means they’re going a single-digit win. So if it’s 60-40, once the mail is in, once the early vote is in, once the election day vote is in in Loudoun County, I think I would be pretty confident in saying that yes is going to win.
19:16.79
Sam Shirazi
If it’s even bigger than 60-40, if we’re seeing 65-35 in Loudoun, that means it’s a very good night for yes and that it could be a double digit win for the yes campaign. Conversely, if it’s very relatively close in Loudoun, if we’re seeing fifty five forty five for the Yes campaign in Loudoun, I think that’s going to be a good night for the No campaign. And obviously, if if No even gets close to winning Loudoun, I think that’s a very good night for No and a very bad night for Yes. So keep an eye out on Loudoun. I think it’s an important county.
19:45.95
Sam Shirazi
Everyone always looks for it. It reports pretty quickly. So keep an eye out for Loudoun. The other thing I’ll say is some of these big Democratic counties, Fairfax, Prince William, they take a while to report because they got a lot of precincts. They have a lot of voters.
20:01.02
Sam Shirazi
It’s different than a rural county that has, you know, a few thousand votes. Fairfax County is going to have tens of thousands of votes. And so it’s just going to take a while to process and and they’ll post later. And so I wouldn’t necessarily, you know, go crazy if the early votes are showing no up because,
20:20.18
Sam Shirazi
That is traditionally the trend in Virginia is the Republicans tend to do well at the beginning of the night and then slowly as the night progresses, the Democrats do better. And then by the end of the night, usually the Democrats end up winning Virginia. So I think as much as we all like looking at the results coming in, it is a little bit of a scattered results and they’re not really uniform. And so I wouldn’t go too crazy as the results coming in. Look at the Navcast, i kind of have some common sense. Okay, there’s no votes from Fairfax or, you know, just just kind of understand how votes are coming in. And I think one thing to keep in mind, like the New York Times, I often look at their elections webpage, and I think they do a good job for the most part, but they don’t always tell you, is it early vote that’s coming in? is it
21:06.56
Sam Shirazi
election day. So for example, in a county, yes or no might be up, but that’s because, you know, maybe it’s only the mail vote or maybe it’s only election day. So I think you just really have to be careful.
21:18.08
Sam Shirazi
Again, I’m not going to dwell on it. I think pretty quickly we’re going to get a sense of how things are going. And, you know, every you see all sorts of stuff being posted and anecdotal stuff. And some of it drives me crazy and I can’t comment on everything on election night. So that’s why I’m kind of giving you this preview and and just you know I’ll give you some accounts to follow on election night to maybe not drive yourself crazy. i Definitely recommend my account. So I’m on the you know social media. So look look me up. Chaz Netticombe and his team at State Navigate have put a lot of thought and effort and work into the election. So definitely would would follow Chaz and his team at State Navigate. And there’s definitely other people who do really good job.
22:02.97
Sam Shirazi
Don’t want to list them all because I’m going to leave someone out and I’ll feel bad about it. But definitely, you know, keep keep in mind when you’re seeing things online. some Some of it might be good. Some of it might be bad.
22:13.65
Sam Shirazi
And yeah, I’ll i’ll do some bad podcasts to unpack the results. I think no matter what happens, it’s going to be a really interesting night. This has been a unique election. All eyes are going to be on Virginia.
22:25.29
Sam Shirazi
i think we haven’t had a competitive election in a while. yeah And so everyone’s excited about this one, even if you know No matter which which side you are on, I think if you’re truly just a interested in elections and people going to the polls and democracy in action, this is a really great election to watch. And yeah, so I’ve appreciated everyone who’s... Rouxet- Gone on this ride with me, which is a redistricting referendum.
23:03.49
Sam Shirazi
you know It never ends in Virginia. The elections go on and on. and yeah i mean it’s It’s always interesting following Virginia elections. I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. I will catch you on the other side of the redistricting refer referendum. and This has been Federal Fallout. and I’ll join you next time.
