80 thoughts on “From CNBC: Early voting hits record high in Virginia ahead of dead-heat governor’s race”

  1. Drop your predictions here!

    Here’s mine:

    McAuliffe wins, barely. It’s not going to be finalized until tomorrow. This will result in Conspiracy Theories like you wouldn’t believe. There will also be verified stories of irregularities that will contribute to the Conspiracy Theories.Report

      1. And if you absolutely positively need to keep up with what’s going minute by minute, don’t!

        But you can also click here.

        But seriously. Get a bowl of ice cream or something and watch an old episode of one of your favorite sitcoms from the 90’s.Report

  2. I’m going with McAuliffe too.

    My theory is that people (esp in NOVA) were more than willing to signal to pollsters/media that they are unhappy with Dem/Lib Education policies… but that a critical mass won’t actually pull the lever for Youngkin.

    And by Education, it includes the media darlings of CRT and School Boards, but the real deep seated anger is with Covid response and the exposure of the ‘True Fact’ that Education Policy serves Education Professionals, not parents.

    As a result, wrong lessons learned by all. So that much stays the same.Report

    1. I don’t know if it will remain a dead heat or not. (Let’s define it… within 1%, let’s say.)

      But if it does, that means that “TRUMP!” is not as persuasive to GOTV as will be necessary come 2024. (Unless, maybe, Trump’s on the ticket.)Report

      1. I think McAuliffe wins by 2-3%… which is to say, not particularly close; but golly-gee only a candidate as inept as McAuliffe would win by only 2%.

        If there was a party untainted by Trump? Youngkin wins easily.Report

    2. “…exposure of the ‘True Fact’ that Education Policy serves Education Professionals, not parents.”

      I think it is a bit more complicated than this but… interesting you say “not parents” and not “not students.”Report

          1. How different are the interests of the parents with the interests of the students?

            I mean, if the students want more ice cream socials and less homework, how much more emphasis should that get over whatever the hell it is that parents would want for their kids? (“Teach them to say precocious things that I may quote them and get clout on Tik-Tok.”)Report

              1. The closest real-life example that I can come up with against that example is Young Earth Creationism.

                My biology teacher, instead, taught evolution. (You wouldn’t believe some of the wrongthink that also got taught in biology class in the 80’s, though.)Report

              3. Hey, that’s what *I* got taught too.

                But I was given literature in the meantime by such organizations as The Caleb Campaign (now the guy seems to be with the Worldview Academy) and trained to be on the other side of that dialectic.Report

              4. The main dispute now seems to be that parents want schools to teach children that 2 + 2 = 4, while schools are hiring DEI consultants to tell teachers that the idea of a single correct answer to the question of what 2 + 2 equals is a white supremacist myth.Report

          2. I’m saying that Public Schools couldn’t begin to formulate what the interests of Students would even be without reference to what the Parents who would commission such an undertaking. No matter what you *imagine* are the interests of Students would be referential to what the Parents agree are those interests.Report

            1. For transparency, I am a private school teacher and public school parent.

              I do not agree with prioritizing the interests of teachers over parents or students and was dismayed by much of what was coming out of teachers circles (and/or their representatives) last year and even this.

              But I think an ideal system would have the right people in place to identify what is best for students, even if that may be at odds with what parents want.

              But… what’s ideal and what is are very different.Report

    3. Hmmn… Loudon county is not breaking as hard for McAuliffe as the ‘experts’ say he needs. Still early… but MSNBC has used the word, ‘concerning.’ Still looks like it’ll just be raw votes in NOVA outpacing all else. 8.18pmReport

      2. Still early, but MSNBC is in full panic.

        Nicole Wallace (?):
        “Critical Race theory, which isn’t real turned the suburbs 15 points to the Trump insurrection endorsed Republican. What do Democrats do about that?”

        Heh… it isn’t real, but its losing the suburbs… those rubes.

        I mean, it’s honestly too close to even call and MSNBC is losing their sh*t.Report

          1. Nope… I hit pause/rewind and transcribed.

            I mean, when I look at the map it looks like McAuliffe should still win… but these MSNBC people seem to know things that I don’t and are already doing the post mortem.Report

      3. Holy sh*t… Larry Sabato just said that the McAuliffe team told him it is a “blood bath”

        Blaming Congress for not passing the Bills.

        We’re officially in the “time for our Priors to explain things”Report

      4. MSNBC: Meanwhile, Eric Adams has won NYC (in case you were wondering).

        Decision Desk called Virginia about an hour ago … seems way early to me… but I’m just a liberal arts major trying to do fractions and outstanding vote totals in my head.Report

        2. My comment from 8:01 PM yesterday on the Lincoln Project post:

          If Younkin wins it will have nothing to do with any of that. It’ll be because, whatever he is on policy, he lacks the total yuck factor Trump has on nominally liberal suburban women who are already annoyed about left-wing idiocy undermining the quality of the local school system.

          I’m never right about anything so I’m going to assume those reports are right and consider myself Nostradamus for the day.Report

      6. Whelp… 95% of the vote is now in from Fairfax… 88% all of Virginia is in… Youngkin is up 125k votes. Hard to see how McAuliffe makes up the votes.

        10:18 two hours exactly after first post.Report

        1. I live in a county that is currently breaking 52/47 for Ciatterelli. I held my nose and voted for Murphy, who I seriously disliked after much of his Covid response (both policy and his public persona). The election wasn’t a major topic of discussion in any of the circles I was in. However, from what little I can tell, here are the reasons people seemed to vote FOR each candidate:

          Murphy
          1. He had a D after his name

          Cittarelli
          1. He had an R after his name.
          2. Murphy’s Covid response.
          3. Taxes

          If I recall properly, in the GOP primary there were 4 candidates, two of whom explicitly ran on being pro-Trump(ism). Citterelli got nearly half the primary vote.

          Again, I don’t dig deep into this stuff but that was my rough assessment of the lay of the land here… take it for whatever it’s worth.Report

      9. 94% in… getting tighter.

        Youngkin has 65k lead with approx 190k votes still out.

        McAuliffe needs to capture 68% of all the outstanding votes to eliminate the gap.

        Guessing it narrows to a 1% Youngkin win… but that’s just a guess.Report

    4. Updates have slowed to a crawl… so probably won’t see outcome until tomorrow. But in any scenario, we can likely conclude that my prognosticating powers have once again proven useless… In the Deadpool 2 universe, I am the Peter of Prognosticators.Report

  3. so that’s a 6X increase in early voting. granted some of that is probably due to legislative changes since, but I read that as a highly motivated electorate. Remains to be seen who was highly motivated – though national trends say it benefits Democrats.Report

  4. I also am predicting a close McAuliffe victory based, primarily on one data point: The polling has a systematic problem identifying and tracking Trump supporting voters which makes them skew slightly left but ONLY when Trump is on the ballot. Since Trump is not on the ballot I don’t think his voters will be sufficiently activated so McAuliffe skates through to a landing, possibly so close he knocks the tail on the deck when he comes in.

    But if Youngkin pulls it out I would be glumly unsurprised.Report

  5. I’m going with “Very Close”, say less than 2 points.

    Which is the point I keep repeating, that almost a majority, or very slim majority, wants some form of Trumpism.

    Even if the Dems win, we are going to be in this fight for a long while yet. Even if we lose, we will need to fight for a long while yet.
    It’s going to be about a decade before America sees anything like a political consensus.Report

      1. You’ve heard of the Sun and Moon theory?

        It says that when there is a strong dominant party, like the New Deal Coalition or the Reagan Coalition, the opposite party, out of necessity, adopts a softer version of the same, a reflective moon of the FDR/ Reagan sun.

        So like in the 50s, the Republican Party platform always pounded the drum in favor of labor unions and Social Security, or like how Bill Clinton promised to end welfare as we know it.

        Right now, neither party is dominant enough to force the other to compromise, since either one is close enough can win outright, but only by a razor thin margin.Report

        2. I am 41. I know a lot of people my age who are married, have kids, have mortgages, and that other typical American middle-class life stuff. I also know lots of people my age who are not married, do not have kids, are well-educated but never quite got something you would call a career, and are still living with roommates in their early to mid-40s. Some of the unmarried and childless people made that a conscious choice. Others seem to have had this state of perma-25 year old status thrust upon them because of factors beyond their control largely such as suffering through 9/11 and multiple recessions in their adult life, and now the first global pandemic in 100 years.

          Most of my friends have left politics that are either “reform can save the day” or “burn it all down and start again.” The problem with the burn it all down and start again folks is that they are a minority that does not realize it and can’t quite convince the majority that BS Jobs by Dan Graeber is the best book ever written. But I do think there is a substantial portion of the 20-40 something population that did everything it was told to do education wise and are now stuck with huge student debt bills and precarious prospects compared to their elders. “More neoliberalism/triangulation” will not help this group.

          I get a sense that a lot of Americans feel like everything is literally and metaphoically broken and new media is exposing how the sausage gets made in Congress too much. There are still lots of older Boomers and Gen Xers who are stuck in “old economy Steve” mode and this group can be around for decades considering the youngest of them are probably only 46 or 47. But those 46 and 47 year olds graduated into the Clinton boom years and tech 1.0. I graduated into post-9/11 and the tech bust recession.

          The oldies are styming real progress in BBB and people will just blame Democrats instead of stating “well if the Democrats had bigger majorities, Manchin and Sinema would be cranky but harmless eccentrics instead of unofficial co-Presidents.Report

          1. The problem with the burn it all down and start again folks is that they are a minority that does not realize it and can’t quite convince the majority that BS Jobs by Dan Graeber is the best book ever written. But I do think there is a substantial portion of the 20-40 something population that did everything it was told to do education wise and are now stuck with huge student debt bills and precarious prospects compared to their elders. “More neoliberalism/triangulation” will not help this group.

            I endorse, at least mostly. The man’s name was David Graeber, not Dan, a London-based American Marxist who unfortunately died recently. In fact, his twitter account is still online even if Mr Graeber himself isn’t.

            In any event, I’ve read a fair amount of his stuff (though not his book); and for the most part I found it very impressive. Among other things, it has been almost completely ignored by the Right and mainstream punditry, but there are some relevant circumstances where the hard Left is friendlier to the Right (I say friendly but really it’s probably better described as ideologically simpatico) compared to mainstream liberals.

            And those circumstances are primarily about institutionalism. For example, I am much much more supportive of the political aspirations of Bernie Sanders compared to Liz Warren. And I have much more respect for the worldview of Liz Warren than that of Kamala Harris.

            Or, there’s a very weird intellectual lacuna on the Left where the ideology of cultural Marxists is a much much different thing than the cultural critiques of traditional Marxist (almost directly opposed sometimes even).

            The funny thing is, for most of us this sort of thing seems offhand to be associated with the political fringes, but really it’s not. It’s really about competing centrists, where one group is protected by jobs in bureaucracies in government, universities, hospitals, and the like. And they’re political/cultural focus is largely about reinforcing the institutional power of those bureaucracies. And there’s another group who’s over-educated but underemployed and often carrying debt (as Saul said), whose economic and social aspirations are often thwarted by those very same bureaucracies.Report

    2. Which is the point I keep repeating, that almost a majority, or very slim majority, wants some form of Trumpism.

      To wit (allbeit from CNN):

      Just 1 in 3 Republicans say that they will trust that the 2024 results are “accurate” even if their preferred candidate doesn’t win. (By contrast 82% of Democrats and 68% of independents say the same.)

      While that number is the most stunning, it’s far from the only number in the poll that should be cause for concern as we look to future national elections.

      Consider:

      * Two thirds of Republican respondents said they have little to no trust that elections are fair.
      * Asked what the biggest threat to fair elections is, 34% of Republicans said it was voter fraud while 29% cited “vote tampering by the opposing political party.”
      * Three quarters of Republicans say that Trump has continued to contest the 2020 results because “mostly because he is right, there were real cases of fraud that changed the results.”

      This is a problem they created intentionally over decades to hold political power, which means it will be decades to undo IF it can be undone.

      (SOURCE – https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/02/politics/2024-election-election-fraud-trump/index.html)Report

  6. Turnout looks like it’s gonna set a record:

    Report

      1. And he barely won in 2013. He won because a libertarian third party candidate received about 165K votes. Mos of the voters would have gone R and Cucinelli would have eeked out a narrow victory in 2013 but for a third party candidate.

        Though I have to admit that VA’s non consecutive terms only is a deeply stupid idea.Report

  9. Ooh, Youngkin lead now below 1% — still time for everyone to have to rewrite their analyses.

    Edit – no, I think I need to go to bed, my arithmetic skills have turned in early.Report

  10. Youngkin won but not by a margin that should make anyone happy.

    I don’t think CRT hysteria was enough to flip the VA one way or another. If this is true, McAuliffe outperformed Biden with college-educated white women but vastly under performed with non-college educated white women. Youngkin won the later group 75-25.

    CRT was a factor but I think this is more about residual anger about COVID school closures along with the general suckiness of the economy right now. Gas prices are high and people complain about those all the time and the supply-chain issues. There was an NPR article today on how we are living through skimpflation. Prices are generally the same but the service sucks more and it is the same as paying more for less. This should calm down but right now lots of people are angry and looking for people to blame.Report

    2. Nothing to worry about.
      No reason to change.
      Nobody did anything wrong.
      Even the people who won tonight should be disappointed.
      I can calm my own disappointment with the thoughts of their disappointment.
      Nothing to worry about.

      No reason to change.Report

      2. Jaybird,

        You posted above that VA has go opposite of the presidential results since 1977. Reagan, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama all won re-election. Yet it always just bad news for the Democrats to you.Report

        1. I guess yesterday wasn’t bad news for the Democrats.

          I just need to have a bigger picture view.

          Truly, it wasn’t possible for anything *BUT* this to happen.

          Therefore: No Mistakes Were Made.

          It’s like when Clinton ran.Report

  11. https://twitter.com/ThePlumLineGS/status/1455690385750208512?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1455690385750208512%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com%2Fembed%2Fcomments%2F%3Fbase%3Ddefaultf%3Dlawyersgunsmoneyblog-comt_i%3D12112520https3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F3Fp3D121125t_u%3Dhttps3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F20212F112Fthe-thermostat-is-a-harsh-mistresst_e%3DThe20thermostat20is20a20harsh20mistresst_d%3DThe20thermostat20is20a20harsh20mistress20-20Lawyers2C20Guns202620Moneyt_t%3DThe20thermostat20is20a20harsh20mistresss_o%3Ddescversion%3Db8cc22d9c3be6916b2ef7fe9e57839bcReport

  12. Would this be a reasonably fair conclusion to draw after the last few election cycles?

    (# of people who support Democratic candidates) < (# of people who support Democratic policies) < (# of people who support general liberal ideology)Report

  13. Terry Mac received 1.57 million votes, this is more than Northam received in 2017. Democrats showed up, Republicans showed up. Biden -Youngkin voters are very real and seem to be white women without college degrees mainly.Report

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