Rep. John McGuire was out beside a road in Charlottesville early Wednesday morning, waving at commuters from behind a giant sign that read: “THANK YOU!”
The Republican congressman from the 5th District had what was, in political terms, a near-death experience: Running in a district that had been considered predictably Republican, he trailed much of the night as the returns came in, only to pull ahead at the end for what appears to be a victory.
The operative word there is “appears.” The major news organizations that “call” elections, such as The Associated Press, have yet to declare McGuire the winner over Democrat Tom Perriello. Those calls have no legal force — only the Virginia Department of Elections declares winners, and that won’t happen until next month when the paperwork is certified — but they do have a psychological impact.
Meanwhile, Perriello, in a statement emailed just after midnight Wednesday morning, said the race is “too close to call” and is waiting for a final accounting of provisional ballots in the district. Neither he nor his campaign responded to messages on Wednesday, but Perriello did post a message on social media: “I’m so appreciative of the incredible support we have received as we await the final results of our election. I’m filled with nothing but gratitude for all of the election officials and observers who are putting in overtime to make sure that every vote is counted across the 5th.”
So what’s the deal here? Has McGuire won? Is there a realistic shot that late ballots put Perriello over the top? Let’s look at the math — and history.
McGuire’s lead looks insurmountable
The Virginia Department of Elections says that with all the available ballots counted, the tally is:
John McGuire (R): 181,260 or 50.19%
Tom Perriello (D): 173,416 or 48.01%
Cooke Harvey (I): 5,791 or 1.60%
There are three important things to take note of here:
That’s a lead of 7,844 votes (this figure will become important shortly, just hang on).
That margin of 2.18 percentage points is well outside recount territory. Virginia law allows recounts if the margin is 1 percentage point or less — but the apparent loser has to pay unless the margin is within half a percentage point.
The figures do not include two types of ballots — provisional ballots and properly postmarked mail ballots that can be counted if they arrive by noon on Friday. (The theory is the same as with your tax return; you don’t need to get it to the IRS by April 15, you just need to mail it by then.)
Let’s dispense with the post-election mail ballots first. The number of these is always so small as to be statistically insignificant — a fraction of a percent, although when we’re talking about close elections, these fractions matter. Reality check: In the 2024 elections, there were just 1,931 post-election mail ballots in the 5th District. This year produced a similar number, and if they all went for Perriello, that still wouldn’t come close to erasing McGuire’s lead. In all of Virginia’s 11 congressional districts two years ago, only two districts had anywhere close to 7,844 post-election mail ballots: the 8th and 11th, both in Northern Virginia, where voters are more likely to cast mail ballots. In this year’s early voting, most congressional districts in Virginia cast more mail ballots than the 5th did. It’s not impossible that there will be some big mail dump of post-election ballots, but there is nothing in our history to suggest this is a realistic possibility.
As for provisional ballots, these are generally ballots cast by people who registered on Election Day and whose paperwork still has to be checked on. These are typically college students. Two years ago, there were 10,532 provisional ballots cast in the 5th District. However, contrary to some public perception, these provisional ballots are not overwhelmingly Democratic. In Democratic districts, they are. Generally, though, they reflect the overall leanings of that district. Two years ago, 56.3% of the provisional ballots cast in the 5th District race went to … McGuire. He got a 1,393-vote margin out of the provisionals that year.
That’s because two years ago the single biggest source of provisional ballots in the 5th District was Lynchburg — and the single biggest source of those Lynchburg provisionals is Third Ward Second Precinct, which is located at Liberty University. Even without the provisionals, this is a precinct that on Tuesday gave McGuire 94.05% of its votes.
NBC News reports there are approximately 8,500 votes yet to be accounted for, presumably provisionals. That seems a plausible number, given that the turnout this year was somewhere south of a presidential year. NBC News also does the math and reports that Perriello would need 98.2% of those votes to win. That seems unlikely, to put it mildly.
It’s unclear whether NBC’s math accounts for a lot of those provisionals coming out of the Liberty precinct. We know that the Liberty precinct this year had 1,236 same-day registrations. Based on experience, virtually all those votes will go to McGuire. Meanwhile, Charlottesville has 1,854 provisionals. Even if all the Liberty provisionals went to McGuire and all the Charlottesville provisionals went to Perriello, that still doesn’t reduce McGuire’s lead enough for Perriello.
There will be other provisionals in the district, but Charlottesville and Lynchburg are the two biggest metro areas. We never know what we don’t know, but it strains credulity to believe there are enough provisionals out there to make a difference.
The constitutional amendments do not appear to have made a difference
A lot of people — yours truly included — had wondered before the election if the constitutional amendments would make a difference in the 5th District race. In other words, would a big “no” vote on the amendments in rural counties have the effect of boosting McGuire?
It doesn’t look like it. While the amendments no doubt brought out some voters who wouldn’t have voted, and while it’s entirely possible that those “no” voters backed McGuire, it’s not evident from the numbers that this happened.
In most of the district’s localities, McGuire polled more votes than the “no” vote, which suggests that he was the one driving the turnout with some drop-off later on the ballot. There were some exceptions: In Lynchburg, the “no” vote on Amendment 1 outran McGuire by 857 votes. In Danville, the “no” ran 386 better than McGuire. However, in Mecklenburg County, McGuire ran 638 votes higher than the “no” vote. In Powhatan County, McGuire ran 1,469 votes ahead of “no.”
I suppose you could argue that without the amendments, those would have been the only votes McGuire would have received, but that doesn’t seem a realistic argument to me.
Instead, it looks to me that the 5th District is simply a hard district for a Democrat to win. Perriello ran a masterful campaign but simply ran out of places to squeeze votes out of. It’s a big drop-off to go from blue Albemarle County, where Perriello won 71.14% of the vote, to red Louisa County next door, where he took 41.53%. And there’s definitely a drop when you go from Lynchburg, which Perriello managed to carry with 51.24% of the vote, to Campbell County, where he took just 28.72%, and to Appomattox County, where he took just 26.57%.
Mathematically speaking, McGuire won because there are are strongly Republican counties around Lynchburg where he ran up margins that helped make up for Perriello’s margins in Albemarle, Charlottesville and Danville. In Campbell County, McGuire won by 9,733 votes. In Bedford County, which is mostly in the 9th District next door, McGuire took a margin of 6,547 votes out of the portion in the 5th. Those two counties alone gave him a margin of 16,280 votes; that was enough to wipe out Perriello’s 15,422-vote margin in Charlottesville. That margin will likely grow when the provisionals are counted but not by the amount Perriello needs.
Perriello is right: We need to count all the votes, but the math I see says McGuire will be going back to Washington for a second term.
