Today we’re going to do some math.
Wait — where are you going? Come back! It’ll be fun! I promise! It’s about elections! At least check out our Voter Guide!
Oh well. Glad you’re sticking around. So, the math we’re going to do today is look at what it would take Democrats to flip each of the five Republican-held House seats in Virginia. So here’s the key —
(Imagine me writing on a chalkboard as I go through all this.)
— they need to get more votes than the other side.
See how simple that was? Class dismissed.
OK, that was a joke. Maybe not much of one, but if we’re going to do math, I should at least try to make it entertaining. My focus is on whether and how Democrats can flip these five Republican seats because midterms typically go against the party in power, so this is presumed to be not a particularly good year for Republicans — and some of you wouldn’t stick through me going through all 11 House seats anyway.
Here’s the way I’m going to look at each of these districts: I’m going to try to calculate what the potential Democratic and Republican vote is in each district. The problem with this is that each election starts from zero, so no vote is ever truly guaranteed. However, as a practical matter, we do know how many people voted in the last midterm elections in 2022 and then how many voted in the presidential year House elections in 2024. Those are the numbers we’ll be using. I will point out that 2022 was a Republican year — those were Joe Biden’s midterms — so my approach does begin with a built-in Republican bias. That’s unavoidable because those two years were the only ones under the current congressional maps.
We’ll go through this in order of easiest to hardest:
2nd District: Elaine Luria (D) vs. Jen Kiggans (R)
The 2nd District has long been the most competitive in Virginia, so this might be a close race no matter the circumstances. This is also a rematch of the 2022 race where Kiggans ousted Luria. Now Luria hopes to return the favor. Let’s look at the vote in the past two elections:
2022: Kiggans 153,328 / Luria 143,219
2024: Kiggans 207,638 / Smasal 191,666
You’ll notice that two years ago the Democratic nominee, Missy Cotter Smasal, won more votes than Kiggans had in 2022. Of course, being a presidential year, Kiggans got more votes, too, and that was that. However, this does show what Democrats need this year: Democrats need something close to a presidential-level turnout on their side while hoping Republicans have only a midterm-level turnout on theirs.
That’s a very simplistic way of demonstrating things, but it’s essentially true. Kiggans and Luria can argue about whatever they want to argue about, issues-wise, but this election isn’t so much about persuading undecided voters as it is persuading partisans to turn out in a nonpresidential year. That’s probably why Kiggans chose to take part in a tele-town hall with President Donald Trump last week. Trump is a motivating factor for both Democrats and Republicans so there is some risk involved, but Kiggans likely figured that Trump will motivate Democrats anyway; what she needs is to make sure Republicans turn out.
If we drill down further, we can see that, mathematically, the key place for Luria is Virginia Beach. For one thing, that’s where 57% of the district’s voters are. Because the district changed after the last census-prompted redistricting, we can’t compare the current 2nd District with the district Luria won in 2018 and 2020. However, Virginia Beach remains constant so we can make deeper comparisons. In the 2018 midterms, Luria won Virginia Beach, 86,822 to 82,586. In the 2022 midterms, she polled only 81,421 votes in Virginia Beach. Kiggans’ totals at the beach were consistent with the Republican nominee in 2018, but Luria’s numbers fell. Luria needs to get those 5,401 voters back — and then some. The district has added more rural (and therefore more Republican) areas after the last redistricting. However, those areas won’t mean much if Luria can’t regain her former support in Virginia Beach — and ideally, from a Democratic point of view, build on those margins. If Luria can regain support in Virginia Beach, then she can worry about those rural voters out in Isle of Wight and Southampton counties.
1st District: Shannon Taylor (D) vs. Rob Wittman (R)
2022: Wittman 191,828 / Jones 147,229
2024: Wittman 269,657 / Mehta 208,445
Once again, we see a situation where the losing Democratic candidate in the 2024 presidential year received more votes than the winning Republican candidate in the 2022 midterms. As with the 1st District, that means what Democrats need to do to win this district is to replicate something close to presidential level turnout while hoping Republicans stay at midterm-level turnout.
If Wittman were to hold all 191,828 votes he received in the 2022 midterms, then Democrats this year need to generate 44,600 more votes than Herbert Jones did that year. They will try to find a lot of those in the Richmond suburbs. Democrats saw a 15,990-vote gap in Chesterfield County between 2022 and 2024 and a 14,850-vote gap in Henrico County. Think of that as 30,840 potential Democratic votes available. There’s another 6,149-vote gap for Democrats in James City County and a 1,930-vote gap in Williamsburg. Add those together and that’s 38,919 potential votes.
That still leaves Democrats short and that’s where Taylor’s road becomes harder, because outside that Interstate 64 corridor, much of this district is rural — and Republican. Of course, one key question with this, and all the other districts, is whether the Republican vote this year will match 2022 or come in lower. That gets to enthusiasm levels. For our purposes today, I’m assuming Republican enthusiasm levels are the same. However, if they’re lower, then every Republican vote not cast is a vote that Democrats don’t need to turn out on their side.
The early voting trends so far are hard to read. Turnout almost everywhere is up from 2022, but that could simply reflect that voting early has become more popular. The early voting trends aren’t at presidential levels, though; they’re running slightly behind the early voting we saw in last year’s governor’s race, although an early analysis from Chaz Nuttycombe of the State Navigate political data and forecasting site believes we’re seeing a somewhat more Democratic electorate. He cautions that it’s early and trends can change, but he believes the Democratic vote is up enough that it could tip the 1st and 2nd districts into Democratic hands — and possibly even the 5th, which would be even more surprising and which we’ll get to next.
I discussed those trends in more detail in last Friday’s edition of West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter, and will have an updated analysis in this week’s edition. If you’re not signed up, you can do so here:
5th District: Tom Perriello (D) vs. John McGuire (R)
2022: Good 177,191 / Throneburg 129,996
2024: McGuire 249,564 / Witt 184,229
Here’s where things start to get more interesting. On the surface, the challenge for Democrats in the 5th District looks the same as for Democrats in the 1st and 2nd: generate a presidential-level turnout and they can win if Republicans stay at a midterm-level turnout.
However, notice that Republicans had different candidates in 2022 and 2024 — John McGuire ousted Bob Good in the 2024 Republican primary. Obviously there was some Republican disquiet with Good or he wouldn’t have lost. Based on that, does that mean Good got every Republican vote available in 2022, or were there some Republican votes left on the table? On the other hand, there appear to be some Good supporters who still aren’t reconciled to McGuire. Will McGuire be the one leaving some Republican votes on the table? Right now, we have no way to know. All we know is that, to be on the safe side, Perriello needs to generate 47,196 more votes than the Democratic candidate did in the last midterms. They’re out there — can he persuade them to vote in a nonpresidential year?
Many of those votes are in Albemarle County and Charlottesville, the largest population center in the district. The Democrats’ vote from 2022 to 2024 increased by 13,719. However, you’ll notice that’s nowhere close to what Perriello likely needs. Lynchburg’s Democratic vote went up 5,660 between those two elections, so that’s another place Perriello will look for votes. In Danville, 3,929. However, that’s still not enough, and that will send Perriello out into the more rural parts of the district. There certainly are votes available — 3,243 in Pittsylvania County and 2,503 in Louisa County for instance. The trick, though, is to motivate your side without motivating the other.
That math shows this is a winnable race for Democrats — under the right circumstances. Whether those circumstances materialize depend largely on the shape of the turnout.
6th District: Beth Macy (D) vs. Ben Cline (R)
2022: Cline 173,352 / Lewis 95,410
2024: Cline 256,933 / Mitchell 141,612
Now we come to the harder cases for Democrats. Macy could get a presidential-year Democratic turnout and still lose to Cline, even if he got only a midterm-level vote. Macy needs to generate a presidential-level turnout and then pick up another 31,741 votes, assuming Cline stays at his previous level. We have to assume something, so that’s mine for purposes of showing the math. If Cline loses support from his midterm levels, then obviously things change, but I have no good way to compute that.
There was an independent candidate on the congressional ballot in 2024; he received 7,980 votes. Let’s assume those are voters who didn’t want to vote for Cline, or for a Democrat. If Macy can pick up those voters, then she’s only 23,761 votes short under this scenario.
So where can a Democratic candidate in the 6th District go to produce more votes than even a Democratic candidate in a presidential year received? On the one hand, that’s asking for something that’s never happened. On the other hand, this is all a math exercise, so let’s do the math.
The first thing to do would be to increase turnout in the district’s biggest Democratic locality, Roanoke. In 2024, the city’s voter turnout was 62% — high for Roanoke but distinctly below Republican-voting localities. The turnout in Botetourt County that year was 81%, in Rockingham County 82%. If Roanoke had voted at the same level, that would have meant another 13,464 voters. There’s no guarantee that those would have all been Democratic voters; many studies show nonvoters either tend to resemble the general population or trend Republican in some places.
The challenge is that there aren’t many Democratic localities in the district, and the others are smaller than Roanoke. This poses a strategic question, then: Should Macy focus more on driving up voter turnout to unheard-of levels in key localities, or persuading former Cline voters that they’ve made a mistake? Which is the easier route?
9th District: Joy Powers (D) vs. Morgan Griffith (R)
2022: Griffith 182,207 / Devaughan 66,027
2024: Griffith 290,645 / Baker 109,570
Finally, we come for the steepest mountain for Democrats to climb: the 9th District.
A presidential-level Democratic turnout and a midterm-level Republican turnout still leaves the Democratic candidate 72,638 votes short. Even that margin is a 62% to 38% split — down from Griffith’s recent vote shares of 73% and 72%, but still a long way from victory.
To find that many additional votes in the 9th, Democrats essentially need a realignment, back to the days when the coal counties delivered strong Democratic majorities, not Republican ones. Even a 100% turnout in Montgomery County, the district’s most populous locality, would have only generated 19,802 extra votes two years ago.
This concludes today’s math lesson. My takeaway is a simple one: This is an election that will be determined by turnout — who shows up and who doesn’t. To some extent, every election is that way, but this one perhaps more than most. If Democrats want to pick up Republican seats, they just need to activate voters who usually aren’t inclined to vote in midterms. If Republicans want to hold those seats, they need to make sure their voters aren’t discouraged or complacent. Together, those two formulas will add up to the math that really matters.
You can see where some of these candidates stand by looking on our Voter Guide. We sent questionnaires to every candidate across the state and have posted the answers from those who have replied on our Voter Guide.
You can also get more political news each week in West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter. During the campaign, I’ll have a weekly update on the early voting trends (and more).
