With 23 Days Until VA Election Day 2021, Here’s Where Things Stand in Polling, PredictIt and Early Voting

As of October 9, with just 23 days until November 2, here’s where things stand with regard to polling, PredictIt and early voting in Virginia.

• There’s no new Virginia polling this morning. To see all the polls so far, click here. Also, the FiveThirtyEight average has McAuliffe up 2.5 points, while the Real Clear Politics average has McAuliffe up 3.5 points.
• On PredictIt this morning, the price of a contract for Democrats winning the governor’s election is at 73 cents, versus 28 cents for Republicans. This compares to 80 cents for Democrats back on September 9…so Democrats still favored, but by a bit less than a month ago.
• Virginia’s up to 172k voting in person, 105k voting by mail and 178k mail ballot requests…for a total of 456k. There’s really no comparison to 2017, since early voting laws were totally different back then and we didn’t have a COVID pandemic, but just FYI, the TOTAL/FINAL early voting in that election was 226k. And the TOTAL/FINAL early voting in the 2020 presidential election was 2.8 million.
• Looking at the numbers by Congressional District, voting in person is as follows: VA01 (22,296), VA04 (19,456),  VA07 (19,048), VA06 (17,809), VA05 (17,161), VA10 (16,348), VA02 (13,638), VA08 (12,428), VA09 (12,036), VA11 (11,066), VA03 (10,709)
• Looking at the numbers by Congressional District, mail ballot requests are as follows: VA08 (26,752), VA11 (23,417), VA10 (21,644), VA07 (17,657), VA02 (14,997), VA01 (14,655), VA04 (13,705),  VA05 (13,411), VA03 (13,910), VA06 (10,733), VA09 (7,611)
• Looking at the numbers by Congressional District, already voted by mail numbers are: VA11 (12,127), VA10 (12,063), VA07 (11,847), VA08 (11,079), VA01 (10,128), VA03 (8,680), VA06 (8,586), VA05 (8,312), VA04 (8,133), VA02 (7,868), VA09 (6,673)
• Looking at the numbers by Congressional District, ALL early ballots amount to: VA08 (50,259), VA10 (50,055), VA07 (48,552), VA01 (47,079), VA11 (46,610), VA04 (41,294), VA05 (38,884), VA06 (37,128), VA02 (36,503), VA03 (33,299), VA09 (26,320). Breaking those down by “blue,” “red” and “purple” districts we get: 221,517 for the “blue” CDs, 149,411 for the “red” CDs, 85,055 for the “purple” CDs…a very similar percentage breakdown to last week (“blue” districts about 49%; “red” districts about 32%-33%, “purple” districts about 19%).
• Per @WithWithJMC yesterday, Virginia early voting as of 10/8: “Still slow and steady, and STILL 69% less than it was after a similar point in time in 2020. In other words, the drop-off I’d expect between a Presidential and an “off year” statewide election would be 34% (the drop-off between 2017/2016). And in those heavily Democratic jurisdictions in NoVA (Alexandria, Arlington, and Fairfax County), these are the % of the early vote they cast as of yesterday: 2017: 33% of EV 2020: 21% of EV 10/8/2021: 16.8% (+0.5) of EV.”
• Per this comment at PredictIt: “If anyone is interested, here are the early voting numbers for the 26 largest counties/cities in Virginia Governor’s race. NOVA has the highest number of early votes/mail ballot applications with 80.1 per 1000 residents. These areas gave Biden 65.5% in 2020. Then Western VA with 74.1 per 1000. These areas gave Trump 52% of the vote in 2020. followed by Eastern Shore/Central at 71.5 per 1000. These areas gave Biden 60.4% of the vote in 2020. The GOP areas (60%+ Trump) are up 179.75% in early vote turnout vs 2017. The DEM areas (60%+ Biden) are up 131.81% in early vote turnout vs 2017. But NOVA is fairly weak, with 82.9% turnout vs. 2017, mostly from GOP leaning areas. Caveat is that early vote turnout was already pretty high in NOVA in 2017.”