VA Early Voting #s

[MT Treasurer]

The problem with analyzing or overinterpreting this (other than relying too much on what was always going to be an obvious D advantage in early voting that could also just be a cannibalization of D voters) is that it tells us nothing about whether Youngkin has made dramatic inroads into Democratic communities/rapidly D-trending areas. "High turnout in Richmond metro/outer NoVA" doesn’t mean much if McAuliffe's doing 15 points worse than Biden in these counties. "High turnout" in D/R areas isn’t good per se if the new/energized voters are likely to turn out against your party (also what happened in 2020 in IA/MT/Miami-Dade/etc.).

[MT Treasurer]

If Youngkin wins this election, it will be the umpteenth example of a strong Democratic turnout in early votes meaning nothing about the results of the election. I stopped drawing any encouragement from this after NC/FL in 2016.

Not drawing any conclusions from this is honestly the wise thing to do given how many variables we simply don’t know. This also doesn’t tell us anything about the actual margins in those places and whether Youngkin is winning over traditionally or recently D-leaning voters (just because people picked a D primary ballot last year doesn’t mean that they’re all reliable Democrats). This also doesn’t tell us anything about how high election-day turnout will be (on either side, but especially among Republicans). I also wouldn’t subscribe to the "high turnout = always good for Democrats" assumption, even in D areas (that was disproven as well in many states in 2020).

[MT Treasurer]

If Youngkin wins this election, it will be the umpteenth example of a strong Democratic turnout in early votes meaning nothing about the results of the election. I stopped drawing any encouragement from this after NC/FL in 2016.

Not drawing any conclusions from this is honestly the wise thing to do given how many variables we simply don’t know. This also doesn’t tell us anything about the actual margins in those places and whether Youngkin is winning over traditionally or recently D-leaning voters (just because people picked a D primary ballot last year doesn’t mean that they’re all reliable Democrats). I also wouldn’t subscribe to the "high turnout = always good for Democrats" assumption, even in D areas (that was disproven as well in many states in 2020).

I think the one thing that it can tell us is that both sides are engaged, which goes against the prevailing narrative right now.

I personally never bought that Democrats were not going to be engaged here (if Youngkin wins, it will be in spite of that), but even so, we all know that early voting was always going to be the preferred voting among Democrats and that they were going to enter ED with a sizable advantage in terms of raw votes. Those who vote early tend to be the most engaged/partisan voters, so it’s not surprising to see them turning out at a fairly high rate relatively early. It’s still pretty obvious that both parties need to hit certain targets on election day, however.