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It’s that time of year when we start looking for signs of what’s to come. For some, it’s “just how big are the black marks on those wooly worms anyway?” For others, it’s “what does this tell us about the election?”
I can’t help you with the wooly worms. If you want to know what kind of winter we’re going to have, I suggest you sign up for weather journalist Kevin Myatt’s weekly newsletter, although he’s going to talk about precipitation and weather patterns and not prognosticating caterpillars.
As for the election, I won’t offer any predictions either, but today I will address some questions about the trends we’ve seen so far. Like Kevin, though, I’m going to rely on what I see and not what I might want to see. Warning: Math ahead! Another warning: Some of that math will discomfort Democrats, some of it will discomfort Republicans. Math doesn’t care about ideology.
With that setup, let’s apply that math to the two big questions I’ve heard so far:
Why are so few people registering to vote?
The number of people signing up to vote this fall is running well behind other presidential years in Virginia.
Through September, about 241,000 new voters have signed up in Virginia. By contrast:
2008 saw 267,000 people register.
2020 saw 278,000 people register.
2012 saw 307,000 people register.
2016 saw 329,000 people register.
What gives? And, of course, who does this hurt or help? The latter question is easier to answer. The single biggest group of newly registered voters in Virginia — 44.7% in September, 44.1% in August, 44.9% in July — is those who are under 25. Polls consistently show that age group goes strongly for Harris. The most recent Virginia Commonwealth University poll shows that age group going for her 43% to 33%. That would suggest a drop in voter registrations is bad for Democrats, right?
Let’s look deeper.
The State Board of Elections provides age breakdowns for new registrants. When we look at those, we find that through the first nine months of 2022, there were 108,777 new registrants under 25. So far this year, the number is 103,824 — a slight decline but that 4,953 drop in under-25 registrations isn’t what’s driving an overall drop of about 37,000 registrations.
What’s really happening is that we’re seeing a drop in those 25 and older registering. Why is that? I consulted with Hamilton Lombard, a demographer at the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, and he pointed out that we’re seeing fewer people move, which means fewer people need to register to vote in a new place.
Here’s what he told me: “During the late 2000s, migration slowed as interest rates rose and the economy slipped into recession, migration picked up as the economy recovered, which may explain why voter registration was higher in 2012 than in 2008, despite the enthusiasm [Barack] Obama generated in his initial run. Voter registration was likely lower in 2020 because total migration was reduced due to the pandemic. We don’t have annual migration data for 2024, but home sales have fallen considerably over the past year since interest rates rose in late 2022, which likely means fewer people are moving and fewer people need to register to vote this year.”
Democrats might still worry about a slight dip in registrants in a key voter group for them, but the overall decline in voter registration does not portend some sudden lack of interest among young voters. It simply shows that people aren’t moving as much.
Do the early voting trends show that Republicans are winning in Virginia?
We now have three weeks of early votes cast. The Virginia Public Access Project compiles a daily update by congressional district that has consistently shown Republican congressional districts have cast more early votes than Democratic ones. This is quite a surprise since, historically, Democrats have been the ones most likely to vote early. So why, this year, are the three heaviest-voting congressional districts Republican ones (the 1st, 5th and 6th, in that order) and the three lightest Democratic ones (in fact, the four lightest are Democratic districts, the 8th, 10th, 11th and 3rd, in that descending order)?
Each time I’ve pointed this out I’ve heard from Republicans who are convinced that a great upset is in the making and from Democrats who insist that these are really Democrats who are voting heaviest, they just happen to be in Republican districts.
Here is a more likely explanation: The Democratic districts are mostly suburban ones in Northern Virginia and, as we all know, the traffic there is terrible. Those localities also haven’t opened satellite voting locations yet, meaning early voters would have to either trust the mail (I wouldn’t) or drive to the registrar’s office. Starting next week, Arlington County, Fairfax County and Prince William County open their satellite locations, with Alexandria and Loudoun County the following week. That suggests we should see early voting numbers in all those Democratic localities rise. The point of early voting is convenience (Americans do love convenience), and right now it’s more convenient for voters in smaller, often Republican localities, to vote early than it is in the big Democratic ones. You can get across town in Salem in about 15 minutes; in parts of Northern Virginia, you might still be sitting in traffic by the time that Salem early voter is back home.
If the numbers start to change, that theory will be borne out. If they don’t, then maybe something else is going on. In any case, the numbers right now are what they are — they show more voters in Republican areas than Democratic ones. True, we don’t know who these voters are, but we do have a 70%-plus Republican congressional district (the 9th in Southwest Virginia) casting more votes than a 70% Democratic district (the 8th in Northern Virginia). That gets my attention.
To examine this further, let’s look at the 7th Congressional District. This is an open seat — Democrat Abigail Spanberger is retiring to run for governor next year — and the race between Republican Derrick Anderson and Democrat Eugene Vindman is expected to be the most closely contested district in the state, perhaps even the country, this year. It’s also a district with some localities clearly red and some clearly blue, which makes analysis easier.
The Virginia Public Access Project has computed what share of the voters in that district live in which locality.
Prince William (partial) 32.56%
Stafford 20.36%
Spotsylvania 19.23%
Culpeper 6.76%
Orange 5.18%
Caroline 4.17%
King George 3.60%
Fredericksburg 3.53%
Greene 2.72%
Madison 1.89%
Albemarle (partial) 0.01%*
*Just a tiny sliver of Albemarle is in the district.
We know that 51,773 early votes have been cast so far in this district. We also know that there are only two identifiably Democratic localities in the district: Prince William and Fredericksburg. When Spanberger won two years ago (with 52.2%, to 47.6% for her Republican opponent), those were the only two places she carried. Those were also enough, given their size (particularly that of Prince William) and their margins. Stafford was nearly a tie, although Yesli Vega won it in a squeaker. In the presidential election four years ago, Stafford went Democratic, also in a squeaker. Caroline County was another close locality four years ago, although it tipped Republican. That leaves us with two clearly Democratic localities, two that are split, and the rest clearly Republican.
Because Prince William is split between two congressional districts, we don’t know in which district its early votes have been cast. However, we can look at the other localities (except for that little piece of Albemarle) and see how their early votes stack up. Here’s what we want to know: Based on the early votes so far, do some localities represent a higher (or lower) share of their vote than if they were all voting evenly?
Here’s what we find:
Locality Locality represents this percentage of the district’s voters Locality represents this percentage of the district’s early vote so far How the county voted in 2020 Prince William (partial) 32.56% 19.4%* Democratic 62.6% Stafford 20.36% 24.2% Democratic 50.5% Spotsylvania 19.23% 25.5% Republican 52.3% Culpeper 6.76% 8.8% Republican 59.1% Orange 5.18% 6.2% Republican 59.9% Caroline 4.17% 4.2% Republican 51.2% King George 3.60% 5.3% Republican 59.4% Fredericksburg 3.53% 0.04% Democratic 66.2% Greene 2.72% 3.8% Republican 60.7% Madison 1.89% 2.6% Republican 65.2% Albemarle (partial) 0.01% —* Republican 63.7%**
* Since we don’t know how many of Prince William’s votes are in which congressional district, we can’t directly know a number here. However, by adding up all the other localities, we can indirectly figure out Prince William’s current share of the vote. Because the Albemarle County share of that district is so small (just 36 votes), I’ve left it out because even if all 36 voters there have cast early ballots, that’s not going to change the general picture.
** The Free Union precinct in Albemarle is split between the 5th and 7th congressional districts. Overall, Albemarle is a Democratic county; it voted 65.7% Democratic in 2020. However, the Free Union precinct voted 63.7% Republican.
Here’s what we see: The two most identifiably Democratic localities in the district (including the biggest one) are early voting at a lower rate than their overall share of the total voter pool, while all the Republican ones are early voting at a higher rate.
To put this in plainer language: Prince William accounts for 32.56% of the total voters in the district but appears to only account for 19.4% of the early votes so far.
Spotsylvania, a county that went Republican by a fairly small margin four years ago, accounts for 19.23% of the district’s voters but 25.5% of the early voters.
Given that the margin in Spotsylvania was pretty close, we can’t start ringing a bell and shouting that Republicans are dominating the early voting. For all we know, these might be Spotsylvania Democrats voting early with such enthusiasm. However, when we look at the other places, it seems reasonable to conclude that these probably are Republicans driving the voting in places such as Greene County and Madison County. Overall, the voting share so far is skewing rural, which matches what we’re seeing across the state. At the risk of causing Democrats heartburn, it sure looks to me as if the early voting in the 7th District is tilting Republican right now — but it could easily tilt back the other way once Prince William opens up satellite voting stations and Democrats there have more opportunities to vote.
If you want to know how the 7th District is going to go (and perhaps the state as well), I’d advise keeping an eye on the early voting in Prince William County. Now, if you really want to have some fun with trying to use math to get a sense of how the election is going, consider this: For the past two months, Prince William County had the third-highest number of new voter registrations in the state (behind only Fairfax and Loudoun). In July, it had the second-highest.
The politics of storm relief
I write a weekly political newsletter, West of the Capital, that goes out Friday afternoons at 3 p.m. This week I’ll deal with:
- The politics of storm relief
- Which of Virginia’s members of Congress is rated the most collaborative with the other party? Which ones rate the least collaborative? A new report has the rankings.
- Meet the candidate who readers are looking up the most in our Voter Guide.
- Meet the candidate who calls herself “the crazy cat lady” and how pets fit into her campaign platform.
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