mtutiger

Right, but that would be a smaller swing than what happened in Virginia over 2020. Again, it's an imperfect comparison to qualify how much candidate quality may have impacted Virginia.

Re. New Jersey

The lead will widen out some from where it is at the moment. They are two different races, and its flawed, but I am curious to see a comparison to tell how much of what happened in VA was national environment and how much was candidate quality.

It was mostly persuasion. The fact that the swing was largely uniform in all parts of the state kinda has me convinced on that

Probably not. I am curious to see what kinda swings we see in New Jersey now... does Murphy do a little better than McCauliffe relative to the states lean?

I wouldn't entirely trust the exit polls, tbh.

He'd get rinsed in a primary against Trump...

Come on...

As someone who lives in Texas (and has seen Abbott's poll numbers crater), I'd love for this to be reality lol

Yeah, Glenn's got this. It'll still be close, but he's got it.

Probably would rather be Youngkin atm, although the lack of clarity on what types of ballots are reporting in which counties kinda makes it hard to follow

And structurally, it makes sense. Virginia is one of the first elections after a President takes office or wins reelection - often a time when national environment for a sitting President isn't always the best. I think MB is right about Virginia's lean, but the fundamentals nationally do point to a close race here. And one that Youngkin can win.

This is the other pitfall of Wasserman's point.... there are some very large in population, Biden-voting counties that are also in the 110s of turnout right now.

The difficult part of Wasserman's math as well is that an increase in turnout in a larger county with over 1M is going to mean significantly more votes than it would a county of about 80k (like Rockingham). So, for instance, if Fairfax County is at 106% of 2017 and Rockingham at 117, without doing the math, that still means Fairfax is turning out more raw votes over the last election than Rockingham is. The question is whether the same pattern in Rockingham holds in other deep red counties in Virginia, and that we really won't know until they count the votes. I suspect he thinks that's the case, there's reason to believe that could be the case, but still. We don't know.

I believe I read that Virginia updated their laws to allow for pre-processing of absentee ballots, so they may be the first ballots we see tonight

This is a fair point.... but the last part is key. Differential turnout making up the difference in a state Biden won by almost 11% would require a bigger difference that doesn't appear to be happening in a lot of blue places. It comes down to the persuasion piece.... did Youngkin persuade enough people to cross over? We'll have to see.

Yep. High turnout doesn't guarantee anything for either side at this point... but it probably makes it safe to assume the Fox poll is gonna look bad by the end of the night.

With Richmond and Newport News punching their weight, I think we've seen enough turnout wise to conclude that Youngkin's path to victory probably involves more persuasion than differential turnout. Definitely not impossible! But probably makes the job somewhat more difficult

This is probably the best news I've seen all day. 85% of 2017 total vote

That's a good sign.... would love to see numbers from Norfolk

We had a couple of bonds and a bunch of Amendments to the Texas Constitution. I arrived at my precinct about 30 minutes after polls opened and was only the 9th person to vote.... these off-year elections are small affairs lol

There's one place where turnout needs to be good.... still would be better to know what kinda turnout is coming from Richmond/Hampton Roads/SW Virginia, etc.

Sure, but is it considered likely that TMac will do better than Delegate candidates?

This race is a real test of the "old fundamentals" versus the "new fundamentals", for sure. The history is what it is, and it works against McAuliffe, versus the fact that Virginia has evolved a lot since the last time a Republican won the Governorship in 2009.... The result tonight is going to bad for Ds regardless in terms of holding the House in 2022, but in terms of VA, If TMac pulls it out, in this environment, with a campaign that by all accounts wasn't the greatest, one has to think its another sign that Virginia is probably Blue Ohio at this point.

NoVa is getting a ton of oxygen on Twitter this am (turnout appears to be good for TMac all things considered), but that's only one part of the equation... he still needs to get turnout from key constituencies in Richmond, Petersburg, the college towns, Hampton Roads, etc. Haven't seen much there. Setting aside the possibility of some erosion in NoVa (we'll see - wouldnt be surprised if its somewhat overstated), hard to feel too good about TMac's chances without knowing much about turnout in other areas he needs.