Hi, everyone. I'm Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This episode, I will go over the districts the Democrats are targeting this November.

00:11.81

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, instead of going over the ratings and who's up, who's down, i thought I'd do a little bit something a little bit different and basically go over the district shapes and the lines because we're a little bit early for me to give ratings. And I'm sure I will do another episode closer to the elections where I will go over all the different ratings, who's up, who's down. This is more to kind of give a big picture overview of the districts.

00:35.81

Sam Shirazi

And really what made me want to do this is a couple weeks ago, I did a episode on redistricting and I talked about how the decisions the special masters made in 2021 were important because we were, we were Virginia had those maps for a decade and I wanted to kind of go over the maps to kind of give you a sense of the nuances of the district districts, how the redistricting choices made a difference this year.

01:00.41

Sam Shirazi

And it's not so much that I'm going to be critiquing necessarily every district, although for some of them, I will give you my thoughts and give you a sense of where I thought maybe the special masters got things right and where they got it wrong.

01:12.34

Sam Shirazi

And I'm only going to be focusing on the districts the Democrats are targeting because I think that's more likely than not. um I think the most of the Democratic-held seats are going to be safe this year. In Virginia, it's really the Republican ones where there's going to be more focus. So

01:26.38

Sam Shirazi

The one thing I should say is I'm not going to talk about House District 41 because in my redistricting episode, I talked a lot about some of the issues I had with the special masters drawing that district and why it didn't make a whole lot of sense.

01:37.40

Sam Shirazi

You kind of heard my rant about House District 41. I'm not going to do that over again. So I'll be going over the other districts. And if you want to follow along, you know, I haven't I often reference VPAP. And if you're not familiar with VPAP, it's the Virginia Public Access Project.

01:51.94

Sam Shirazi

They have all the maps on their website. So go to VPAP.org, check out those maps, and you can follow along if you want to see what I'm talking about because I'll be kind of going into some of the district shapes and nuances in each district.

02:07.97

Sam Shirazi

All right, so without further ado, the first district is House District 57. This is everyone's favorite district in the Richmond suburbs of Western Henrico and Eastern Goochland.

02:18.70

Sam Shirazi

I think this one gets a lot of attention because it is such a Harris blue seat. So it was it was carried by Vice President Harris 2024 by about nine And the current Republican incumbent, David Owen, certainly faces a tough challenge from Democrat May Navarre.

02:36.16

Sam Shirazi

And the reason for that is this district is in part of Virginia that is becoming more and more friendly to the Democrats. But i I talked about this in 2023 as well. There was one...

02:47.54

Sam Shirazi

decision the special masters made during redistricting that really was important. So 90 or 85% of this district is Western Henrico, which has become almost completely democratic, but about 15% of the district is Eastern Goochland, which is much redder than Henrico.

03:05.77

Sam Shirazi

And in 2023, the Democratic candidate Susanna Gibson actually won Henrico. So if this was just a Henrico seat, the Democrats would have won the seat in 2023.

03:16.52

Sam Shirazi

But the Guczlin portion of the district is just so red that the Republicans were able to win this in 2023 because of the votes that came out of Guczlin. And I think there's going be similar dynamic this year. If I had to guess, Henrico is going to go blue, Guczlin is going to go red.

03:31.81

Sam Shirazi

I think what's going to be different this year potentially is that Henrico is going to get a little bit bluer and Goochlin is going to get a little less red. And each cycle ah both Henrico, Western Henrico and Eastern Goochland have become more and more democratic. So I think this is the year potentially where it's just got to get to the point where it doesn't matter what's going on in Goochland. I think Henrico is going to get so blue and Goochland is not going to be red enough for there to potentially be the votes for the Republicans.

04:01.65

Sam Shirazi

And so we'll just have to wait and see. And I think that's one of the things with Redistricting, obviously, it's happening at the beginning of the decade. And the people who draw the maps have certain information about the districts.

04:13.55

Sam Shirazi

But the districts change over time, partly because people move in and people move out, partly because the people who live in those districts, maybe their politics are changing for various reasons.

04:24.52

Sam Shirazi

And I think part of what's driving mid-cycle, mid-decade redistricting is this idea that we need to update the districts because we have more political data, we have more election data, so we have to change the districts because of that.

04:36.97

Sam Shirazi

Now, you know, we can debate whether that's a good idea or not. I think generally doesn't make a whole lot of sense to redistrict for no other reason than for political reasons. As I discussed, Virginia is not going to have mid-decent.

04:47.76

Sam Shirazi

Decade redistricting because of its constitution. But i I just want to use that as example about this is the type of district where at the beginning of the decade, it's it seems like it's a Republican district. And maybe now it's going to become more of a Democratic district, given the changes that are happening in the Richmond suburbs.

05:04.37

Sam Shirazi

All right. Now, speaking of the Richmond suburbs, I'll talk about another district. This is House District 73. This is in the western parts of Chesterfield County. The current incumbent is Republican Mark Early, and the Democratic nominee is Leslie Mehta.

05:19.32

Sam Shirazi

And this is a district that Harris very narrowly carried. I think the district itself is pretty clean. It's kind of more the outer part of Chesterfield. It's more suburban, even has a little bit of exerman exurban parts of it.

05:32.91

Sam Shirazi

I think the thing with this district is it's just changing. you know At the beginning of this decade, i think pretty solidly you could say it's a Republican-leaning district. Now it's basically becoming more of a toss-up district because of some of the changes we talked about, growth in Chesterfield County and also suburban voters becoming more democratic. So this is the type of year I think it's going to be close. you know We'll have to see if there's maybe ticket splitting or if maybe the seat is quite not quite there yet.

06:00.56

Sam Shirazi

I think unlike House District 57, which I think most people think is pretty much there where a good chance the Democrats might pick it up, House District 73, we'll see if it's kind of there yet and for it for there to be a flip. And even if it doesn't flip this cycle, this is the type of seat maybe in two years in 2027 could flip. So interesting district to watch in the Chesterfield area in the Richmond suburbs.

06:24.45

Sam Shirazi

So that's House District 73. All right, so I'm going to talk about two other Richmond area seats and i'm going to talk about them in tandem because I think this is where the special masters kind of went off the rails in Richmond area and in South Side. So I talked about House District 41 in Southwest Virginia. I think, frankly, that's probably the worst run seat in the House Delegates.

06:48.77

Sam Shirazi

So this is House District 75 and House District 82. And I'll start with House District 75. This is has a kind of a odd district because it's a mix of suburban Chesterfield and then it goes south of the Appomattox River to Hopewell.

07:07.25

Sam Shirazi

And then there is a neighboring district, House 8 District 82, which again is a little bit of a weird district because you have the city of Petersburg and then you have a bunch of rural areas surrounding Petersburg and going into South Side.

07:21.89

Sam Shirazi

And the reason these two districts are a little bit odd is i think potentially or arguably there are some Voting Rights Act issues now. realistically, like no one was going to go there and file a voting rat Voting Rights Act lawsuit. I don't think the districts really rose to the level that there were some issues with the Voting Rights Act.

07:41.46

Sam Shirazi

But I do think, you know, it could have been drawn better. And the reason I say that is this district has a decent amount of African-American voters, and then it has a decent amount of working class white voters. So typically the way it works in this part of Virginia is African-American voters tend to be Democrats.

07:59.22

Sam Shirazi

The working class white voters tend to be Republican. And when you have that kind of racial polarization parts of the South, typically you want to be careful when you're drawing the maps not to dilute African-American voting straight.

08:12.57

Sam Shirazi

Essentially, you don't want to crack African-American voters because If there's a bunch of districts where there's about 30% or 40% African-American voters, you might think, oh, okay, you know, in theory, they they might be able to elect the candidate of their choice. The problem is if a district is 60% white and there's very racialized racialized voting,

08:32.08

Sam Shirazi

then you're not going to have the ability of African-American voters to choose the the candidate of their choice. And, you know, I'm not saying that this is necessarily a Voting Rights Act violation. I just think things perhaps could have been drawn differently.

08:45.88

Sam Shirazi

And with these two districts, the reason I say they could be drawn differently is you had these two districts, these two cities. So there's Petersburg, which has a large African-American population.

08:56.32

Sam Shirazi

And then you have Hopewell, which also has a ah ah decent African-American population. And they're very relatively close to each other. In some ways, they're similar type cities. You could call them maybe sister cities, but they've been put in these two different districts.

09:09.01

Sam Shirazi

And so if you had a district that combined those two cities, it it would have been majority African-American. But the way it was drawn, these two cities are put in two different districts. neither district is majority African American.

09:21.42

Sam Shirazi

And so I think you've gotten to the point where it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense the way that the districts were drawn. And I think, you know, the logical thing would have been to put Petersburg and Hopewell in one district.

09:35.54

Sam Shirazi

I i have really have no idea why the special masters didn't do that. But the the result is, Both these districts currently have Republican members of the House of Delegates. So the 75th district has Republican Carrie Conyer and the 82nd district has Kim Taylor as the incumbent delegate. And the Democrats are challenging both of them. Both these districts are Harris districts.

10:01.22

Sam Shirazi

But I think part of the challenge Democrats are going to have this year in these districts is you have different turnout for presidential and state elections. So for presidential turnout, I would say African-American turnout is stronger for Democrats, especially this last November. You had an African-American woman at the top of the ticket. So I think that helped turn out for Democrats. And that's why Vice President Harris was able to win both these districts.

10:24.42

Sam Shirazi

We'll see. We'll see if former Congresswoman a Abigail Spanberger is able to win these districts. And they both have different dynamics. So I'll talk about House District 75. So, you know, the it's it's this oddly shaped district and the Appomattox River runs in the middle of it. And it kind of separates the district into two different parts. So the northern end of the district.

10:44.76

Sam Shirazi

is part of Chesterfield County, is more suburban, kind of more of a typical suburban type district. And then south of the Epimetrics River, you have parts of Hopewell City, you have Hopewell City and Prince George County, which is more of a working class area. And so I think the the Democrats' advantage in this district is that the Chesterfield portion of the district may become more democratic this year just because The suburbs are trending towards the Democrats.

11:11.32

Sam Shirazi

I think the challenge Democrats might have is that the Hopewell portion of the district, the turnout of among African-American voters might not be there this year. And so we'll just have to see. I think um Republicans feel like the incumbent, Carrie Conyer, has a good brand in the area that she might get a decent amount of ticket splitting.

11:29.12

Sam Shirazi

So this is definitely definitely a type of seat where even if Spanberger carries it at the top of the ticket, there's a possibility the Republicans are able to hang out, hang on. Okay, I will also talk about House District 82, kind of a a little bit of a different dynamic in that you basically have Petersburg city and then you have the sh surrounding rural areas.

11:48.01

Sam Shirazi

And so there's not as much of a suburban component to this district. And I think the Republicans feel like they have a good shot of winning this district, even at the top of the ticket, because they think because of the working class nature of the district, it's just the type of district that they might be able to win in an off year election.

12:06.10

Sam Shirazi

Obviously, I think if at the top of the ticket, Winston-Marie Sears is carrying this district, it's going to be very hard for the Democratic nominee, Kimberly Pope Adams, to win this district. I think if Abigail Smemberger carries the to district, obviously the Democrats have a better shot.

12:20.32

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, as I said, I think if you created a district... So I think if you had a district that had both Petersburg and Hopewell in one district, decent chance the Democrats would win that district. I think now because they're in separate districts, we'll have to wait and see.

12:34.91

Sam Shirazi

And again, i think these redistricting choices that are made at the beginning of the decade have a big impact down the line and are going to decide this thing one way or another. And some of these seats...

12:45.67

Sam Shirazi

you know House District 82 was the closest seat in 2023, came down to a few dozen votes, and the decision to put one precinct versus another precinct basically decide elections like that. So all that's to say is these red redistricting decisions that are made can really impact elections years later on.

13:03.14

Sam Shirazi

All right, now let's go further down I-64 from Richmond down to Hampton Roads, and I'll talk about House District 71, which is in the Williamsburg area. The incumbent is Republican Amanda Batten, and the Democratic nominee is Jessica Anderson.

13:19.38

Sam Shirazi

This district, I think, the most part, makes sense. It's basically Williamsburg and some of the surrounding suburbs. think ah there's a portion of the district, not a huge amount of the district, but is is very red, which is in New count Kent County, which is more of a rural county.

13:33.78

Sam Shirazi

And i think one thing to keep an eye on, both in New Kent and in the Williamsburg suburbs, is to see how much growth there's been and how much more democratic it's become. Because I think this is another type of those districts. People are moving in.

13:47.84

Sam Shirazi

People are becoming more democratic because it's more of a suburban district, more college-educated voters who may have traditionally been Republicans, but this year, might vote for the Democrats. We'll just have to wait and see how much that happens this year.

13:59.54

Sam Shirazi

Again, Republicans think they have a strong incumbent. We'll see if there's ticket splitting. I think there's a decent shot Spanberger is going to carry this district at the top of the ticket. Republicans think maybe their candidate might be able to get enough ticket splitting to win.

14:13.00

Sam Shirazi

Obviously, the Democrats are hoping there'll be more straight ticket voting and Jessica Anderson will be able to win. All right. Next, we'll talk about the neighboring district, which is House District 69, which is in the Yorktown area.

14:25.50

Sam Shirazi

I've talked about this district before because there was a very, I would say, odd redistricting choice made where most of this district is in the lower part of the Chesapeake Bay and There's a little bit, a small portion of the district that goes across the York River into Gloucester.

14:45.90

Sam Shirazi

And Gloucester is much redder than York County. And so that one decision to just include part of the district in Gloucester, and it's about 10% of the district, but honestly, it's so much redder than the rest of the district.

14:59.46

Sam Shirazi

In a year like this, where it's going to be close, it could come down. to a few hundred votes. I mean, it really, a decision like that could basically decide the election. Just the fact that they put this little tiny portion of the district across the river in Gloucester could decide this election. And, you know, not to belabor the point, like I said, I mean, to me, it's just very interesting how these redistricting decisions, why were they made? i mean, sometimes they're made for population reasons because they want to make sure the districts all have even population.

15:27.24

Sam Shirazi

I think sometimes, frankly, they're made for political reasons, just so they didn't want too many districts that were Democratic leaning. And so they just made that decision to do that. And, you know, we'll see we'll see how that affects the outcome this November.

15:41.27

Sam Shirazi

Okay, now we'll go down to the next district in the Hampton Roads area, which is House District 86. The incumbent Republican is AC Cardoza, and he is being challenged by ah ah Democrat, Virgil Thornton. So this is, again, one of those odd districts in that it includes two very different cities. So it includes part of the city of Hampton, which is a more Democratic stronghold, has a decent amount of African-American voters,

16:08.80

Sam Shirazi

And then it includes the city of Pocosin. And Pocosin is just known for whatever reason, it's just become a very, very red city. It's known to be very conservative, delivers a lot of votes for the Republicans.

16:21.45

Sam Shirazi

And I think that's one thing AC Cardozo has going for them. For him, it has a lot of turnout and it's going to be very red. And so the Democrats hopes come down to getting out voters in Hampton City, getting out African-American voters.

16:35.21

Sam Shirazi

So the decision to kind of link Hampton and Pocosin, it but basically becomes a turnout battle. Who can turn out more of their base? Can the Democrats get out African-American voters in Hampton? Can AC Cardozo get out his base in Pocosin?

16:48.63

Sam Shirazi

I mean, frankly, I think AC Cardoza has an easier job because most people, the voters in Pocosin, they tend to come out in pretty high numbers. I think the Democrats need to focus on getting out African-American voters if they want to have a shot in this district.

17:02.79

Sam Shirazi

All right, next Hampton Road District is House District 89. The incumbent is retiring. And so we're gonna, this is an open seat. And it's a little bit of an interesting dynamic because you have parts of Suffolk and Chesapeake.

17:17.35

Sam Shirazi

Those are big cities. Parts of the Suffolk, parts of the district are actually pretty rural. So you have these rural parts of the district, but it goes all the way into more suburban and and even urban parts of Hampton Roads, closer to the Chesapeake part of the district.

17:33.95

Sam Shirazi

And so it's just one of those districts you have different groups. You have working class white voters, working class African-American voters. And again, it's just who can get out more of their base.

17:44.96

Sam Shirazi

And this type of district is kind of a a scoop district, as I like to call it. I think it scoops up a bunch of random areas to kind of make a district to balance population.

17:55.53

Sam Shirazi

And so it's it's a little bit hard to get a read on who has the advantage in a district like this, because it really just comes down to which sides base show up. Vice President Harris was able to carry it in 2024. So I think the votes are there for the Democrats.

18:11.39

Sam Shirazi

But the Republicans won it in 2023 because maybe some of the turnout wasn't there on the Democratic side. So again, one of those districts, we just have to wait and see who's able to get out their base. All right. Hope everyone can stick with me because we're going up to Northern Virginia to look at some of the districts there. And, you know, I think sometimes I'm a little bit hard on the special masters. As you can tell, I'm not a big fan of their house district 41. I'm not a big fan of some of their south side district decisions.

18:38.39

Sam Shirazi

But I think for the most part, Northern Virginia, they they drew pretty well. And I think they're pretty clean districts that make sense. So I'll talk about a few of them. First, I want to start with House District 30.

18:49.66

Sam Shirazi

thirty This is in Western Loudoun and Western parts of Falkir. And I think the district all makes sense because it's a you know pretty rural, exurban district for the most part.

19:02.19

Sam Shirazi

But there's a little bit of a nub. And this little nub goes into parts of... Crosses from Western Loudoun more into Eastern Loudoun. And this part of Loudoun has seen a lot of growth.

19:13.93

Sam Shirazi

it's There's houses being built there. You can go there and there's housing being built because obviously housing demand in Northern Virginia and people want houses. And this is where there's more land. People are able to build houses here.

19:26.41

Sam Shirazi

And I think this part of the district is going to be really interesting to watch because... If enough people have moved into this part of the district and enough voters have become democratic in this more suburban part of the district, it can kind of offset the Republicans natural advantage in the district with more rural voters.

19:44.11

Sam Shirazi

But there's an extra complication. And that is that in the suburban part of the district, I would say it has a decent South Asian population. And I think that population is growing.

19:54.68

Sam Shirazi

And while traditionally in Virginia, Democrats have done well with South Asian Indian voters, I think in the last election, there was a little bit of a reversal where Republicans were able to make some gains with South Asian and Indian voters. We'll see if that continues this year. Obviously, the Democrats for lieutenant governor have nominated a South Asian woman and maybe she's going to be able to help the Democrats there. So all that's to say is.

20:16.90

Sam Shirazi

A lot of interesting dynamics in this district also has, you know, more well-off voters in some of the rural areas because there are a lot of nice wineries and horse farms. And so you have wealthier people as well as working class people in the rural areas.

20:32.87

Sam Shirazi

And so just a really interesting district. I talked about it before, has a lot of potential federal fallout from what's going on in DC because you have federal workers and total contractors. So anyways, long story short, a super interesting decision, a super interesting district in Northern Virginia, and we'll see who's going to be able to pull it out.

20:52.71

Sam Shirazi

All right, now I'm going to move on to House District 22. This is in middle Prince William County. And it's, again, kind of one of those, as I described it, scoop districts.

21:04.29

Sam Shirazi

I think it's scooping up places here and there. Some of the areas are more Democratic. Some of them are more Republican. I would say traditionally this part of Prince William County is more Republican, more exurban.

21:15.04

Sam Shirazi

has more of a rural vibe to it in some parts of it. So I think for that reason, traditionally, Republicans have done well here. But federal fallout, there's a there's been a decent amount of, there's there's probably a decent amount of federal workers and contractors in this district. So I think in terms of The federal fallout just being close to DC, this is the type of district that could be feeling it in November.

21:41.07

Sam Shirazi

And yeah, we'll see if the Republicans are able to keep this district in middle Prince William County. All right. Another Northern Virginia district. This is House District 64. And again, I think this is a pretty clean district.

21:53.45

Sam Shirazi

It is in middle Stafford County, includes most of the parts of Stafford that most people think about in terms of Stafford.

22:03.95

Sam Shirazi

And I think it's, again, one of those districts traditionally Republican. as federal workers, as federal contractors. We'll see if this is the year that it flips. I think these Northern Virginia seats all are very similar in that traditionally they've been Republican, but we'll see if the suburban growth and just the impact on what's going on in DC might make it so that this year they could flip.

22:27.23

Sam Shirazi

All right, another district a little bit further down, I-95. So this is south of Fredericksburg. This is House District 66. And so it has a little bit more suburban parts closer to Fredericksburg, but then it goes into these rural areas.

22:41.49

Sam Shirazi

And it has this kind of interesting shape to it. It's kind of angular and I don't know. To me, it kind of looks like an elbow where it goes one way and then it goes the other way. i think the interesting dynamic is...

22:52.65

Sam Shirazi

You have the suburban and rural parts of it. It has a decent African-American population. You know, I would say the Republicans, just given the historical nature, have an advantage in this district. They have an incumbent that's been there a long time. So I think definitely Democrats have an uphill climb in this district.

23:09.47

Sam Shirazi

But again, type of district that could be impacted by what's going on by the threat of fallout. So another district to keep an eye on in November. All right. One last district. Thanks for everyone who stuck with me. I know there's a lot of district and this is House District 34. And I think the reason this South District is really interesting is the Democrats late in the game added this to it to the list of their targeted seats.

23:31.17

Sam Shirazi

And honestly, i think it's it's interesting to think about why they did that. So the district is not super. red But it did vote for President Trump by about seven points in 2024.

23:45.11

Sam Shirazi

I think there's probably a couple reasons why the Democrats added this to the list of targeted seats. And that was, think, last month they did that. think partly so this city, this district is based in the college town of Harrisonburg and then has some rural areas around Harrisonburg.

23:59.42

Sam Shirazi

That's not a super expensive media market. So it doesn't take a whole lot of money to make this district competitive if the Democrats really wanted to compete here. I think the other thing to keep in mind is there's same-day registration in Virginia.

24:11.01

Sam Shirazi

And so the way it works is if you are a voter and you're not registered to vote, you can go down to your polling place. You will fill out a app you fill out a voter registration form, and then you'd vote provisionally.

24:23.11

Sam Shirazi

And what that means is the vote is put aside, and after the election, they will check your voter registration if you are able to legally vote. After they check your voter registration, the vote will be counted as a regular ballot and not a provisional ballot.

24:37.23

Sam Shirazi

So they the advantage the Democrats have with the same-day registration in this district is that college students are notorious for remembering there's an election last minute, for not registering to vote.

24:48.76

Sam Shirazi

And so under the old rules, if there was no same-day registration and you weren't registered to vote, you're out of luck, you can't vote. Under the new system, the college students can just show up same day register, and then their vote could be counted if they are allowed to vote.

25:02.86

Sam Shirazi

I think that theoretically, there are probably enough students at JMU, if enough of them show up on election day, and then enough of them vote Democratic, that the Democrats could win this district, especially if for whatever reason, because Republicans are demoralized by their campaign or whatever, Republicans are not showing up in the rural parts of the district.

25:23.99

Sam Shirazi

We'll see if that ends up happening. I mean, I think a lot of things have to go right for the Democrats. They need to have a a blue wave, they need all the college students to show up on election day or before they need Republican turnout to go down. I mean, that's a lot of things that need to go right in order for this district to flip.

25:40.26

Sam Shirazi

So I think realistically, this is probably the the seat the Democrats are targeting that's least likely to flip. But I don't think it's necessarily out of the realm possibility. And, you know, I will say this again with the special masters.

25:54.58

Sam Shirazi

This district, it didn't, know, there's nothing super complicated about it. You basically take Harrisonburg and then you have to fill it out with other populations. So you put the rural areas around Harrisonburg.

26:06.17

Sam Shirazi

You know, in theory, if let's say the Republicans were trying to gerrymander this district, they could have cracked Harrisonburg into two separate districts, really wouldn't make any sense whatsoever. And that's why the special masters didn't do it. But it just goes to show you,

26:19.95

Sam Shirazi

If you wanted to gerrymander, there are ways to gerrymander all these districts. And, you know, the special masters, you know, I think they made some decisions that were questionable in some of these districts. But there are certainly districts where they followed pretty basic redistricting rules. And this is one of them where they just took a city and then put some extra population to fill out the city.

26:41.07

Sam Shirazi

And so anyways. That is all the districts that I wanted to talk about this time. I know that's a lot of districts. All of them are super interesting. I could, you know, spend all day talking about every district in Virginia, but I'm sure you would get a little bit bored.

26:54.90

Sam Shirazi

You know, I think before I close out this podcast, I just wanted to talk big picture about the House of Delegates. So I think the House of Delegates races are not getting that much attention this year. So because there's the governor's race and then there's the attorney general race and there's lieutenant governor race, those always get the most attention in these governor year elections.

27:13.83

Sam Shirazi

I think the challenge... for these House of Delegates candidates on both sides, but I would say it's more of a challenge for the Republicans is to distinguish themselves from the top of the ticket because some of these seats, I mean, it's very likely that Spanberger is going to carry these, just not all of them, but I think she will carry certainly a few of the ones at least that I talked about.

27:34.01

Sam Shirazi

And the question is, is there enough ticket splitting at the ah bottom of the ticket for the Republican candidates where they'll be able to hold on even if Spanberger carries it at the top of the ticket. In 2023, the state Senate and the House Delegates got a lot of attention because those were the main things on the ticket.

27:51.66

Sam Shirazi

And so the those candidates were able to really define themselves and then got a lot more attention. This year, you know Most people are not paying attention to the House of Delegates races. I mean, there might be some people who really love their local delegate, but frankly, most people don't even know about these races. Most people show up because they want to vote for the governor's race, and then they just vote straight ticket, as we've talked about.

28:13.92

Sam Shirazi

And I think a good example of that is in 2021, where Glenn Youngkin only won the governor's race by about two points. But the Republicans were able to flip the House of Delegates because just so many people voted straight ticket that year.

28:29.90

Sam Shirazi

And same thing happened in 2017. I think most people in 2017 thought Democrats would pick up a few seats But they picked up a bunch of seats, way more than anyone expected, because most voters in 2017 just showed up, voted for the Democrats at the top the ticket, and then just voted straight ticket.

28:46.80

Sam Shirazi

So I think there definitely is that possibility this year. And I think the House of Delegates is going to be very tricky to try to figure out who is going to win in each individual seat and how many seats Democrats are going to pick up. Because I think realistically, most people expect the Democrats to pick up seats.

29:04.12

Sam Shirazi

If you had to bet, you'd say the Democrats are going to pick up at least, I would say, a few seats. The question is, is it a little wave or is it a big wave? And to close out the podcast, I want to give a shout out to Chaz Nutticombe.

29:16.06

Sam Shirazi

His State Navigate site came out with their forecast for the Virginia elections. They thought that the Democrats were favored for all statewide campaigns, and then they and then they said that Democrats are going to win the House of Delegates. And currently they project that the Democrats are going to pick up seven House of Delegates seats. Now that obviously could change based on what happens during the last three months of the campaign.

29:40.06

Sam Shirazi

So definitely checks state check out State Navigate and check out that resource to look at each district and their projections and their forecasts. I think at some point it'd be great to have Chaz back on because, you know, his forecast is definitely very thorough and he's thought about it a lot. And frankly, when I looked at it, it made a lot of sense and it kind of was roughly where I was. So I think, you know, as the campaign campaign continues, we're going to focus on the governor's race or most people are going to focus on governor's race. But really the interesting details are in these House of Delegates races.

30:10.57

Sam Shirazi

And we'll see how many the Democrats are able to win this November. yeah. As always, lots going on in the Virginia governor's race. I hope everyone found this interesting, spending a little bit of time in the House of Delegates. I don't always talk about the House Delegates races, but I hope to talk about them more as the election gets closer. And I think, you know, they're definitely important, even if most people are paying attention to the governor's race. So for now, that has been Federal Fallout, and I'll join you next time.

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