In key races, Republican turnout exceeded Democratic turnout

On Election Day, Democrats on Twitter/X excitedly circulated videos of students at the College of William & Mary lined up to vote. For Democrats, that was a hopeful sign for the prospects of state Sen. Monty Mason, D-Williamsburg, who was locked in a tight race with Republican Danny Diggs.

Williamsburg did, indeed, turn out heavy — 50.6% — and delivered a big margin for Mason. 

Unfortunately for Mason, but fortunately for Diggs, voters in Republican-minded Poquoson turned out at an even heavier rate — 56.7%. The two cities are virtually the same size but thanks in part to the bigger turnout, Poquoson delivered a bigger margin for Diggs (3,071 votes) than Williamsburg did for Mason (2,353 votes).

Diggs wound up winning the race by a mere 725 votes, and while there are many ways to attribute a victory, one way is to look at the shape of the turnout. In that district, voter turnout was higher in the Republican-voting parts of the district (Poquoson, 56.7%; York County, 53.8%) than in the Democratic-voting parts of the district (James City County, 53.4%; Newport News, 33.4%; Williamsburg, 50.6%). 

That’s how Diggs won.

Every election produces winners and losers — and also overly broad conclusions about why the results turned out the way they did. In this year’s General Assembly elections, there’s naturally been attention on the fact that Democrats held the state Senate and won back the House of Delegates. However, I’ve pointed out in a previous column that while Democrats won, they barely won. They needed to win three seats in the House of Delegates — they won three, but no more. They actually lost a seat in the Senate. Out of 140 General Assembly seats, Democrats had a net gain of just two seats. This is much like a football team winning by a field goal as time runs out; it still counts as a win, but this was hardly a blowout.

Ed Lynch, a political science professor at Hollins University (and a former candidate for a Republican House nomination), recently pointed out in a commentary in the Richmond Times-Dispatch that, if you filter out the votes in unopposed races, then in the House of Delegates, “Republicans actually won the statewide vote, 832,213 to 821,933.” His point: Republicans either overperformed or Democrats underperformed.

Lynch’s partisan background may color his analysis for some, but his math isn’t wrong. I have another way to make the same point he did: Look at the turnout.

The Diggs-Mason race provides one example. A closely contested House of Delegates race in the Petersburg area — where Del. Kim Taylor, R-Petersburg, held off Democrat Kimberly Pope Adams by just 78 votes — offers another.

Petersburg is the biggest locality in that district, accounting for nearly 4 of every 10 registered voters. It’s also the only Democratic-leaning locality. Unfortunately for Adams, only 31.8% of Petersburg voters bothered to cast ballots. 

Meanwhile in Republican-voting Dinwiddie County, some 49.6% voters went to the polls. Same in Republican-voting Prince George County, where 44.2% went to the polls. A slice of Surry County is also in the district, and Surry had a high turnout of 60.7% but the total vote count was small — and also went Taylor’s way.

That’s how Taylor held onto her seat in a district where the precincts had voted slightly Democratic in congressional midterms the year before.

A third example comes in the state Senate race between Republican Emily Brewer and Democrat Clint Jenkins in the district that runs from Portsmouth to Dinwiddie County. She won with 52.3% of the vote, and a margin of 3,669 votes. Suffolk is, by far, the biggest locality in that district, accounting for 43% of the voters. Jenkins won in Suffolk, where both candidates were from. Turnout in Suffolk was 44.9%, a decent enough figure. However, turnout in the localities where Brewer won was much higher. Those places were smaller but the higher turnout helped increase her margins there — enough to win overall. For instance, in Isle of Wight County, where she took nearly two-thirds of the vote, turnout was 50.8%. In Southampton County, where she also took about two-thirds of the vote, turnout was 53.7%. By contrast, turnout in localities that Jenkins won tended to be smaller: 44% in the city of Franklin, 36.2% in Emporia, 31.7% in Portsmouth. One exception was Greensville County, which Jenkins carried narrowly. Turnout there was a whopping 62.7%, the third-highest in the state. Jenkins needed that kind of turnout elsewhere and didn’t get it.

Yet a fourth example comes in the House race in the Richmond suburbs, where Republican David Owen edged Democrat Susanna Gibson by just 715 votes. Most of that district is in Henrico County, and Gibson carried that portion of the district by 1,142. She lost the three precincts in Goochland County by 1,845 votes — and that’s ultimately how she lost the election.

Here’s a deeper look at that election: In Henrico County, voter turnout was 41.9%. But in the three Goochland precincts, turnout ranged from 66.7% to 68.8%.

Owen won, and Gibson lost, because Republicans in Goochland were more enthusiastic about voting than were Democrats in Henrico.

To some extent, none of this should be surprising. Not every locality votes at the same rate. A study by the Pew Research Center that covers 2018-2022 laid out some of these disparities: Whites tend to vote more frequently than other racial groups. College graduates tend to vote more frequently than non-college graduates. Older people tend to vote more frequently than younger ones. 

In the 2021 governor’s race, the highest-voting locality was Goochland County, where 71% turned out, followed by Powhatan County, where 70% turned out. The lowest turnout that year came in Buchanan County, where 30% of the registered voters cast ballots, followed by Dickenson County, where the figure was 34%. (That’s why I’ve written that Republicans have more to gain from pushing early voting than Democrats do — Republicans would be in a stronger position statewide if they could increase the turnout in some of those low-voting but strongly Republican Southwest counties.) What really made the difference in 2021 was that turnout in many of those Republican localities increased from the previous election — turnout in Goochland went from 61% to 71% — while turnout in many Democratic ones stayed the same. In 2021, only 38% of registered voters went to the polls.

Turnout this year was lower than in the governor’s race two years ago — that’s to be expected — but in many places turnout fell more in Democratic areas than in Republican ones.

For instance, two years ago, turnout in Republican Dinwiddie County was down 12% from two years ago, but turnout in Democratic Petersburg was down 18%, and was lower to begin with. That helped Taylor and hurt Adams.

In Republican Poquoson, turnout was down 13.6%, but in Democratic Newport News it was down 26.6%. That helped Diggs and hurt Mason.

Viewed this way, Democrats should not be surprised they lost those races — they just didn’t get enough people out. True, some of those localities are traditionally lower turnout localities, but the numbers remain what they are: Turnout patterns helped Republicans win. That won’t be much consolation when a Democratic speaker of the House gavels the House into session in January, but things could have been a lot worse for Republicans — and a lot better for Democrats — with different turnout patterns. (U.S. Rep. Bob Good, R-Campbell County, blamed the Republican loss on “low red turnout” but the math clearly shows otherwise — in some of the key races such as Brewer-Jenkins, Diggs-Mason, Owen-Gibson and Taylor-Adams there was high Republican turnout.) 

It’s important to note that these pro-Republican turnout patterns weren’t consistent across Virginia. In a previous column I looked at Montgomery County, where two conservative candidates lost close races for school board seats and where Republicans lost close races for clerk of court and commissioner of the revenue, saw a 4-3 GOP majority on the board of supervisors turn into a 5-2 Democratic majority — and saw Republican Chris Obenshain’s margin in his House of Delegates shrink to just 183 votes. I pointed out then that what cost Republicans in Montgomery County was that turnout in some Republican-voting precincts was lower than it was in some Democratic-voting ones. In precinct A-1, a strongly Democratic precinct just north of Blacksburg, 64% of registered voters went to the polls. But in Republican-leaning precinct C-4 near Christiansburg, only 34% did. If Lily Franklin had managed just 184 more votes, well, one, we’d be talking about a recount right now, but we’d also be talking about how Democrats had managed the rare feat of picking up an additional seat west of the Blue Ridge. (She could have done that with higher turnout from Virginia Tech students, for instance).

Why the difference between that 64% turnout in Montgomery County Precinct A-1 and the 31.8% turnout in Petersburg? I refer you to the Pew study cited earlier: That Montgomery County precinct just outside Blacksburg is full of college-educated whites, the voters most likely to vote.

Still, there are always exceptions. The locality with the highest voter turnout this year is a rural county without a college in sight: In Highland County, 69% of voters went to the polls. That’s a level of turnout approaching a presidential election. The lowest turnout in Virginia was in Bristol, where 11.97% of voters cast ballots. Context is key: There were only two races on the ballot in Bristol and both were uncontested so those Bristol voters who showed up ought to be commended for doing their civic duty despite the lack of choices available.