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Early voting turnout in Virginia so far tends to be higher in many Republican localities than Democratic ones.
Does that portend something? Or is this just a statistical fluke?
Let’s try to find out, shall we?
We begin with some basic facts: Virginians began voting this year on Sept. 20, along with voters in Minnesota and South Dakota. Those three states have the earliest start dates for early voting in the country.
We also know that, historically, Democrats have been far more enthusiastic about the convenience of early voting than Republicans; although, some Republicans (notably Gov. Glenn Youngkin) have been trying to persuade those in their party that it’s in their interest not to chance everything on a single day’s turnout. I’ve written columns pointing out that Republicans have more to gain from early voting than Democrats do — as early adopters, Democrats are closer to maxing out their early voting potential than Republicans are. Plus, some of the strongest Republican localities in the state — rural areas, especially in Southwest Virginia — have some of the lowest turnouts, be it early voting or day-of voting. If Republicans could use early voting to increase voter turnout in those areas, they’d produce a lot more votes that are now being left on the table, so to speak.
That’s why I’ve been curious to see that the congressional districts with the highest early voting numbers so far are all Republican ones. Through Oct. 1, the three districts with the most early votes were the 1st in eastern Virginia (represented by Republican Rob Wittman), the 5th in Southside (represented by Republican Bob Good) and the 6th in the Roanoke and Shenandoah valleys (represented by Republican Ben Cline). The 7th District, a swing district now represented by Democrat Abigail Spanberger, comes in fourth. Meanwhile, four strongly Democratic congressional districts — the 10th (Jennifer Wexton), 11th (Gerry Connolly) and 8th (Don Beyer), all in Northern Virginia, along with the 3rd (Bobby Scott) in and around Hampton Roads — came in with the lowest turnouts so far.
The actual numbers go like this: 47,247 people have voted early in the 1st, 37,965 in the 5th and 37,130 in the 6th. Meanwhile, the three lowest-voting districts record 23,698 in the 8th, 22,184 in the 11th and 21,246 in the 3rd. For those who prefer words over numbers: More than twice as many people have voted in the Republican 1st than in the Democratic 8th, 11th or 3rd. In fact, more people have voted in the 1st District than in any two of those laggard Democratic districts put together.
Since Democrats like early voting more than Republicans, should this be the other way around?
Yes, it should be.
In the 2020 presidential election, the top heaviest early-voting districts were two Democratic districts in Northern Virginia, the 8th and 10th, with the Republican 9th District in Southwest Virginia as the least interested in early voting.
In the 2021 governor’s race, the top early-voting districts were the Democratic 10th and the swing 7th, with the 9th District once again last.
So far this year, the 9th District is right in the middle of the pack and ahead of four of the state’s six congressional districts represented by Democrats. I realize that the shape of the congressional districts has changed since 2020 and 2021, but they haven’t changed that much.
What’s going on here?
To find out, I calculated the voter turnout rates for each locality in the state through Monday’s early voting figures. (Thank you, Virginia Public Access Project, for making these figures more accessible.)
Then I poured all those statistics into a Datawrapper map. The result:
Now we see some trends emerge, which are both clear and confusing at the same time. Let's go with the clear ones first.
Four counties have turnout so far that places them in the highest quintile. All are counties that voted for Donald Trump in 2020 — two narrowly, two by wide margins.
Locality Turnout through Sept. 30 2020 results Nelson County 13.05% Trump 51.7% Biden 46.4% Fluvanna County 11.55% Trump 51.5% Biden 46.8% Mathews County 11.35% Trump 67.0% Biden 31.3% Northumberland County 11.01% Trump 57.4% Biden 41.6%
Beyond that, we see a swath of mostly Republican localities, mostly in the high-growth counties in the eastern part of the state, with the highest turnouts. We also see a splotch of localities around Roanoke (but not Roanoke itself) with elevated turnouts. Most of those voted Republican four years ago.
On the other end of the scale, two types of places stand out for having the lowest turnout so far.
Some are Republican-voting localities in Southwest Virginia. Smyth County has the lowest turnout so far, at 1.35%, followed by Lee County at 1.44% and Buchanan County at 1.63%. That matches historical trends — those localities have always had low early voting numbers and low turnout numbers in general. This is where Republicans historically underperform — the voters who get to the polls vote heavily Republican, but there are lots of people there who simply don’t vote.
The other low-voting localities so far are some large Democratic localities, mostly in Northern Virginia. Fairfax County is at just 3%, Prince William County at 2.72% and Richmond at 2.88%. Those numbers seem far more significant.
What should we make of this?
Before we jump to conclusions, let's do some more math. Here's where things get complicated. The logical thing would be to compare 2024 numbers with 2020 numbers. However, that was the pandemic year, and we saw a big push for early voting. That year 62.8% of the votes in Virginia were cast early. Since then, the number of early votes has been down, although still far higher than in pre-pandemic elections. Between 2021 and 2023, the percentage of votes cast early in Virginia ranged from 32.1% to 36.4%. This is the new normal. It seems reasonable to think that this year we'll see a similar share of the vote cast early — maybe somewhat higher, given the newfound Republican embrace of early voting, but closer to those 2021, 2022 and 2023 elections than the abnormally high number in 2020.
We also know that turnout is never consistent. Suburban localities generally vote at higher rates than rural and urban localities. What we really want to know is whether these turnout patterns are different from previous years. If they're not, then maybe this is a case of “nothing to see here.” If they are, then we're onto something. The problem with the former is we already know from VPAP's turnout reports by congressional districts above that the patterns this year are definitely not ones we've seen before. Still, let's get out the calculator again.
As we've seen, Nelson County leads this year's turnout while the Democratic stronghold of Fairfax County is a laggard. How unusual is that?
In the 2021 governor's race, turnout in Nelson was 65.2%, while turnout in Fairfax was 56.9%.
In the 2022 congressional midterms, turnout in Nelson was 60.1%, while turnout in Fairfax was 52.0%.
What that tells me is that we can expect Nelson's turnout to be higher than Fairfax's. However, right now Nelson's turnout percentage is about four times that of Fairfax when the final results have never been that dramatic. In fact, when we look back at those elections (again, thanks, VPAP), we find that in each of those elections, Fairfax had the higher turnout during early voting.
In 2021, 31.5% of Nelson voters cast their ballots early, while 39.9% of those in Fairfax did.
In 2022, 28.8% of Nelson voters cast their ballots early while 34.3% of those in Fairfax did.
So why, then, is Nelson's early voting turnout running so far ahead of Fairfax, percentage-wise, this time?
There's a lot we don't know. Does this suggest an unusual turnout surge that will see Nelson's turnout go even higher this year? Or might this turnout pattern simply be front-loaded with either people who would normally vote early later in the fall or people who would normally vote on the traditional Election Day, and who have now decided to vote exceptionally early? In other words, are we really seeing “new” voters or just old ones voting at a different time? We also don't know who these voters are. Given the historic closeness of the results in Nelson, we don't know if these represent a lot of Democrats voting early, a lot of Republicans voting early, or both.
As the great philosopher Bob Dylan once observed: “Something is happening here but you don't know what it is.”
Let's see if a more distinctly Republican county might offer more clarity. For that, let's skip down the list to Mathews County, a two-thirds Republican county.
In 2021, 51.3% of the Mathews County voters cast ballots early, far higher than the 39.9% in Fairfax County. Same thing in 2022: 54.1% in Mathews voted early, well above the 34.3% in Fairfax County.
Hmmm — Mathews is the rare Republican county that has already embraced early voting, so we shouldn't be surprised to find its early turnout figures so high, and higher than Fairfax.
Let's try Bedford County, partly because Youngkin was there recently for a Republican rally where he urged people to vote early — and partly because it's a hardcore Republican county where the Republican share of the vote tops 70%.
In 2021, Bedford saw 28.4% of its voters cast early votes, compared to 39.9% in Fairfax. In 2022, the Bedford early vote dropped to 23.8% while Fairfax was 34.3%.
Now, though, Bedford's early vote percentage is running twice as high as Fairfax: 6.13% in Bedford to 3.0% in Fairfax. As before, we don't know whether these are truly new voters or just previous voters casting ballots in a different pattern, but it's definitely a change.
Let's try a few other comparisons. How about some localities that usually cast the same number of votes, just in opposite directions?
In 2020, Roanoke recorded 43,323 votes in the presidential race. Fauquier County was about the same: 43,661. The only difference: Roanoke voted 61.8% Democrat while Fauquier voted 57.5% Republican. So far this year, Roanokers have cast 3,797 votes early while Fauquier has cast 4,222.
In 2020, Harrisonburg cast 17,086 votes in the presidential race, 64.5% of them Democratic. That same year, Goochland County cast 16,950 votes, 58.8% of them Republican. So far this year, Harrisonburg is getting outvoted by Goochland. Goochland has 2,006 early votes, Harrisonburg 1,270.
In 2020, Brunswick County (57.3% Democratic) and Northumberland County (57.4% Republican) were equal in both their partisanship and their vote tallies — 7,948 in Brunswick, 7,815 in Northumberland. So far this year, though, Northumberland has cast 1,186 early votes, Brunswick just 626.
In each of these cases, the Republican locality is outvoting its Democratic equivalent, even though historically Democrats have cast the most early votes.
Now, I can cite examples in the other direction, where Democratic localities are outvoting Republican localities of roughly equal size. Manassas and Amherst County cast about the same number of votes four years ago, but this year Manassas is outvoting Amherst 1,634-1,137. Fredericksburg and Page County were equals in 2020, but this year Fredericksburg is outvoting Page County 1,366-787. The difference is that since we know Democrats like early voting more than Republicans, we shouldn't be surprised by those imbalances in the vote tallies at this stage. The surprise is places where Republican localities are producing more early votes, which takes us back to those original tallies that show the heaviest-voting congressional districts are Republican ones, the lightest-voting districts Democratic ones.
I'm not in a position to predict anything other than the sun will come up tomorrow. All I can do is describe what I see, and what I see right now is not the usual order of things.
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