President Donald Trump has made false statements about Tuesday’s special election in Virginia.
I don’t know how many people still pay attention to his repeated contention that every election that doesn’t go his way is “rigged,” but a presidential allegation of a rigged election should not go unchallenged when the facts clearly show otherwise.
Here’s what Trump said, in a social media post: “A RIGGED ELECTION TOOK PLACE LAST NIGHT IN THE GREAT COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA! All day long Republicans were winning, the Spirit was unbelievable, until the very end when, of course, there was a massive ‘Mail In Ballot Drop!’ Where have I heard that before — And the Democrats eked out another Crooked Victory! Six to five goes to ten to one, and yet the Presidential Election in November was very close to a 50-50 split.”
Trump’s final sentence is absolutely correct: The congressional map that Virginians voted to put in place is, indeed, intended to change the state’s congressional delegation from six Democrats, five Republicans, to 10 Democrats, one Republican. And that’s obviously quite at variance with Virginia’s general political dynamics. In the 2024 presidential election, Kamala Harris won 51.83% of the vote to 46.05% for Trump. You can decide if that’s “very close to a 50-50 split” but that is not the issue.
Trump is also more or less correct when he says “all day long Republicans were winning.” Virginia Department of Elections data shows that the “no” side — basically the Republican side plus whatever independents and Democratic defectors objected to the redistricting plan — got the most votes on Tuesday. Overall, “yes” won because not everyone votes on Election Day; “yes” won the early voting. Add that all together and you get the narrow “yes” win.
The egregious — and false — part of Trump’s post is where he claims that a “massive ‘Mail In Ballot Drop’!” made the difference. Trump is likely referring to the fact that the “no” vote led much of the evening — until Fairfax County started reporting and then “yes” pulled ahead narrowly.
Let’s resort to some old-fashioned facts.
While the polls close at the same time for everyone — 7 p.m. — it usually takes bigger localities longer to count their votes than smaller ones. That means the votes are not all reported at the same time. All through election night, we have localities reporting as their precincts check in. There is nothing nefarious about this at all. Because cities and most suburban counties vote Democratic, that means Democratic votes are often among the last that come in, which does sometimes create a “red mirage” effect in the early results when the Republican side jumps to an early lead that later goes away. Again, nothing nefarious here. A generation ago, when Northern Virginia was voting Republican, the same thing happened, just in reverse — with Democratic-voting rural areas reporting early and Republican-voting Northern Virginia coming in late. Fairfax wasn’t the only locality that didn’t report until relatively late Tuesday evening; so did two of the bigger Republican localities, Bedford County and Hanover County. You can track much of this on our Election Live post that tried to analyze the numbers as they came in.
When Fairfax County’s tallies finally came in — and put the “yes” side ahead — that was not because of some “Mail In Ballot Drop.” Again, Department of Elections data: Most of the Fairfax County ballots were cast the old-fashioned way, on Election Day. Here’s how Fairfax votes were cast:
Election Day: 199,717, or 52.8%
Early voting: 126,514, or 33.4%
Mail ballots: 51,850, or 13.7%
Total: 378,081
That “total” figure will change because these numbers don’t account for mail ballots that are postmarked in time but don’t arrive until Friday. Trump objects strongly to those, and the U.S. Supreme Court has expressed skepticism of that practice — which mirrors how tax returns simply have to be postmarked by a certain date, not in the hands of the IRS by April 15. In any case, the number of those ballots is very small, typically less than 1% of the total votes cast. In practical terms, they are insignificant, even if you object philosophically.
About the court cases
A Tazewell County judge issued an order Wednesday to block certification of the election on the grounds that the General Assembly cut legal corners in placing the referendum on the ballot. This is part of the Republicans’ lawsuits that have been ongoing in the case. Attorney General Jay Jones said he would immediately appeal the ruling.
The practical effect here is the same it’s always been: The Virginia Supreme Court will be asked to rule on whether the referendum was constitutional. Oral arguments are set for Monday. A ruling is expected sometime in May.
The Virginia Supreme Court has set aside an election result once before. In 1958, it ruled a local referendum in Arlington County unconsitutional. The issue there was the substance of the referendum, not the process. Here the legal question is about the process.
In any case, I call your attention to the mail ballots from Fairfax that Trump says are evidence of a rigged election.
The split on those in Fairfax was 41,516 “yes,” 10,334 “no” — a margin of 31,182 to the “yes” side.
The statewide margin for the “yes” side was 88,916. The mail ballots in Fairfax County did not make the difference.
I’ve seen other fevered chatter online about how mail ballots are suspect because their results always skew Democratic. That’s not fraud; that’s preference. Democrats simply prefer that method, just as they prefer in-person early voting while Republicans prefer voting on the traditional Election Day.
The “no” side did not lose because there was mail balloting. The “no” side lost because there wasn’t enough of it — specifically in rural areas. While it might seem that Trump is helping Republicans by disparaging mail balloting, the reality is he’s hurting his own party. Here’s why: Voter turnout is almost always lower in rural (Republican-voting) areas than in metro (Democratic-voting) ones. For Republicans to be more competitive in Virginia, they need to increase turnout in rural areas. If that means embracing mail balloting, they should do it. Geography (a long way to the polls) and demography (an older populace) make it difficult for Republicans to get some potential voters to the polls, yet many in the party (including the president) are reluctant to use the most obvious tool at their disposal: mail voting.
I will be working on a more thorough analysis in the coming days, but we can see some things already. Rural areas were energized in Tuesday’s vote, but they still weren’t energized enough for the “no” side to win.
Let’s compare two localities of almost equal size but very different politics. Democratic-voting Falls Church has a population of 17,056; Republican-voting Buchanan County is a wee bit larger at 19,002.
Even though Buchanan is somewhat bigger, Falls Church cast more votes: 6,485 votes in that Northern Virginia city compared with 5,251 votes in that Southwest Virginia county. Falls Church simply has a higher voter turnout than Buchanan. Because of that lower turnout, Republicans are leaving votes uncast in Buchanan. There’s a 1,234-vote difference between the two localities. Given Buchanan County’s voting trends, the vast majority of those uncast ballots are from potential Republican voters.
What can Republicans do to get those voters to the polls? Maybe that’s the wrong question. What would happen if Republicans could take the polls to those voters in the form of mail balloting?
In Falls Church, 715 people voted by mail, 11.0% of the overall total. In Buchanan County, 222 people voted by mail, or 4.2% of the total. What would happen if Republicans could triple the number of mail ballots in Buchanan — without cannibalizing their other voting methods? The mail vote in Buchanan broke 127 “no,” 95 “yes” — a closer margin than the county overall but, as I noted above, mail voting skews Democratic so we shouldn’t be surprised to see this even in an 88.14% “no” county. Because Democrats prefer mail balloting, Democrats are closer to maxing out their mail vote potential than Republicans are. That gives Republicans a lot more upside. If Republicans could triple their mail vote in Buchanan, that would give them 254 additional votes in Buchanan. That wouldn’t have been enough to sway Tuesday’s election any more than the mail ballots in Fairfax that Trump is fantasizing about — but if Republicans could replicate that across rural Virginia (and not just rural Virginia) they’d cut more deeply into Democratic margins.
More math: “Yes” is currently up by 88,916. Divide that across 11 congressional districts and the “no” side needs 8,803 additional voters per congressional district. For as strong as the “no” turnout was for a special election, were there 88,916 potential Republican voters sitting at home who didn’t go to the polls but who might have been persuaded to vote by mail? If “no,” then Republicans can’t complain about the outcome — they just didn’t have the votes. If yes, though, then that’s an argument for why Republicans should be encouraging voting by mail.
The order in which votes are reported on election night is dramatic, but ultimately irrelevant. The “no” side didn’t lose this election because it was rigged; the “no” side lost because Republicans gamble too much of their election outcomes on a one-day push while Democrats are pushing for all 45 days of early voting, by whatever means are available.
I’ll have more about redistricting in this week’s edition of West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that goes out on Friday afternoons. Sign up here:
