UPDATE 9:23 pm: I’ve been adding statements, etc. in the comments section of this post. Also, per State Navigate, where we’re at right now in the House of Delegates is that they’re projecting Democrats winning 63.8 seats out of 100, including Elizabeth Guzman winning HD22, John McAuliff winning HD30, Lily Franklin with a 92% chance in HD41, Karen Carnegie with a 96% chance in HD89, May Nivar winning HD57, Stacey Carroll winning HD64, Jessica Anderson winning HD71, Leslie Mehta winning HD73, Lindsey Dougherty winning HD75, Kimberly Pope Adams winning HD82, Karen Carnegie with a 96% chance of winning HD89, Virgil Thornton with an 81% chance of winning HD86, Mark Downey with an 84% chance of winning HD69, Nicole Cole with an 88% of winning HD66, and…hopefully I didn’t miss any, but there are a TON of Democratic wins, it’s really incredible.
UPDATE 8:28 pm: State Navigate just called the AG race for Jay Jones – amazing comeback after many analysts assumed he was toast.
UPDATE 8:26 pm: Sam Shirazi tweets, “Obviously have to wait for full results, but looks like a blue wave in Virginia Dems on track to sweep statewide offices Going to retain majority in House of Delegates and make gains Spanberger will be first incoming Dem Governor with a trifecta since 1989 election”
UPDATE 8:19 pm: State Navigate now has Jay Jones with a 91% chance of defeating Jason Miyares; Kalshi’s now up to 98% for Jones – amazing turnaround from down in the 30%s a few days ago!
UPDATE 8:17 pm: For House of Delegates, the State Navigate model now has Democrats projected to win 61.2 seats (out of 100). That includes John McAuliff in HD30 (with a 94% chance), Elizabeth Guzman in HD22 (with a >99% chance – called for her by State Navigate and by Ben Tribbett); Karen Carnegie in HD89 (with an 83% chance); Lindsey Dougherty in HD75 (with a 98% chance); Kimberly Pope Adams in HD82 (with a 100% chance – called for her by State Navigate); Lily Franklin in HD41 (with a 67% chance); Leslie Mehta in HD73 (with a 63% chance); Jessica Anderson in HD71 (with an 82% chance); May Nivar in HD57 (with a 94% chance); etc.
UPDATE 8:08 pm: On VPAP, they’ve put a check mark next to Spanberger, which means she is the winner. Congratulations to Governor-elect Spanberger! BTW, the State Navigate model now gives Ghazala Hashmi a 100% chance of defeating John Reid for LG, and they’ve called it for Hashmi – awesome! 🙂
UPDATE 8:06 pm: The VA Dept. of Elections site now has Spanberger up 657,917 (57.5%)-Earle-Sears 483,011 (42.2%). For LG, Hashmi’s up 631,365 (55.6%)-500,792 (44.1%); for AG, Jones is up 598,552 (52.9%)-527,949 (46.7%).
UPDATE 8:03 pm: Also at State Navigate right now, the model gives Democrat Karen Carnegie an 83% chance of defeating Republican Mike Lamonea in HD89. In HD71, the model gives Democrat Jessica Anderson an 83% chance of defeating incumbent Del. Amanda Batten (R). In HD57, he model gives Democrat May Nivar a 91% chance of defeating incumbent Del. David Owen (R). In HD75, the model gives Democrat Lindsey Dougherty an 88% chance of defeating incumbent Del. Carrie Coyner (R). In HD86, the model gives Democrat Virgil Thornton Sr. a 52% chance of defeating incumbent Del. A.C. Cordoza (R)…
UPDATE 7:55 pm: At State Navigate right now, they model’s giving Democrat John McAuliff a 91% chance of defeating incumbent Republican Del. Geary Higgins in HD30. In HD22, the model gives Democrat Elizabeth Guzman a 75% chance of defeating incumbent Republican Del. Ian Lovejoy. In HD41, the model gives Democrat Lily Franklin a 66% chance of defeating incumbent Del. Chris Obenshain (R). In HD82, the model gives Democrat Kimberly Pope Adams a 98% chance of defeating incumbent Del. Kim Taylor (R). Etc.
UPDATE 7:49 pm: In HD73, incumbent Republican Del. Mark Earley Jr. is now up 10,645-10,642 over Democrat Leslie Mehta, with 17/19 precincts reporting, but with 25,622 early votes (which could be relatively strong for Mehta) left to count. State Navigate has Mehta with a 66% chance of winning this seat.
UPDATE 7:45 pm: With 491 of 2,533 precincts reporting, Spanberger is up 58.0%-42.0%; Hashmi is up 56.1%-43.9%; Jones is up 53.5%-46.5%
UPDATE 7:40 pm: At StateNavigate right now, Abigail Spanberger has a 100% chance of winning; Ghazala Hashmi has a 96% chance; and Jay Jones has a 74% chance. As for the House of Delegates, the State Navigate model currently projects 60.5 Democratic seats, with Democrats’ chances of winning the House of Delegates at 98%.
UPDATE 7:35 pm: In HD73, with 12 of 19 precincts reporting, incumbent Republican Del. Mark Earley Jr. leads Democratic challenger Leslie Mehta 50.6%-49.3%, but no early votes reported yet, and those should be strongly Democratic.
UPDATE 7:28 pm: With 103 of 2,533 precincts reporting, Spanberger’s up 54.7%-45.3%; Hashmi’s up 52.9%-47.1%; Jones is up 50.3%-49.8%.
UPDATE 7:24 pm: Per VPAP, with 58 of 2,533 precincts reporting, Spanberger’s up 54.56%-45.4%; with 60 precincts reporting, Hashmi’s up 53.5%-46.5%; with 62 precincts reporting, Jones is up 55.5%-44.1%.
UPDATE 7:22 pm: Very early results, but just for completeness, right now the VA Department of Elections has Spanberger up 29,908 (62%) over Earle-Sears 18,272 (38%); Hashmi up 28,897 (60%) over Reid 19,038 (40%); and Jones up 27,523 (58%) over Miyares 20,088 (42%)
UPDATE 7:17 pm: State Navigate is projecting that Abigail Spanberger will defeat Winsome Earle-Sears for governor.
UPDATE 7:07 pm: From Justin Fleenor – “It’s 7:05pm and students are still in line and in chairs voting and registering to vote here at Precinct E-3 on the Virginia Tech campus”
UPDATE 7 pm: Polls are now closed; if you’re in line, stay in line…you can still vote! Results should start coming in soon…and depending on the margins, potentially races can be called pretty quickly. We’ll see soon enough.
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As always, I’ll be live blogging Virginia’s election results as they come in tonight, with results and calls from the State Department of Elections, VPAP, State Navigate, Ben Tribbett, etc. (also check out VoteHub). The main races, other than the governor, LG and AG races, that I’ll be focused on tonight are:
- House of Delegates races in HD22 (Elizabeth Guzman vs. Republican incumbent Del. Ian Lovejoy), HD30 (John McAuliff vs. Republican incumbent Del. Geary Higgins), HD41 (Lily Franklin vs. Republican incumbent Del. Chris Obenshain), HD57 (May Nivar vs. Republican incumbent Del. David Owen), HD64 (Stacey Carroll vs. Republican incumbent Del. Paul Milde), HD66 (Nicole Cole vs. Republican incumbent Del. Bobby Orrock), HD69 (Mark Downey vs. Republican incumbent Del. Chad Green), HD71 (Jessica Anderson vs. Republican incumbent Del. Amanda Batten), HD73 (Leslie Mehta vs. Republican incumbent Del. Mark Earley, Jr.), HD75 (Lindsey Dougherty vs. Republican incumbent Del. Carrie Coyner), HD82 (Kimberly Pope Adams vs. Republican incumbent Del. Kim Taylor), HD86 (Virgil Thornton vs. Republican incumbent Del. A.C. Cordoza) , HD89 (Karen Carnegie vs. Republican Mike Lamonea)…also HD97 (Del. Michael Feggans vs. former Republican Del. Tim Anderson).
I’d say a great night for Democrats would be sweeping all three statewide races and picking up 9 seats (or more) in the House of Delegates (to get to 60/100 Democratic delegates – or better). A less-great night would be winning the governor and LG races, picking up a bunch of seats in the House of Delegates, but losing the AG race. A bad night would be doing any worse than that, basically. Let’s just hope Dems can win the AG race, because whatever you think of Jay Jones, another four years of Jason Miyares (suing Abigail Spanberger and the General Assembly; NOT suing Donald Trump) would be a nightmare.
Finally, here are a few numbers to keep in mind as results start coming in tonight:
1) Statewide turnout in 2017 was 2,612,309, and in 2021 was 3,276,572. So far, we’ve seen over 1.4 million early votes cast in this election (L2’s model has it at about 56% Democrat vs. about 38% Republican; see here for a map of early voting turnout by precinct), with the potential for total turnout to exceed 2021 levels. We’ll see. Also, it will be interesting to see WHERE election day turnout is strong. For instance, if turnout is heavy in “Trumpy” areas in SW Virginia and light in the “blue” areas (e.g., NoVA, Hampton Roads, the Richmond area), etc., that’s not a great sign for Democrats; conversely, if turnout is “meh” in the red areas (which is what seems to have been the case today) and strong in the blue areas (ditto) on election day, Democrats could/should romp. Something to keep an eye on.
2) The latest polling heading into election day can be seen here for governor (Spanberger with an 11-point average lead); here for Lt. Governor (Hashmi with a 4.6-point average lead); here for AG (Miyares up about 1.9 points…but it’s been tightening in recent days).
Oh, and check this out from Ben “Not Larry Sabato” Tribbett…we’ll see if these results pan out tonight – fingers crossed!
With that, results should start coming in soon after polls close at 7 pm, and hopefully we’ll start getting a bunch of races called pretty quickly – depending upon how close they are (e.g., we’ll see about the AG race; hopefully won’t be in recount territory like Mark Herring vs. Mark Obenshain in 2013 or super-close like Creigh Deeds vs. Bob McDonnell in 2005). And here, from Aaron Fritschner, is a good chart of WHEN races were called in previous years.
P.S. It will be interesting to see how different folks’ predictions do. For instance, Uncrewed, who says “It’s kind of hard to overstate how screwed the Virginia Republicans are on Tuesday,” due to “an unpopular President in Washington, an unpopular gubernatorial candidate, and the generic House of Delegates ballot tracking very close to the performance of said unpopular gubernatorial candidate”; Uncrewed has “Democrats flipping 10 seats, but they could flip three more if Spanberger wins in a landslide.” Also see the State Navigate House of Delegates forecast, which has Democrats favored to win 60 seats, with a 94% chance of winning the chamber and a 12% chance of winning a supermajority.
Hopefully we get into blue “wave” or even “tsunami” territory tonight in Virginia. Fingers crossed!
