Virginia Mega Thread: The Youngkin Administration

[The Mikado]

Isn't the whole premise here that Carter has no reason not to because he can run for reelection to his State House seat and run for Governor at the same time, so why not do both?

Obviously he's not gonna win the latter, but I was under the impression he's just going to file for both races simultaneously and that that's allowed.

[The Mikado]

Have people factored in the high chance that we'll be in a government shutdown starting Oct 1 and a bunch of people in Fairfax and Loudoun will be furloughed?

[The Mikado]

I have seen no polling in this state this cycle yet, but just a friendly reminder that Virginia is one of the few states (maybe the only) where aggressive "Dems are blowing it!" beltway media coverage can actually galvanize Democratic voters.

Supposedly that was supposed to be the case in 2021 as well. But we'll see. I still think abortion could be the hail mary again here as it was in other states. Youngkin probably would have lost if the gubernatorial election took place post-Dobbs.

I think people take the fact that Youngkin won and neglect that it was by 2%. It was a 13 point overperformance of Trump, which was impressive, and an 11% swing from 2017, but even a fairly minimal swing towards TMac and Youngkin ends up washed up.

Dems don't need to win by 11% like Biden or 9% like Northam to flip the legislature. Winning statewide by 3% like they did in 2022 probably flips the State House their way.

[The Mikado]

Yeah, Dems need to get their sh*t together with VA spending. Though I assume that doesn't include the $1.2-1.5M Biden had DNC send to VA.

VA Dems paying the price for fumbling redistricting back in 2019. They could've killed the sham redistricting commission in 2020 and drew their own maps but instead they let it pass to look good. Probably the biggest political self own of the decade.

I thought Dems were against gerrymandering?

The current redistricting commission Dems allowed to pass is a mess one of the worst in the country. Legislators and lobbyist are allowed to be commissioners and it's so easy to deadlock and throw things to the Supreme Court everyone games the system so it ends up there. In the end Sean Trende a Republican activist basically drew the maps with no accountability.

Imo we need to switch to a computer algorithm. There will still be bias, but the more models you build off of, the closer you get to fairness.

Some variation of the Iowa system where a computer model pops out a map and the legislature gets to vote yes or no and if they vote no the computer just pops out a second map and they repeat until they get a map they accept would at least avoid the worst intentional gerrymandering while still allowing human input.

[The Mikado]

really sad how 18-29 vote is so low. imagine if they voted at the percentage 55 and above does.

Voting OVER A MONTH out?

Only the sort of freaks who are like us would vote this early.

Virginia is just a state with quite a few such people.

[The Mikado]

https://twitter.com/L2political/status/1715031637602251237

Would it be fair to guess this is about 10%ish of total turnout?

[The Mikado]

https://twitter.com/L2political/status/1719069212453536021

I've been assuming between 2.5 and 3 million-ish total votes. If that pans out, that's a pretty decent chunk of the electorate already voting.

[The Mikado]

Do we have final statewide EV totals?