Statistical Analysis by Data Scientist Lenny Bronner of the WaPo: “It looks like what happened is that Youngkin hit one of very few paths he had to win.”

Interesting statistical analysis by data scientist Lenny Bronner (“Elections, statistics and natural language processing @washingtonpost“), which concludes that:

• “[C]onventional wisdom was that it was McAuliffe’s weakness in rural areas that cost him the election,” but “That’s not enough, if Biden had done as poorly in rural areas as McAuliffe he still would have won.”
• “In fact, McAuliffe didn’t do particularly poorly in rural areas…McAuliffe lost an average of 10 percentage point relative to Biden’s margin in every type of precinct.”
• “Democrats did lose proportionally more in rural precincts, but it’s simply not enough to have cost them the election.”
• “What brings Youngkin over the line is that McAuliffe also did poorly in more heavily African-American precincts”
• “Keep in mind, what I am *not* saying is that one group caused McAuliffe’s loss. Elections are complicated, and rarely, if ever, is it as simple as that. It looks like what happened is that Youngkin hit one of very few paths he had to win.”
• “[Youngkin] had high turnout and high margins in rural areas, he significantly brought down margins in suburban areas and he significantly shifted margins in African-American precincts (probably caused by differential turnout). This was his high turnout path to victory.”