Hi everyone, I am Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout the 2025 Virginia Elections. This is a special bonus episode where I will do an early check-in on early vote just to give everyone an update on how everything is going.

00:13.96

Sam Shirazi

So to begin with, I wanted to just give you the big picture number. When this is released, there’s about four days of early voting that’s happened so far. And in those four days, there’s been over 91,000 early votes cast in Virginia so far.

00:30.10

Sam Shirazi

That is well ahead of where things were in 2021, when there was around 41,000 votes at this time. It’s not quite 2024 level turnout, obviously, because that’s a presidential election. But I still think that’s very strong early vote turnout. I think by the end of this week...

00:48.21

Sam Shirazi

There will be well over 100,000 early votes, probably closer to 150,000 early votes. So that’s pretty crazy if you think about it, because we’ve only had a few days of early voting and there’s already tens of thousands of Virginians who have made up their mind.

01:04.18

Sam Shirazi

I think, as I mentioned, there are some things that early vote is better at telling us, and I think one of them is turnout. And so I think just from these preliminary numbers, I’m pretty comfortable saying that the early vote this year in Virginia is going to be more than in 2021.

01:18.87

Sam Shirazi

And so we’ll get record early vote for a Virginia state election. That’s not a huge leap to say that just based on these early numbers. I think the other thing that potentially could happen is we could have more turnout than in 2021. Now, 2021 was a modern record for turnout in a Virginia governor’s election.

01:39.38

Sam Shirazi

It was around 55% turnout. And I think there were roughly 3.3 million total votes. I think we there’s a good chance we’ll get over that just given these initial numbers and the level of engagement and the number of people coming out. So I think it’s interesting to think about overall turnout.

01:57.43

Sam Shirazi

I’m pretty confident we’re going to break 50%. And I’d be curious if we get over 55% just given these initial numbers So that’s just on the turnout side of things. I did want to mention, you know obviously, i I had flagged in my previous episode that there was going to be a lot of overanalyzing of these numbers. I do think there’s some good in the all ah ah analysts out there who are trying to crunch through their numbers.

02:23.22

Sam Shirazi

What I usually use is I use VPAP. ah ah The Virginia Public Access Project, they have a really good dashboard of early voting that you can go look at every single county and see how many votes have been cast. So VPAP a great resource.

02:35.84

Sam Shirazi

Shout out to Chaz Netticombe. He’s put together a spreadsheet kind of comparing 2025 early vote to early vote. I think it has some really interesting i numbers in there. And that’s kind of a useful comparison to take a look at his spreadsheet. So i think I think there’s some good resources to dive into the early vote data, more so to get a sense of what’s going on. you know I’m a little bit nervous because I think some people are kind of drawing huge conclusions this early in the early voting cycle.

03:07.38

Sam Shirazi

i think it’s my you know my personal opinion. I think it’s way too early to draw any strong inferences other than turnout is pretty strong. There’s a lot of things you have to consider. I’m going to kind of break down some of the things that are important to keep in mind when analyzing early vote.

03:23.21

Sam Shirazi

All right. So one of the things you have to keep in mind is mail ballots. Oftentimes with early vote analysis in Virginia, there’s kind of a ah ah focus on in-person early vote. And, you know, I get it.

03:34.67

Sam Shirazi

there It’s going to be more in-person early votes. But, you know, that is going to be roughly even. I still think the Democrats are going to have an advantage and in-person early vote. Now, is it going to be 60-40, 55-45? I mean, I don’t know that right now. But I do think...

03:50.93

Sam Shirazi

and Democrats are going to win the in-person early vote, just not by a huge amount. And so you’ll see a lot of time spent on the in-person early vote numbers. But don’t forget about the mail, because I think that’s going to be about 25% to a third of the early vote is going to be mail.

04:06.33

Sam Shirazi

And that’s going to be primarily in in the bluer parts of Virginia, and the mail ballots themselves are going to be very blue. And so when you’re looking at in-person early votes, you know they’re they’re kind of Democrats, Republicans trading off votes. But when you look at the mail ballots, it’s the Democrats really making up a lot of ground in the early vote.

04:25.61

Sam Shirazi

And so it’s almost like the icing on top of the cake for the Democrats in the early vote. And if you look at 2024, so Democrats slightly won the in-person early vote. Republicans slightly won the Election Day vote.

04:39.26

Sam Shirazi

But Democrats just overwhelmingly dominated the mail vote in 2024 in Virginia. And frankly, most of Harris’s 2024 margin in Virginia came from the mail votes.

04:49.96

Sam Shirazi

And so I think it’s it’s it’s easy to kind of focus just on the in-person numbers, but you also have to think about what’s going on with the mail vote. And the reason I raise this is mail votes obviously take a while to get to people.

05:03.10

Sam Shirazi

They have to fill it out. They have to send it back. The mail Local election officials have to process the mail votes, then they have to send the data to the state. Whereas an in-person early vote, very quickly, someone goes, votes, it’s going to be added to the system.

05:17.21

Sam Shirazi

And the reason I flag that is some of these larger counties, primarily Democratic states, Counties like Fairfax, Prince William, Loudoun, they just take a while to process their mail data.

05:29.92

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, part of that is just they get a lot of mail. And so it just takes time to open it. It takes time to count them, to add them to the system. And so pretty much most of the Democratic strongholds in Virginia have not added any mail vote so far.

05:46.92

Sam Shirazi

And so you’re seeing these 91,000 votes are almost entirely in person. Okay, so that’s the mail vote you have to consider. The other thing I want to talk about is satellite voting locations because some of these counties, very big geographically, very big population-wise, and typically the more Democratic counties have more satellite voting locations that open up later in the cycle. So for example, right now, Prince William County, big county, only one but early voting location. Loudoun, only one early voting location.

06:17.05

Sam Shirazi

Virginia Beach, only one early voting location. So you think of these places, I mean, there’s hundreds of thousands of people, big areas, lot of traffic. You know, it takes a pretty motivated voter to go down to the early voting site. I mean, in Prince William County, I mean, literally some, it might take you 45 minutes to get to the early voting site.

06:34.68

Sam Shirazi

Those counties, people know that there’s satellite voting like voting locations. They know that they open later in the cycle. And so, A lot of people, it’s not that they might not be – it’s not that they’re not enthusiastic about voting. They’re just like, I’m going to vote when my satellite but loading voting location opens up.

06:50.84

Sam Shirazi

And so you just have to take that into account because I see some very preliminary takes like, oh, or its early vote is down here or – And I get that people are comparing it to 2024 and there’s a lot of different things you can look at, but you have to kind of holistically think about, okay, are people going to end up voting by the end or are they not going to vote by the end? And I’ll talk a little bit about that going forward. And I’ll i’ll give you the example of Fairfax City.

07:14.58

Sam Shirazi

So Fairfax City is different than Fairfax County. and And if you know Virginia, you know that... There’s kind of a unique system where you’re either a county or a city. And so Fairfax County is this big county.

07:25.100

Sam Shirazi

But in the middle of Fairfax County is this tiny jurisdiction that’s independent of Fairfax County, which is called Fairfax City. And it does all its own functions. It has its own election office. And so those voters vote in Fairfax City. They don’t vote in Fairfax County.

07:39.65

Sam Shirazi

And smaller office, also geographically small, so everyone lives near the early voting location. Fairfax City has very high early vote so far because they’re processing the mail quickly and people can walk can go a few minutes down to the early voting location.

07:55.79

Sam Shirazi

So that’s telling me people in Northern Virginia are generally fired up to vote. It’s just they might vote at different times. So if you live in Fairfax County, you might be waiting until your local satellite voting locations opening up, or you might be sending in your mail ballot. It’s taking a little bit of time to process. So all that you have to consider when you’re kind of reading the tea leaves of early voting analysis.

08:19.73

Sam Shirazi

And look, I’m not going to like go out and make huge statements. The Democrats are winning by a lot or the Republicans are doing better than expected just based on the early vote. But I can kind of give you the tea leaves very preliminarily about what I’m seeing in the early voting data.

08:32.09

Sam Shirazi

There’s good things and bad things for both sides. I’ll start with the Democrats. So I think the good thing for the Democrats is the so suburbs in certain parts of Virginia, for example, in the Richmond area, like Henrico, generally are showing up.

08:46.28

Sam Shirazi

And so that’s telling me... educated suburbs are going to show up in November. as I mentioned, Northern Virginia is going to be a little bit later. I just think there’s a lag. It’s not that I don’t think Northern Virginia is going to show up. It’s just a little bit more of a lag because of some of the issues we talked about.

09:02.94

Sam Shirazi

So in my mind, I think Richmond suburbs, in Northern Virginia are going to come out. And that makes sense because you have high propensity voters, educated population. They’re probably upset at what’s going on in DC.

09:13.78

Sam Shirazi

I think Democrats are not going to have a problem this November in Virginia in the suburbs. That’s kind of like a very early tea leave that I can gather from the early voting data. Now, the Democrats, I think where they might struggle, and it’s not uniform across all these areas, but traditionally the part of Virginia that’s been Achilles heel for the Democrats in these off-year state elections has been Hampton Roads, Southside,

09:38.60

Sam Shirazi

areas with more African-American voters, those types of areas don’t always show up at the same level as other parts of Virginia for the Democrats. I think there are some some places in Virginia where the Democrats are doing a pretty good job of getting out those voters. There’s other parts of Virginia where they could be doing better at getting out those voters.

09:56.07

Sam Shirazi

And so I think in these early results in the early vote, I can kind of see that that pattern is continuing. Now, the good news for the Democrats is is they have a still have a lot of time to fix that. And typically, these types of low propensity voters, I talked about it in my previous podcast, they show up at the end. And so they they tune in at the end.

10:16.04

Sam Shirazi

And so I do think there is a universe where Democrats democrats get these people engaged. They’ll show up. That’s better news for the Democrats in November. And kind of a similar category of people are students, young people.

10:29.97

Sam Shirazi

College towns so far have had pretty good turnout. um Now you could say, well, maybe those are the professors or the people who are older in those college towns. But I think generally it seems like those areas are more engaged and and that kind of trickles down to the low propensity voters.

10:44.42

Sam Shirazi

And remember that Virginia has same-day registration. So I expect in some of these college towns, there’s going to be a lot of college students showing up on election day, early voting. Sorry, they’re going to show up on election day and actually vote on election day with same-day registration.

10:58.04

Sam Shirazi

Again, that’s kind of very early tea leaves. I’m not saying it’s 100% going to happen, but I think that’s kind of what I’m seeing on the Democratic side. Republican side, it’s a little bit of ah a a similar story. I think areas where Republicans traditionally come out have been coming out.

11:14.67

Sam Shirazi

So you talk about somewhere like Goochland in the Richmond suburbs, more college-educated Republicans who are so who are sticking with the Republicans. I think those areas are coming out. So you’re seeing an increased engagement from the Republican base.

11:27.81

Sam Shirazi

I think that makes sense for various reasons. Part of it is the Winsome Sears reboot strategy, kind of engage those people. You could argue maybe what happened with the tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk may have engaged some more of the traditional partisan base voters who are always going to show up no matter what. Maybe they’re coming out more early.

11:47.14

Sam Shirazi

You know, as I said, I think most of those people tend to show up. you know If there was really a disaster for the Republicans they all fell asleep and they didn’t show up, you know that would be a bad night. I don’t see that happening. And honestly, my gut was that was never going to happen because I just never saw this as blowout-type territory where know no Republicans would show up in November. I mean, I always thought that for whatever reason, the Republican base was generally going to wake up and show up. So it hasn’t really changed my calculus that much, but it is –

12:17.14

Sam Shirazi

You are seeing it in the early vote data in some of these areas where traditionally there’s high Republican turnout. You’re seeing that again. But just like the Democrats have a problem,

12:27.71

Sam Shirazi

with some of their low propensity voters potentially in November, I think Republicans are having a similar problem in some parts of Virginia. For example, in Southwest Virginia, traditionally, some of those counties just has a really lower turnout overall and has low turnout in the early vote.

12:43.62

Sam Shirazi

And you’re seeing that again. And it’s not a huge shock to me that places like Lee County or Buchanan County just are not having the same amount of turnout as somewhere like Goochland, different demographics, less college educated,

12:56.10

Sam Shirazi

I’m also mindful that those are big counties. Early voting location might be far away. So I all understand that maybe they’ll show up on Election Day. And again, that’s why Election Day is such a wild card.

13:06.60

Sam Shirazi

Like you don’t know who is going to show up on Election Day. It could be a red surge. It could be a blue surge. It could be everyone surging. It could be no one surging. I mean, that’s that’s the real wild card in elections is who is going to show up.

13:20.45

Sam Shirazi

on election day, who wakes up and realizes there’s an election. And I think that’s just what early vote can’t tell you is it just can’t tell you who’s going to turn out on election day. and And frankly, you don’t even know the universe of voters. I’ve mentioned this before.

13:34.88

Sam Shirazi

Virginia has same day registration. So you don’t even know, like it’s possible 100,000 people you haven’t modeled for just show up on election day because they’ve been tuning in really late to the Virginia elections.

13:46.38

Sam Shirazi

And then the final wild card is just the fact that at the early stages, there’s going to be very partisan people voting early. And and that’s because they already know who they’re going to vote for they’re They’re very motivated. They want to go early vote.

13:58.45

Sam Shirazi

So right now we kind of know you know who’s voting. I think as early voting continues and more and more voters in the middle start voting, we just don’t know. We don’t know who the independents are voting for. We don’t know who the moderate voters are voting for.

14:13.40

Sam Shirazi

And it’s possible they’re all swinging in one direction. It’s possible they’re splitting their votes. And we just, we obviously can’t find that out until election night. And you know, behind the scenes, the campaigns know, based on the voter file, who’s voted.

14:27.28

Sam Shirazi

And typically in these campaign and party databases, they know they assign everyone kind of a rank. This person’s a strong Democrat. This person’s a strong Republican. So can they kind of have a sense of what things are going on behind the scenes.

14:39.79

Sam Shirazi

Again, my gut is telling me there’s just a bunch of strong Democrats and a bunch of strong Republicans voting right now. I think when it’s going to get more interesting is people in the middle and the parties can’t really model for that. They don’t know which side they’re voting for.

14:51.69

Sam Shirazi

And that makes it more complicated when you’re doing the analysis. All right. So what does this all mean, big picture overall? I mean, I think, as I said, it’s it’s telling us a turnout story.

15:01.100

Sam Shirazi

The high propensity voters on both sides are turning out. That’s not a huge surprise. We kind of knew that would happen because by definition, they’re high propensity voters. Question mark are the low propensity voters. I think for Democrats, especially in some of these House of Delegates districts, it’s going to be really important to see if they can get out students, they can get out black voters. Those voters are going to decide some of these House of Delegates races.

15:24.31

Sam Shirazi

I think there is this path for the Democrats where they just kind of run up the score in the suburbs and it doesn’t really matter what happens in the rest of Virginia. that The problem with that it for the Democrats is that’s kind of a narrow path to victory. And I think, you know, that’s...

15:39.81

Sam Shirazi

They obviously would like to get a bigger win. And so the more parts of the base you’re they are able to get out, the better for them. Republicans, I think that they’re probably happy that their base is showing up. And so they’re not going to get blown out in November, I don’t think. I think the question for them – okay, your base shows up, that gets you to like 40%.

15:57.59

Sam Shirazi

I mean, how many of the swing voters are you winning? And are you getting up to 45%? Are you getting up to 50%? I mean, that’s the open question. I mean, I i think with these numbers, pretty clear the Republicans are going to get at least 40% of the vote.

16:09.92

Sam Shirazi

I just don’t know what their ceiling is in Virginia. And, you know, I... Glenn Youngkin in a really good year when there was good turnout for him, he won moderate swing voters, he got up to 52%.

16:22.97

Sam Shirazi

And that was like his ceiling in Virginia was 52% in a really good year. And so I’m kind of questioning, you know what is the Republican ceiling this year? Is it 52%? I mean, maybe, but I think everything going on, it’s just kind of hard to imagine a scenario where the Republicans get to the Glenn Youngkin number.

16:40.79

Sam Shirazi

So all that’s to say is maybe I’m just confirming my priors and I’m not thinking this through, but you know not super surprising. Highly engaged Democrats are showing up. Highly engaged Republicans are showing up. Question mark, are the less engaged Democrats, less engaged Republicans?

16:55.33

Sam Shirazi

I think we’ll just have to see how early voting plays out. Super interesting stuff. I mean, I like looking at early voting data. it’s just It’s great to see people so many people voting. We’re going to have record early voting for a Virginia state election.

17:09.66

Sam Shirazi

I just don’t want people to kind of go crazy with the early vote analysis and make kind of bold predictions about who’s going to win just purely off very early, early vote data. I think at the very, very end of early voting,

17:21.95

Sam Shirazi

Maybe then you can really try to read the tea leaves and you might be able to get some good information. But I think right now it’s just too early. You got to wait for mail to come in. you got to wait for satellite but voting locations to open. You have to wait for more later voters who are going to get engaged to tune in. so I wouldn’t go crazy. i wouldn’t worry too much about things you’re seeing. I would just kind of keep following, see what’s going on.

17:47.33

Sam Shirazi

Obviously I’ll keep doing these early vote updates. I don’t want to do them every day because I think it gets a little bit old, but periodically if I think there’s interesting stuff coming in, I will do the early voting updates.

17:58.38

Sam Shirazi

lot going on. Next podcast, I’ll probably talk a little bit about a potential shutdown in DC and see if there’s any news before then. So, Early voting, super interesting. It’s not the only thing going on. There’s a lot going on in Virginia, a lot going on in the country. So just keep that in mind. So anyways, appreciate everyone listening. This has been Federal Fallout and I’ll join you next time.

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