Virginia marked a milestone earlier this week: Voter registrar offices across the state were open for early voting on Sunday.
This was the first experience with a new law that mandates voting offices be open for two Sundays before an election — in this case, the Aug. 4 primaries for which early voting is now underway. They’ll be open again this Sunday, too. In the past, registrars were allowed to open on Sunday if they wanted to; now they’re required to do so.
How did the first Sunday go? That depends entirely on where you look — and what primaries were happening there.
Overall, the Sunday voting appears to have been a success. Across the state, 868 people showed up to vote on Sunday, according to figures compiled by the Virginia Public Access Project. That was more than any single weekday last week except Friday. The in-person voting last week ranged from 731 to 864, then jumped to 1,048 on Friday.
In some large places, such as Arlington County, the Sunday voting was the busiest day of the early voting period. In Arlington, Sunday voting was so popular that more people showed up to vote (287) than had shown up in person to vote in the entire previous week (265).
In much of the state, though, absolutely no one showed up to vote. In 62 of the state’s 133 localities, nearly half, no in-person votes were recorded, according to the data VPAP collected from the Department of Elections.
This map shows how many in-person votes were recorded in each locality on Sunday, July 19. Hover your cursor over each one to get the exact number.
Most of the places with no voters were rural counties, particularly those west of the Blue Ridge. However, some cities also recorded no voters, according to the VPAP data. These included Norfolk and Portsmouth. They can be explained by the primaries on the ballot. Both of those are heavily Democratic cities, and there are no Democratic primaries on the ballot there, just a Republican primary for U.S. Senate. Another populous county with Democratic leanings, Prince William County, also showed no voters on Sunday, even though Republicans there had multiple reasons to vote — both the Senate primary and either a 7th District Republican primary or a 10th District Republican primary, depending on which part of the county they live in.
Democrats have historically embraced early voting with more enthusiasm than Republicans, so it’s no surprise that we saw higher voting in Democratic primaries, where they’re being held, than in Republican primaries. For instance, Buchanan County is one of the most Republican counties in the state, typically voting 80% or more Republican. In this year’s primary, Buchanan voters have two ballots to choose from: a Republican ballot in that Senate contest or a Democratic ballot for the 9th District House nomination. Despite being a Republican stronghold, only one Republican voter showed up on Sunday, while two Democrats did. We shouldn’t read that as Democrats now having a 2-1 advantage in the county, just that Democrats are more likely to vote early than Republicans.
Who’s on your ballot?
Our Voter Guide has information for all 133 cities and counties in Virginia where you can look up who’s on your ballot and where they stand (if they’ve responded to our issues questionnaire).
The primary is Aug. 4.
Likewise, Floyd County has long been a Republican county, but on Sunday no Republicans showed up to vote. However, 20 Democrats did — an unusually large number compared to some communities. Henrico County — part of which is in the 1st District, which has a seven-way Democratic primary for a congressional nomination — saw 17 Democratic voters and four Republican ones.
The two localities with the most Sunday voters were Arlington (298) and Alexandria (128). Both are strongly Democratic localities. They’re also in the 8th House District, which has the heaviest-voting primary in the state so far — incumbent Democrat Don Beyer is facing four challengers. More votes have been cast in the 8th District Democratic primary than any other congressional primary in the state this year, and the Sunday voting saw both localities produce their biggest day yet of in-person early voters. In all, almost half — 49.0% — of the in-person Sunday voters in the state were in those two localities. (Arlington also has a Democratic primary for county board of supervisors, which further explains the spike in interest there.)
However, across much of the 1st District, most localities saw no voters, even though that’s home to the state’s second heaviest-voting Democratic primary plus the Republican Senate primary. The Sunday voters in that district were mostly in suburban localities. Chesterfield County, which is partially in the 1st District, saw 31 Democratic voters and 11 Republican ones, both lower than on weekdays.
Many registrars spent the day processing mail ballots, because many localities recorded mail ballots on Sunday. However, others — including lots of rural localities where voters tend to be Republicans who are resistant to mail balloting or early voting in general — recorded no votes at all, mail or in-person.
This item began as a short blurb intended for our weekly political newsletter, West of the Capital, but quickly outgrew that as I did more research. This column offers a taste, though, of what you can find in that newsletter, which goes out Friday afternoons. This week, I’ll look at early voting trends across the state and dig deeper into the recent Virginia Commonwealth University poll. Sign up here:
