Election Night - Counting Bias by State

[TML]

From what we observed in Alabama's special Senate election last year, the Republican candidate led for most of the night before being overtaken by the Democratic candidate near the end. Does this really mean that AL has an R bias, or was this just a one-time occurrence?

[TML]

Virginia is R bias because ballots from Fairfax especially and to a lesser extent Loudon and Prince William are a slow trickle. Not that anybody is watching any competitive statewide races in VA next month anyway.

Before the early-mid 2000s, SW VA used to vote D while NOVA used to vote R. This would imply that VA used to have a D bias which has been converted into an R bias over the last 10-15 years or so, right?

[TML]

Virginia has an R bias but it was much less pronounced last year than in the past because NOVA trickled in pretty quickly

I think it was more because the overall winning margin was bigger than any Democratic statewide win in recent memory. In fact, an analysis of vote shifts from 2016 to 2017 suggests that Northam did better than Clinton even in SW VA (despite neither D candidate winning most of the counties in that region), which caused Gillespie's early lead to disappear quicker than it did for McCain, Romney, or Trump. I would even go a bit further and state that in the event of a double-digit Democratic blowout, Republicans might not even hold the lead for any substantial period of time during the night.