Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This episode, we will go over the governor’s debate and highlight some of the key moments and talk about what it might mean for the campaign.

00:29.44

Sam Shirazi

Now to begin, let’s go over the debate. So it was an hour long debate. it was in Norfolk and the two candidates for governor were there. And obviously this was high stakes because of the news that happened over the last week with the text from Jay Jones and,

00:46.30

Sam Shirazi

It was going to be a big part of the debate. It dominated the first part of the debate. And then obviously there was discussions about other issues. But I think a lot of the media was focusing on that issue and seeing how Spanberger would respond.

00:59.40

Sam Shirazi

So anyway, that’s kind of the background of the debate. I think this is the only debate we’re going to be getting. So that raised the stakes even more. And if you think about where the race is, Spanberger is up right now. So she wants to play it safe, protect her lead.

01:11.84

Sam Shirazi

She doesn’t want to do anything to rock the boat too much. If you think about where Winston Merle Sears is, she’s down in the polls. Conventional wisdom is if you have a debate and you’re down, you’re going to have to get some sort of game changer, have to be a little bit more aggressive.

01:24.94

Sam Shirazi

I think she certainly was more aggressive than Spanberger and there was a lot of interruptions and That was part of the dynamic of the debate and one of the things people noted at the end. But the thing i wanted to kind of lead with before i play a clip of the debate, I wanted to play a clip from the 2021 debate in Virginia for governor.

01:44.20

Sam Shirazi

Because I think we’ve gotten to the era where, in my mind, it it’s hard for a debate to really help you. Maybe if you have a really good moment, it can it can help you. But for the most part, the reality is these debates are each side looking for something to knock the other off of with. And so to give you an example...

02:04.54

Sam Shirazi

Obviously, 2024, we had the first presidential debate. It was very bad for President Biden. I think that’s like an example of what happens in these types of debates where they really make an impact in an election is when they go badly. So if you really screw up in a debate, it can really hurt you. That obviously hurt President Biden in 2024.

02:21.47

Sam Shirazi

And it also hurt Terry McAuliffe in 2021 when he was running for governor. So first, I want to play the 2021 clip because honestly, understand was somewhat out of context the way the Republicans used it, but the reality is this was not a great thing to say if you’re running for governor.

02:40.01

Sam Shirazi

And I think it probably wasn’t the only reason Terry McAuliffe lost, but I think it’s kind of a lesson of what not to do in a debate and frankly, kind of what either any candidate wants to avoid when they’re debating because ultimately,

02:53.68

Sam Shirazi

that is the main thing a debate can do to you. It can hurt you. It can’t really hurt help you. So I will play that clip.

03:36.21

Sam Shirazi

So that was a clip of terra McAuliffe in 2021. It was seized on by the Republicans and Glenn Youngkin really fed into their story that the Virginia Democrats were not allowing parents to stay in their child’s education. So really helped Glenn Youngkin that year.

03:52.39

Sam Shirazi

Again, i don’t think that alone was the reason Glenn Youngkin won, but it certainly didn’t help the Democrats. And I think it’s just one of those things to keep in mind. I mean, that’s frankly what I’m looking for in a lot of these debates. Like, is there any sort of major screw up by either candidate?

04:06.46

Sam Shirazi

I will say for Spanberger, she had the easier task in the debate. All she had to do was go into the debate, not totally mess up like like that, and then she’ll be fine because she just wants to live to see another day.

04:18.29

Sam Shirazi

She’s ahead. She obviously has to deal with the Jay Jones story, and we’ll we’ll talk a little bit about how she dealt with that. But – Essentially, what she needed to do was survive the debate. And I think if that was her goal, she did that. I don’t think the day after the debate, anyone was like, oh, my God, can you believe what Spanberger did?

04:34.69

Sam Shirazi

It really wasn’t a huge deal in terms of the election. i think it’s not really a game changer. That’s kind of how I saw things on the Spanberger side. With Winsor Meryl Sears, you know I think she had to be more aggressive, and you certainly saw that from her. you know She landed a few punches on Spanberger, but ultimately I don’t think it was the kind of game changer she needed.

04:56.01

Sam Shirazi

And there was one moment in the debate where I think you know kind of – don’t want to it was exactly the same as the McAuliffe gaffe, but I think – Certainly, Democrats wanted to seize on this thing that Winston Earl Sears said. So she essentially said that it’s not discrimination when someone is not for same-sex marriage or is not for protections for gay people in the workplace. That’s not discrimination. so So you’ll hear the clip in a little bit while I’ll play it. But essentially, the Democrats wanted to use that, I think,

05:27.20

Sam Shirazi

it was kind of a short soundbite moment that I think was easy for the Democrats to take and use. So in that sense, I think it wasn’t a great moment for Winston-Will Sears. At the same time, you know, I don’t know if it’s the kind of game changer moment because frankly, Winston-Will Sears has been pretty clear about some of her socially conservative views. She just stated them in the debate, but I don’t think it was some huge revelation that is going to totally change the the election.

05:55.21

Sam Shirazi

And I also think the fact that, Winston Merle Sears, uh, was more aggressive, tried to get some more focus on the Jay Jones text. That happened. A lot of the headlines the next day were about the text. So I think in that sense, she did well. She was able to kind of focus on that issue, even though she also had this thing about discrimination that I think was also so creating some negative headlines for her. So long story short, i will play you a clip, a compilation of clips from the debate, just so you get a sense of what happened.

06:23.41

Sam Shirazi

And then I’ll give you kind of my final thoughts. But I don’t think this was like the The race has suddenly changed because of this debate. I think it was pretty status quo after the the debate didn’t really move the boat too much. So let me play you a few clips of what the debate debate sounded like if in case you didn’t catch it

07:34.63

Sam Shirazi

All right. So those were a few clips from the Virginia governor’s debate. i thought Spanberger’s answer on the Jay Jones side of things was kind of interesting because both Winsor Meryl Sears and the moderators wanted her to take more of a specific stance on him.

07:51.42

Sam Shirazi

So Winsor Meryl Sears wanted her to basically denounce him, say he should drop out. The moderators wanted Abigail Spanberger to say that she endorses him. She basically took the middle ground saying, it’s not my race. I’m focused on my race. he you know The voters can make a decision about the attorney general race, which you know obviously doesn’t help Jay Jones a whole lot, but in theory doesn’t hurt Spanberger because she can’t be tied as closely to him.

08:16.99

Sam Shirazi

So long story short, and i think there was never going to be a great answer about the Jay Jones story from the Spanberger camp. So I think from her side, she’s just happy that She survived. Again, no major gaffe, nothing that you know was dominating the news the next day. you know At the end, you heard the comments that Winston Ross-Sears made about discrimination.

08:37.36

Sam Shirazi

i think the Democrats are seizing upon that to the extent that there was a gaffe. I think that was probably the closest we got to a gaffe. But again, I don’t think it was this huge game changer in terms of the election.

08:48.61

Sam Shirazi

And so pretty much we’re back where we started with this debate. Didn’t change the dynamics in the race. I think it was interesting. Got to see the different styles.

08:59.44

Sam Shirazi

And one thing I should kind of mention before I move on, because...

09:04.30

Sam Shirazi

You know, I am and relatively younger. I’m not super old. I’m not super young. I’m kind of at that point where I’ve seen politics for a while. And I remember the pre-Trump era and I remember the Trump era, obviously.

09:17.14

Sam Shirazi

I think a lot of older Virginia commentators, people have watched debates for like 30, 40 years. were telling me like how much different this debate was. I mean, this is not necessarily a normal type debate for Virginia. The reason for that, you know, in the old days, there was kind of a different way of doing politics in Virginia, much more, you know, frankly, it was gentlemanly because it was mainly men back then, kind of more of a Southern gentil gentility, gentility.

09:44.61

Sam Shirazi

that dominated these debates and you would kind of be courteous to your opponent and all the sorts of things that you know you would imagine in kind of the old school way of doing politics.

09:55.47

Sam Shirazi

And I think Spanberger certainly was trying to keep that tradition alive. You could very much see that that’s what she was trying to do. And you saw kind of that clip where she said, you know you’re not my enemy.

10:06.32

Sam Shirazi

She’s trying to you know partly because I think that’s her personality, but I think partly that was a strategy. She wanted to seem like, and know I’m calm, cool, collected. I’m contrast to Winsome Rale Sears, who she probably rightly suspected was going to be more aggressive.

10:20.20

Sam Shirazi

And so you see Spanberger trying to do the kind of old school way of doing politics. Winstermore Sears, clearly, i mean, I think she had to do something because she’s behind in the polls, but was much more aggressive.

10:32.06

Sam Shirazi

And you could call it kind of a Trumpier style where you’re interrupting your opponent, you’re trying to goad your opponent. And I think that while we’re kind of we’re kind of all used to that, because that’s been the politics for roughly the last 10 years, I do think it’s been a shift from previous Virginia elections.

10:48.04

Sam Shirazi

And I just wanted to note that. And I do think that it’s interesting to see that Winston-Marcel Sears, you know, I I think the Republicans were glad that she was a little bit more aggressive, but I’m curious to see the voter in the middle. Are they going to necessarily like that sort of approach in a debate?

11:03.10

Sam Shirazi

And it reminded me a little bit of the first debate in 2020. So if people remember that, that was between present then President Trump and Vice President Biden, who later won the election and became President Biden.

11:16.23

Sam Shirazi

So In that debate, similar dynamic, Trump was behind in the polls. He had to be more aggressive. And so he interrupted Biden a lot. And you know Biden, I think at that time, was a better debater and was able to kind of effectively deal with it. And I think most people thought that Biden won that first debate in 2020 because he was able to kind of look more statesmanlike than Trump.

11:38.01

Sam Shirazi

you know You could argue there’s kind of a similar dynamic here where Earl Sears was interrupting and Spanberger looked a little bit more polished and put together. But at the end of the day, I mean, I think we’ve...

11:48.47

Sam Shirazi

Politics has changed and, you know Republicans want to see the aggressive posture. Probably the Democrats are fine with more of a, you know, normal style debating that Spanberger was able to do. So I want to keep in mind that the reality is most people don’t watch these debates. You know, obviously the hyperpolitical people are really tuned in.

12:09.10

Sam Shirazi

Maybe people will see one or two clips. So from the Spanberger side, they’ll probably see the clip about Jay Jones. From the Earl Sear side, they might see the clip about discrimination. mean, that’s essentially what most people get out of these debates. And so as much as the debates matter, I think they’ve essentially become these clips that you share on social media. And you know as frustrating as that is, i mean, you aren’t going to get these you know real substantive policy debates out.

12:34.75

Sam Shirazi

You know, the first question in the debate was actually about the car tax, which is, you know, kind of an important policy question for certain people. I mean, Earl Sears quickly tried to just talk about the Jay Jones stuff. I mean, she didn’t really want to talk about the car tax, even though, you know, that’s that’s something she had talked about during her campaign.

12:52.95

Sam Shirazi

And I was struck how both campaigns were not necessarily able to talk about the main themes about at least that they previously talked about in this election. So for Spanberger, you know, one of her main themes is the throw cuts and the economic impact to Virginia.

13:07.39

Sam Shirazi

Obviously, with the shutdown going on, in theory, she would want to talk about that. There was a little bit of talk about that, but that wasn’t like the dominant thing about the debate. She wasn’t really able to get that much in about those things. And, you know, frankly, she was trying to play it safe. She didn’t want to you know, be too aggressive and and force the issue, but she wasn’t able to really talk about that issue, which is really her best issue.

13:26.61

Sam Shirazi

And then for Earl Sears, I mean, I’ve talked about this before. I mean, she spent two months on the trans issue, spent a lot of money trying to get that message out there. And there was a question towards the end of the debate about it, but it was kind of an afterthought. And I think Spanberger, you know,

13:40.26

Sam Shirazi

got through it and it wasn’t a huge deal. And so you saw Sears spent two months of the campaign on an issue and it just really wasn’t that big of a deal in debate. Now, obviously, she now she has a Jay Jones text and so she wanted to talk about those. So she had something else. But long story short, I mean, this isn’t some you know super meaningful policy debate and people got a lot of nuance and and more information about the candidates. It really was just...

14:04.06

Sam Shirazi

you know, politics at the end of the day and trying to survive for Spanberger, trying to, you know, score some points for Earl Sears. I would say both of them probably did fine for what their end goals were Neither of them got the game change.

14:18.73

Sam Shirazi

And frankly, Earl Sears kind of needed the game changer. And so she didn’t get that. So in that sense, I think if you’re, you know, in the grand scheme of things, looking at this debate, probably the advantages with Spanberger, because if you’re up, you just want to survive the debate, you want to move on.

14:31.32

Sam Shirazi

Spanberger was able to do that, and so she kind of met the objectives she had set out for this debate. All right, now let’s move on to a different topic, which is the ongoing shutdown and some of the potential rifts that could be coming out of D.C. So obviously the last week has been pretty rough for the Virginia Democrats since the Jay Jones tech story has come out, and they’ve really been on the defense this past week.

14:54.53

Sam Shirazi

Even though the shutdown has been going on, that has been in the background, I’m the Virginia elections for the past week have been kind of dominated by that issue. However, on Friday afternoon, the head of OMB, Russ Vought, he tweeted out or posted on X that quote, the rifts have begun and didn’t really elaborate beyond that. But obviously people have been waiting to see what was going to happen with the potential layoffs that during the shutdown. So at the beginning shutdown,

15:25.30

Sam Shirazi

The Trump administration said there could be layoffs. think there had been those have been delayed for a while because there was an attempt to maybe reach a compromise with the Democrats to get the government back open.

15:35.70

Sam Shirazi

My sense is the democrat Democrats are not going to go along with a compromise that promises a vote without any sort of real guarantee that some of their demands are met.

15:46.21

Sam Shirazi

And so long story short, I think the Republicans came to the conclusion, or at least the Trump administration came to conclusion, that the shutdown is not going to end anytime soon. Let’s just go ahead and do the layoffs. And, you know, we said we’d do them. We gave them a chance to negotiate.

15:58.54

Sam Shirazi

They didn’t negotiate. Now we’re going to do the layoffs. Obviously, as of the recording of this podcast, we have not heard specific details. We don’t know how many jobs are involved. We don’t know how many of those jobs are in Virginia. But it’s hard for me to imagine if this actually...

16:12.10

Sam Shirazi

happens, it won’t have an impact on the election because obviously decent amount of those jobs are probably going to be based in either DC or Northern Virginia. People who live in Virginia are probably going to be impacted.

16:23.72

Sam Shirazi

It brings this whole story back to the forefront. Obviously, at the beginning of the year we had the Doge thing and that was a big impact at the beginning of the year to both Virginia and the Virginia elections.

16:35.16

Sam Shirazi

It had died off, died down for a little bit. And this is now potentially Doge 2.0, where it really comes back into the open. And the time when right before people are about to start voting, and actually there’s early voting going on right now, the federal cuts and specifically the cuts to federal jobs is now back up.

16:52.80

Sam Shirazi

at the forefront of everyone’s mind because there might be these layoffs that are happening. And, you know, it’s hard to tell how much of an impact it’s going to have on the election. It’s possible that, you know, the people who are upset at this, we’re going to vote for the Democrats anyway. it doesn’t really move the needle too much. But I do think In the reality of people’s lives, specifically in Northern Virginia, the shutdown and the potential losses of more federal jobs are a big deal.

17:19.84

Sam Shirazi

They’re probably going to feel an impact to the local economy, even if the impact isn’t like immediate where people, the the local economy is immediately feeling the hit. If you’re a local business owner,

17:31.12

Sam Shirazi

You know, you’re thinking in the back of your mind, federal employees aren’t getting paid. There could be layoffs, like people are gonna have less money to come into my store. And so that’s still something you’re thinking about, even though maybe the impacts haven’t been felt yet.

17:43.75

Sam Shirazi

And so I do think this is going to be important story as the campaign continues. And not just the federal layoffs, I mean, the shutdown itself. And and there was kind of a interesting moment that happened. So the Speaker of the House, Speaker Johnson, went on C-SPAN. So C-SPAN does this thing where politicians come on and then just members of the public are able to call in. Usually it’s not high high government officials that go on this. It’s usually kind of back bench members of Congress, but Speaker Johnson...

18:11.54

Sam Shirazi

agreed to do this. And you know to his credit, not too many speakers have agreed to do it. So you know that’s one thing that was interesting to watch. But he did get a call from a person in Virginia who identified herself as a Republican.

18:23.93

Sam Shirazi

And she said to Speaker Johnson, she was very disappointed that he had not brought the House back and that he had not brought a vote forward on pay for the military because the military might miss a paycheck. And she was talking about her own specific family. It’s a military family.

18:39.32

Sam Shirazi

Some of her kids have medical issues and this is going to potentially really hurt her family. And so I thought that was interesting. One, because it shows you that not everyone who’s impacted by the shutdown is a Democrat. I think there is this mentality among some Republicans that and who cares about the shutdown? Who cares about federal firings?

18:56.97

Sam Shirazi

It’s all Democrats. you know they’re They’re going to vote for the Democrats anyway. It’s not really going to hurt us. I think specifically on the military side, both in Northern Virginia and in Hampton Roads, a lot of swing voters, a lot of, frankly, Republican voters who, you know, their their military...

19:12.45

Sam Shirazi

They might you know lean to the right, but they all see obviously get their paycheck from the federal government. And so anytime that is getting interrupted, they are going to pay attention. So in that sense, this is kind of an important story for them, not just kind of the traditional federal employee you think of in northern Virginia.

19:29.85

Sam Shirazi

So I don’t want to lose sight of the shutdown because we are probably going to be at this point, it’s looking closer and closer to like at least a two week shutdown. And so I don’t know how it’s going to end. And it’s,

19:43.56

Sam Shirazi

possible it doesn’t end and it’s possible that it drags on and on. And frankly, the fact that the Trump administration is announcing rifts is telling me that this is probably going go on longer because if they thought that there was going to be an end soon, I think they would try to negotiate something with the Democrats. This is telling me the negotiations aren’t working. We’re just going to go through with these rifts and then see what happens.

20:03.42

Sam Shirazi

So, I mean, i i keep telling people there’s a non-zero chance that on election day, there could be a shutdown still going on. I think every day, obviously, we get closer and closer to that. And basically, since the shutdown started on October 1st, there has been really no progress in terms of negotiations.

20:21.95

Sam Shirazi

And just to kind of set up what the fundamental problem is. So, I will say that typically in the Senate, things are still a little bit more like the old school backroom deal type days. So I think from the Republican standpoint, the Republicans are telling the Democrats, just vote for this continuing resolution we have on the table.

20:40.32

Sam Shirazi

And then sometime in the future, we promise we’re going to give you a vote on the Obamacare subsidies that you care about. And so we need to open the government first, and then we promise we’ll give you a vote on the Obamacare subsidies. I think the problem with that from a Democratic standpoint is that the Democrats, even if they believe the Senate Republicans, you know, if Chuck Schumer believes John Thune, you know, John Thune, you seem like a man of your word. I believe you. you’re going to give us a vote on this.

21:05.62

Sam Shirazi

They understand how the government works. You need the House of Representatives to vote and pass something in order for a bill to become law. And so I think a lot of Senate Democrats are saying, OK, well, that’s great. Senate Republicans, you’re willing to negotiate with us.

21:19.54

Sam Shirazi

You need to get Mike Johnson and the House Republicans on board with this so that whatever happens, whatever resolution we come up with, both chambers agree this gets passed. And also, oh by the way, President Trump agrees to it. So whatever gets passed,

21:33.51

Sam Shirazi

we will have that bill signed into law. And I think that’s how the Democrats view the end game. The Democrats view the end game is everyone sits down, the Republicans get the government reopened and they might get some funding for things they want.

22:04.98

Sam Shirazi

The Republican position is We’re not gonna negotiate while the government shut down. You have to reopen the government, Democrats, and then we will sit down and negotiate whatever we’re gonna negotiate with you.

22:14.64

Sam Shirazi

And I think the problem with that is obviously once the government is reopened, the Republicans probably aren’t gonna give the Democrats what they want. And at least that’s the Democratic perception. And so the Democrats say we need to get everything in one bill to get it done.

22:29.94

Sam Shirazi

And then, you know, we will be able to move forward. And, you know, I think they’re really at an impasse. And the Republican strategy, my sense was from the beginning, that we’re just going to wait out the Democrats. Democrats are going to cave. Eventually, they’re going you know, give up and we’ll win the shutdown fight. There’s really no indication that’s going to happen, at least at this point.

22:50.26

Sam Shirazi

And so I think maybe that’s why the rifts are going forward. And maybe the members of the Trump administration, their attitude is, look, If the Democrats don’t want to negotiate with us, whatever, we’ll just keep going. we’ll do this we’ll The shutdown will keep going. We’ll do the layoffs and you know we’ll be able to, we’ll be fine.

23:08.37

Sam Shirazi

I think from a national Republican perspective, you know, you could argue if that makes sense or not. But certainly from a Virginia Republican standpoint, that really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, especially when the elections are three and a half weeks away. So this is really coming at the worst possible time for the Virginia Republicans. You know, they obviously had this good story for them from their perspective on the Jay Jones stuff. So, OK, they’re having a little bit of momentum.

23:34.40

Sam Shirazi

Focus has shifted to something they want to talk about. And all of a sudden, the national Republicans are kind of throwing this wild card of the rifts that could happen in terms of the shutdown. And, you know, the thing I find interesting is that Frankly, the polling’s a little bit mixed.

23:49.00

Sam Shirazi

For the most part, more people are blaming the Republicans than the Democrats by a slight percentage. But my gut is telling me, you know, most people, it’s like they’re blaming everyone. Congress’s fault, Democrats, Republicans, President Trump, everyone’s to blame.

24:02.58

Sam Shirazi

So it’s not necessarily like the Republicans are getting killed right now on the shutdown. I think what could really hurt them and could really hurt the Virginia Republicans If the story shifts from the shutdown to the federal firings, again, i don’t know how big they are. If there are a few hundred people, just not a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

24:19.34

Sam Shirazi

If we’re talking about thousands of people across multiple agencies, different parts of the country, different parts of Virginia, I mean, that’s when it’s really going to become a major story. And that’s kind of like what it was like in the beginning of the year with Doge, when there were layoffs at multiple federal agencies, Department Education, Department of Health and Human Services.

24:35.91

Sam Shirazi

usad I mean, it it just it it really dominated the beginning part of the year if you lived in northern Virginia. And I think there’s a possibility now that there are they going to be have these layoffs. It could again dominate things really at the worst possible time for the Virginia Republicans.

24:50.74

Sam Shirazi

We’ll see. I mean, that there’s a lot unknown. I’m sure we’ll get more details in the days to come. it’s all It’s also possible that the shutdown could be avoided or or not avoided, but could be ended anytime, either because there’s too much pressure, there’s pressure about the military pay, there’s pressure about the FAA.

25:06.73

Sam Shirazi

Both sides just want to get it over with. So you never know. You never know when these things are going to end. But I do want to update everyone. So lot going on. Again, there’s a reason I called the podcast Federal Fallout. I do think what’s going to happen in D.C. is really going to impact the Virginia elections. We’re seeing that at the end where, again, it’s impacting the Virginia election. So.

25:24.57

Sam Shirazi

Anyways, I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. it’s I’m going to be doing more podcasts probably the closer we get to Election Day. Try to have some more people on because there’s obviously a lot going on. I want to keep people updated. And this is really it. This is the homestretch. We’re going almost be at the end. So really want to appreciate everyone who’s been listening. And I hope I’ll do my best to keep everyone updated. And this has been Federal Fallout. And I’ll join you next time.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fall Out 2025 Virginia Elections. This is a special bonus episode where we will go over some of the latest updates on the campaign trail, specifically about the attorney general race, and then quickly touch base about the debate that will be happening this evening, Thursday, October 9th in Virginia. So to begin with, there’s a lot of things happening in terms of the attorney general race since I last talked about that on Sunday.

00:29.38

Sam Shirazi

Specifically, President Trump made his biggest direct intervention into the Virginia elections when he called for the Democratic nominee, Jay Jones, to drop out of the race. Obviously, that has not happened. And from all indications, it seems that Jay Jones is going to stay in the race, that he is going to continue.

00:46.71

Sam Shirazi

And for the most part, Democrats have completely backed him. So I don’t think that there’s any sort of dynamic where we’re going to see any sort of swap. I think the race is set. It’s going to be Jay Jones and Jason Meares for attorney general.

00:59.90

Sam Shirazi

And frankly, I think this is going to be the race everyone’s going to be looking at on election night because while in theory things could change at the top of the ticket, frankly, I think both sides understand that there probably isn’t going to be enough movement in the governor’s race to change the outcome.

01:16.43

Sam Shirazi

Lieutenant governor, similar thing. But attorney general, I think has gotten to the point where Things could be interesting on election night, depending how everything shakes out. And I wanted to talk about some data that we got. So I’m not just kind of speculating. I’ll talk a little bit about the data and then I’ll talk about what I’m seeing in terms of the attorney general race, because there’s just been a lot of focus on it. lot of thinking about it, thinking about the ticket splitting and all this other stuff. And I think while,

01:43.64

Sam Shirazi

It’s certainly going to be an interesting race. I do want to not jump to any conclusions before we get nonpartisan polls. That’s the one thing we haven’t gotten. We haven’t gotten a nonpartisan poll, which I think will be really interesting.

01:54.63

Sam Shirazi

What we have gotten are two sets of internal polls. And so typically with internal polls, you always want to caveat it. You always want to take it with a grain of salt. You don’t want to 100% buy the number from either side because Internal polls, some are better, some are worse. You can kind of look under the hood to get a sense of why it might be good, why it might be bad.

02:29.88

Sam Shirazi

All right. So first I will go over a poll released by the Jay Jones campaign that showed him up slightly in the race. So this was done after the news of the text came out. And so it showed Jay Jones at 46% and it showed j Jason Millares at 45%.

02:46.90

Sam Shirazi

One thing I noticed in this internal poll was that the recall 2024 was... Harris plus six. So basically it was exactly what happened in 2024.

02:58.40

Sam Shirazi

So that’s a little bit of an assumption that 2025 2025 is going to look like 2024 in Virginia. We’ll see if that’s true. It could be more Republican, could be more democratic. Typically the trend is that after the presidential election, the Virginia elections become more favorable to the party out of the white house. So that’s one thing to keep in mind. So long story short, this, uh,

03:18.57

Sam Shirazi

Jay Jones internal showed him up by one. i think it did acknowledge that he had lost some ground with independence. And I think also acknowledged that he, you know, the story made an impact. So they weren’t just pretending like nothing happened. They did understand that it did,

03:35.32

Sam Shirazi

you know, talk about, it didn’t hurt his image with voters, particularly voters in the middle. And so that’s something that he’ll have to deal with. But at the same time, it showed this, that he has a path to victory according to this poll.

03:47.61

Sam Shirazi

All right. Now I want to talk about the Jason Miara’s poll because he or the Republican Attorney General Association on his behalf essentially put out a Republican internal, which found somewhat similar things, although I think they found Miara’s up. So the Republican internal had Jason Miara’s at 46 percent and then it had Jay Jones at 44 percent. And and Apparently, there they had been doing a poll in September, which I don’t think was released at the time.

04:16.43

Sam Shirazi

According to the September poll, Jones was at 46.5% and Miárez was at 42.5%. And so according to this poll, there’s been movement towards Miárez and away from Jones in the attorney general race.

04:33.79

Sam Shirazi

I think one thing that was interesting is we got these two polls at the same time and I don’t think it’s a huge surprise. One side released an internal. So the other side wanted to re release their internal. You know, I would focus less on the specific numbers because, you know, you’re kind of getting granular at that point. I think big picture, both of the polls show that the race is close. So I think essentially you could say both the internals are showing roughly the same thing.

04:57.68

Sam Shirazi

You know, obviously the democratic internal is going to show the Democrats slightly up. The Republican internal is going to show the Republican slightly up. both of these polls have Miara’s roughly at 45 to 46%.

05:11.05

Sam Shirazi

And the Jones poll had him up a little bit more. Miara’s poll had him down a little bit more. I did think it’s interesting. So even in Miara’s own internal, he’s at 46%. So he’s at 50%. And keep in mind,

05:22.45

Sam Shirazi

and keep in mind Jason Meares is an incumbent and he’s at 46%. Now, obviously the environment is tough for Meares. Top of the ticket is tough for Meares. So I think his folks will say like 46% for him is a good number.

05:35.20

Sam Shirazi

And in September they were at 42 and a half percent. So lot of movement towards Meares in this poll. And they’ve all, the Meares folks I imagine would point out that Jones has gone down, which you never really want to go down in the poll.

05:47.92

Sam Shirazi

You want to go up in the poll. So i think overall, you know, I wouldn’t hyperfixate on the numbers from either side because I think what both internals are trying to signal is it’s a close race and they both want to signal that they’re slightly up.

06:01.85

Sam Shirazi

Now, I wanted to think through the dynamics for the election and which side might be able to pull it out in the Eternity Journal’s race, because I think almost everyone admits that’s going to be the closest race for the statewide offices on election night.

06:17.06

Sam Shirazi

And I think you basically have two dynamics. You have the turnout dynamic, and then you have the independent dynamics and the voters in the middle dynamics. So, and and it goes back, remember my last couple podcasts ago, i was talking about turnout versus persuasion. So you have both the turnout angle in the attorney general’s race and the persuasion angle.

06:34.24

Sam Shirazi

I’ll talk about turnout more. Sorry, I’ll talk about turnout first. So turnout, I think in this race comes down to a specific set of voters. And you’ve heard me talk about them before.

06:44.76

Sam Shirazi

It is black voters and specifically black black voters in Hampton Roads. Why are they so important in this race? So if you think about the voters that are most likely to stick with Jay Jones, they’re probably going to be black voters and black voters in Hampton Roads. Why? Because Jay Jones is from Hampton Roads.

07:01.64

Sam Shirazi

He’s black. You would think that you know generally those types of voters would want to stick with him. They know him. We’ve talked about you know his family has a long history in that area. So I think in the primary, his base was Hampton Roads.

07:14.47

Sam Shirazi

That’s what got him the win in the primary. So you would think he needs to do well with those voters and and not so much do well, because I think at the end of the day, he’s going to win them. The question really is,

07:24.92

Sam Shirazi

are they going to turn out in sufficient numbers? So black voters or make up roughly 20% the voters in Virginia. In 2021, according to the exit poll, they were only 16% of the total voters. and Why? Because the turnout was lower in some parts of Virginia, like Hampton Roads.

07:43.25

Sam Shirazi

It was higher in more rural white areas. So you saw there was that differential in the turnout. And so This election, I think the question becomes, what is the turnout looking in Hampton Roads, in Southside, in Richmond area, in Prince William County, areas with higher black population? Because that is going to be key, not just so to Jay Jones, but also to the House of Delegates. Several House of Delegates seats are going to essentially going to be decided by black turnout.

08:10.77

Sam Shirazi

And I have talked about this in the past, and I think most Virginia Democrats will acknowledge this. you know, one of the areas that they struggle, especially in these state elections that happen on the off years or the odd number years is just black turnout. And sometimes it’s just not there for whatever reason.

08:27.78

Sam Shirazi

I think, you know, that is going to be an important dynamic. And, you know, obviously the Republicans are hoping there could be some crossover at the top of the ticket where some black voters might end up backing Winston Merrill Sears.

08:40.32

Sam Shirazi

I do think for the attorney general spot, I think Jay Jones could be doing better with black voters potentially than Spanberger. We’ll see if that ends up happening. But ultimately, I think regardless, I think the Democrats, any of the offices are going to win black voters by a large margin. And so the question is not so much do they persuade black voters to vote for them. It’s more about turnout.

09:19.66

Sam Shirazi

All right. Now let’s talk about the persuasion angle. So the other dynamic that’s going to decide the attorney general race are the voters in the middle, the independents. So the Jay Jones internal poll showed, according to that poll, that independents were slightly going for Miárez, I think by one point in the Jay Jones internal poll.

09:40.21

Sam Shirazi

that’s probably around where it’s going to be close. Because I’m guessing at the top of the ticket, Spanberger is doing pretty well with independents. Almost all the nonpartisan polls have showed, and even the partisan polls, Republican polls, have showed Spanberger doing well with independents.

09:54.52

Sam Shirazi

So I imagine... Independents are going to break pretty strongly for Spanberger. Question becomes, what do they do when they get to the third but spot in the ticket? And remember, independents, they may lean right. They may lean left.

10:06.83

Sam Shirazi

I think what makes them unique is they’re not loyal to either party. That’s why they consider themselves independent. So I think they’re they’re more likely to ticket split. And I think if Jay Jones can get about an even split, that should be close enough where if with the turnout and other dynamics, he should be able to pull it off. So I think for Jay Jones, he’s going to want to get around even split of independence.

10:28.50

Sam Shirazi

I think Miarez will need to get win independence. So he has to win them maybe by 5% or 10%. Remember in 2021, Glenn Youngkin won independence by about 10%. That gave him a 2% win. So again, you know, Miara needs to get a slight win with the independence.

10:46.75

Sam Shirazi

So he’s going to focus on the persuasion angle, trying to win over those independents. I think Jay Jones is going to have to focus both on keeping the independents close, keeping it about a split, and then getting black turnout. I think that’s essentially going to be the dynamic of the race.

11:01.27

Sam Shirazi

And the question becomes, who does a better job? Does Miareza do a better job of persuading the independents to back him to split their tickets from the top of the ticket? Or does Jones do a better job of keeping the independents close and then getting out the black turnout in his base of Hampton Roads?

11:16.20

Sam Shirazi

And I think the other thing to keep in mind, both these polls were taken very recently after the news came out. And I think that can go both ways. One way is this is like the top thing on people’s minds because they they just saw the story and it and they’re processing it. And so it’s very high in their mind when they’re telling you how they’re going to vote in the poll.

11:33.54

Sam Shirazi

So what could happen is by Election Day, they kind of forget about the story or it it becomes less important for whatever reason because the shutdown is going on a long time and the shutdown becomes a dominant story or whatever whatever ends up happening by Election Day, where maybe this story is just less important by Election Day. And so voters don’t make the decision based on just this justice one story.

11:53.95

Sam Shirazi

Or it could go the other way where voters, this was their first impression of the story. It gets reinforced, particularly if the Republicans keep talking about it. There’s more ads about it. It gets reinforced. And so maybe by Election Day, their feeling is stronger and that actually they’ll end up deciding more based on this story rather than less.

12:12.00

Sam Shirazi

Again, we don’t know that. We just have to see how it plays out. What I’m really looking for is a nonpartisan poll because I do think These partisan pollsters on both sides, they are obviously you know trying to figure out what’s going on and give a certain estimate of the the election, but they also tend to show that their side is up. And so I want to see what a nonpartisan pollster who doesn’t have any skin in the game is going to find in the attorney general’s race.

12:39.11

Sam Shirazi

And then the last thing I want to flag before we move on to the debate is just the fact that the issue with polls down ballot is there can often be a lag between the top of the ticket and down ballot. And I’ll give you a good example from 2024. 2024,

12:54.48

Sam Shirazi

the The polls for Senate were so often certain races. And I think the biggest shock on election night was in Pennsylvania, Democratic Senator Bob Casey lost his reelection, even though he had a long history in Pennsylvania. His family had a long history in Pennsylvania. Why did he lose? Essentially, it was because Trump won at the top of the ticket.

13:11.83

Sam Shirazi

What the polls were showing for president... they were basically showing a very close race in Pennsylvania for president. I think everyone kind of understood Pennsylvania at the presidential level was going to be close. However, I think at least on the Democratic side, maybe some Republicans were more optimistic, but Democrats certainly thought that the,

13:28.81

Sam Shirazi

Pennsylvania seat was going to be okay because they thought, okay, well, yeah, I mean, maybe Trump might even win Pennsylvania, but Bob Casey, you know, he’s been there a long time. He’s got a strong brand. He’s going to win the Senate race.

13:39.97

Sam Shirazi

But that didn’t end up happening. I mean, there was a little bit of ticket splitting, but essentially people just went straight ticket. And the polling wouldn’t show you that. The polling showed, I think, Casey roughly up by about 2% at the end, and then he lost, obviously.

13:52.48

Sam Shirazi

And the reason for that is... people were just not giving you, they just didn’t know that much about the race or they weren’t answering the polls. So so the the percentage of voters responding to the Senate poll was less than the presidential poll. So long story short, there were a certain number of people who might’ve said, oh yeah, I’m undecided in the Senate poll.

14:11.17

Sam Shirazi

But then when they showed up, they voted for Trump. They just voted straight ticket. They didn’t think too much about it. And that’s why you got that result in the Pennsylvania Senate race. And so I think there could be a similar dynamic. Remember, neither candidate is close to 50 percent, even in his own internal. Jason Meares at 46 percent. So I think you could see this dynamic where Meares is maybe... keeping it close or even up a little bit in the polling.

14:34.16

Sam Shirazi

But at the end of the day, the like late deciders, though the the people who vote at the end who tend to be the least engaged voters, they’re not really thinking too much about these elections. they’re not looking at the individual candidates. They’re just kind of wake up on election day, realize there’s an election, go to the polling booth.

14:48.29

Sam Shirazi

And then they just vote straight ticket. And that would help Jay Jones because they aren’t thinking about the individual races. They’re just kind of voting straight ticket. And that would hurt the the incumbent Meares. And I think that’s kind of what happened to the Bob Casey, where remember, Trump does really well with low propensity voters, voters who aren’t necessarily living, breathing politics.

15:06.66

Sam Shirazi

They might not know who Bob Casey is. They might not care who Bob Casey is. So they just showed up on election day. They voted straight ticket for the Republicans. I think you could see a similar dynamic here. here in Virginia, where the late deciders, the people aren’t super engaged, if they break towards the Democrats, they just vote straight ticket. And that is going to help Jay Jones.

15:25.03

Sam Shirazi

On the other hand, I did, you know there were Senate races like in Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, where people did split their ticket from the top of the ticket. And Trump was able to win those states, but the Democratic senators were able to hang on because there was enough ticket splitting.

15:39.66

Sam Shirazi

So long story short, I think it’s it’s pretty un unpredictable to know what’s going to happen right now. I think these internal polls were helpful. I think they confirm what everyone kind of feeling that it was going to be close at the year attorney general spot on the ticket.

15:53.55

Sam Shirazi

I think what would be really useful is getting a high quality nonpartisan poll to just get a temperature check of where the attorney general race is. And so hopefully we get one of those soon. And then obviously if we get one, I will report on that.

16:06.28

Sam Shirazi

The last thing I wanted to mention is that there will be a debate in Virginia. I think it’s gonna be very interesting. I think it’s gonna be high stakes. Obviously on the Republican side, they are gonna wanna talk about the story with Jay Jones and the text and highlight that. And I think that’s gonna be one of Winston Merle Sears attack lines in the debate.

16:23.73

Sam Shirazi

So gotta see how Abigail Spanberger responds to that. From the Republican standpoint, they what they’re going to be defensive on or potentially have to answer questions on are the shutdowns.

16:34.08

Sam Shirazi

Is the shutdown dynamic and the federal cuts? I’m sure Spanberger is going to be more on the offense talking about the shutdown, talking about the federal cuts. And so you’re going to see that dynamic, see which one kind of dominates the debate. it going to be more about the shutdown?

16:48.83

Sam Shirazi

Federal issues is it going to be more about... The text, i think I think that’s going to be interesting to see how that plays out. And I guess the last thing I wanted to close with is the shutdown is really kind of this wild card in the background. Because as I said, the longer the shutdown goes on, the bigger deal it’s going to be in the Virginia elections.

17:07.01

Sam Shirazi

At this point, it looks like the shutdown is going to last at least 10 days. We could be coming up on two weeks next week if the shutdown is not resolved. And so that’s going to be increasingly going to dominate the Virginia elections if the shutdown just keeps going going. And, going and you know, I actually did the math. So the last shutdown during Trump 1.0 was the longest shutdown we’ve had, and that was 35 days.

17:30.38

Sam Shirazi

And so if this shutdown that we’re currently in lasts 35 days, that will go all the way until November fifth And obviously, Election Day is November 4th. So I don’t necessarily think it’s going to happen, but I do think there’s a non-zero chance that the shutdown could still be going on on Election Day. And so I think...

17:48.54

Sam Shirazi

Given that possibility, I mean, there is a chance that the election at the end is going to be dominated by the shutdown. So while you don’t hear about it every single day, i think the longer the shutdown goes on, the effects are real. There’s been reports of flight delays because of FAA staffing issues.

18:05.79

Sam Shirazi

I saw that DCA airport in Arlington was having some delays. Obviously, federal workers eventually are going to start missing paychecks. There’s going to be services that are not being rendered with the various agencies. So a lot of stuff that I think is kind of building under the surface.

18:21.73

Sam Shirazi

And the longer this goes on, the more it’s likely to explode. And so while I think... The story right now with Jay Jones and his texts are dominating things and it’s an important story and I get why it got a lot of attention. i also understand that there’s other story going on with the shutdown and that could be really important in Virginia election. So all this is stuff we have to keep an eye on.

18:43.53

Sam Shirazi

I think it’s, you know, October is seems like a pretty crazy month already and it’s, we’re barely in one week into October. so A lot of stuff going on in the Virginia elections. I’m going to try to keep everyone updated. I hope everyone finds the podcast interesting. i will keep everyone going, keep everyone updated as this wild ride of the Virginia elections comes to a close. And I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. And this has been Federal Fall Out. And I’ll join you next time.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi Everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is a special bonus episode where we will go over an October surprise that happened in the attorney general race and just think about how that might impact the final outcome in about a month when the results start coming in for the Virginia election So to set things up, there was a story on Friday that was revealed about the Democratic nominee, Jay Jones, for attorney general.

00:26.74

Sam Shirazi

To be honest, when I released my podcast yesterday, i was not completely up to date on everything. I was trying to process it. I was trying to think through how it might impact the elections, uh, this year.

00:37.20

Sam Shirazi

Now that I’ve had some time, I saw more context. I saw kind of, you know, how it might play out and thought about how it might play out. I thought I’d give you my, uh, reaction now.

00:47.45

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, just to kind of describe what happened, uh, there was an article and reporting about a, uh, text conversation and phone conversation that, uh, Jay Jones had with, uh,

00:59.05

Sam Shirazi

a Republican delegate, Carrie Coyner. Now she is currently in a very competitive House race in the 75th House District. And the conversation was about the former Speaker of the House of Delegates, Todd Gilbert. And I’m not going to go over the actual conversation.

01:14.60

Sam Shirazi

You can look it up. It’s inappropriate and shouldn’t have happened. And Jay Jones himself would say that he has personally apologized. He has reached out to the former Speaker and apologized to him and his family and took responsibility for his actions and is trying to, you know,

01:33.99

Sam Shirazi

make this right and as much as he can, because obviously he can’t take back what he did. So long story short, the story came out. Republicans were obviously upset at what they saw, and they were trying to you know make this an issue in the campaign. And I think it’s one of those things where we quite don’t know how it’s going to play out, because something like exactly like this has not happened before in Virginia Attorney General’s race.

01:59.16

Sam Shirazi

And so we have to kind of think through, OK, what is going to happen? And I do think the Virginia Republicans now think that they have an opportunity to potentially win the attorney general’s race, even if they are realistic about the governor’s race, given the lead that Spanberger has had in some of these recent polls. I think they’re realistic about what’s going on with the governor’s race. But they think, OK, at least maybe the attorney general race can be salvaged and Jason Miyares might be able to win reelection.

02:26.57

Sam Shirazi

And I wanted to kind of objectively think that through looking back at the last 20 years of Virginia elections. And the reason I wanted to do that is because, you know, without polling, and we’re probably not going to get polling on this race for a couple weeks because it takes a while for this story to reach the voters, and then we have to gauge how the voters are reacting to it. So we’re not going to have any sort of sense for a couple weeks.

02:49.07

Sam Shirazi

But I wanted to kind of look back at the past 20 years of Virginia elections. And I’ve talked about this before. The 2005 Virginia election, I would say, was the first basically nationalized Virginia election because President Bush came to campaign.

03:01.70

Sam Shirazi

That didn’t really work out for the Republicans. The Democrats were trying to make this referendum in 2005 on President Bush. So I kind of start the modern Virginia elections in 2005. And so that year, Tim Kaine won the governor’s race by about six points.

03:18.37

Sam Shirazi

But for attorney general, Bob McDonnell was able to win the attorney joe general race in a really, really close squeaker that went to a recount, but he was barely able to pull it off. where he was able to beat Creigh Deeds.

03:30.17

Sam Shirazi

So that was an example where the attorney general candidate was able to overperform the top of the ticket and win that race. But every election since then, the party that’s won the governor’s race has also won the attorney general’s race.

03:44.82

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, I think what’s interesting is every single election, the party that loses the governor’s race, they actually do better in the attorney general’s race. So they overperform in the attorney general general’s race. It’s just not by that much.

03:55.79

Sam Shirazi

And typically since 2009, the overperformance has only been about 2% by the party that loses. So you do see ticket splitting between the governor and attorney general race, but it’s only 2%.

04:07.32

Sam Shirazi

Now, I think the Republicans are going to say, well, this year is going to be different because of what happened in this story. I think there are a few examples that we can think about in terms of why might it be different and and why might it not be different. And so the the best example I think I can use is 2009. So 2009, Bob McDonnell ran for governor and he got a big landslide when he won by about 17 points.

04:30.63

Sam Shirazi

points He ran a smart campaign. He was more pragmatic in that race and really ran race focused on the economy. And I think that really paid off and he got a big landslide.

04:41.46

Sam Shirazi

The attorney general race in 2009, Ken Cucullinelli was the Republican nominee. I mean, frankly, he was not as strong a candidate as Bob McDonnell. He was more ideological. And, you know, in theory, he was he’s not a he was a weaker candidate, but he only underperformed McDonald by about 2%, and he won by about 15%.

05:02.40

Sam Shirazi

So, again, we saw that there wasn’t much ticket splitting. People weren’t really thinking about the individual candidates in 2009. They were just voting straight ticket.

05:12.52

Sam Shirazi

We can also think So just like now, there’s an incumbent attorney general trying to run for re-election. 2021, Mark Herring was trying to run for re-election against the current incumbent, Jason Miyares. Jason Miyares won that race.

05:25.24

Sam Shirazi

And Youngkin at the top of the ticket won by about 2%, and Meares won by about 1%. So there was just 1% of ticket splitting in the 2021 attorney general race, even though Youngkin was able to win.

05:37.59

Sam Shirazi

And even though Herring was an incumbent. And so that’s two attorney general races where they’re kind of similar to what’s going on right now, but there’s only 2% or 1% 2% ticket splitting.

05:50.47

Sam Shirazi

And then you could say, well, this is different. There’s a different level of a story here that is a different caliber of a race than those races. So maybe we can look to 2013. So 2013 for the attorney general, there was some ticket splitting, but not that much. I think it was about two and a half percent.

06:10.18

Sam Shirazi

But for Lieutenant Governor, there was a lot of ticket splitting. And what happened was for the governor’s race, Terry McAuliffe was able to win by about 3%. But for the lieutenant governor’s race, Ralph Northam got a big win, almost an 11% win.

06:25.02

Sam Shirazi

So Northam basically overperformed the top of the ticket by 8%. And the reason for that, E.W. Jackson was the Republican nominee. He had said a lot of things that were pretty controversial in the past, and the Democrats were able to use that against him. And so you saw this huge overperformance by Northam.

06:41.45

Sam Shirazi

But even then, I mean, that was 8%. That’s been like the most overperformance that anyone’s gotten since 2005, and it was 8%.

06:49.64

Sam Shirazi

One thing that caught my mind was in in the summer during one of these panic pieces, the Republican House leader, Terry Kilgore, he talked about how this year in Virginia could be like 2001. And the reason he said it could be like 2001, it’s because...

07:03.20

Sam Shirazi

it’s because In 2001, his brother Jerry Kilgore was able to win the Virginia Attorney general worked attorney General’s race, even though Mark Warner won at the top of the ticket. And the reason he was able to do that is he just got a lot of ticket splitting. It was like a crazy amount of ticket splitting. So Jerry Kilgore got 60% of the vote compared to 40% for Donald MacHean, who was later a congressman.

07:27.63

Sam Shirazi

And so... That was a 25% overperformance. And I think maybe Terry Kilgore thinks this year there’s going to double digit overperformance. I think the problem there, 2001 specifically, was right after 9-11.

07:40.69

Sam Shirazi

So there was just a lot of different vibes in politics at that time. And there was just less partisanship. So I think you could imagine a 25% overperformance in 2001.

07:51.50

Sam Shirazi

It is very hard to imagine that in 2025. And realistically, i don’t think the Republicans are going to think they’re going to get 25% overperformance. But I think the Republican argument is like, look, even if Spanberger gets like a really good night and she wins by 10%, that’s still within the range where we could potentially win the attorney general’s

08:08.59

Sam Shirazi

And the reason they think that is, you know, they’re trying to talk about the story a lot. And, you know, I get it. The facts aren’t great. And obviously it’s something that the Republicans can use against Jay Jones.

08:19.68

Sam Shirazi

But I’m also trying to think critically, one, how many voters are actually going to hear this story? And even if it reaches a good amount of voters, like how many of them are actually going to switch their votes?

08:30.50

Sam Shirazi

Because, as I mentioned, the Virginia elections have just become referendums on the president. And when you are doing a referendum, you’re trying to send a message. So you’re either sending a message, I like the incumbent president, or you’re sending a message, I don’t like the incumbent president.

08:44.79

Sam Shirazi

And when you’re doing that, you’re just doing that straight down the ticket. You’re not thinking, you’re just saying, I don’t like the president or I like the president. I’m going with his party straight down the ticket. And so I do think the Virginia Republicans are hoping that a certain amount of voters will say, okay, I will send a message by voting for Spanberger, but maybe down the ticket for attorney general, I’ll vote for Miyares.

09:06.67

Sam Shirazi

And you know we’ll just have to wait and see. There’s really no way of knowing if that’s going to happen or not. I would just say that voters, i don’t I just don’t know if that’s kind of the trend in Virginia elections.

09:17.59

Sam Shirazi

And even if you look back at 2013, voters, they just... you know voters they just gave Northam a big overperformance, that was 8%. And that was, 2013 was a different environment, less partisanship. I would say during the Trump era, the partisanship has really ramped up. So, you know, 2021, we were, we almost had no ticket splitting. It was basically 1% ticket splitting in 2021, just because the Trump era, people are so partisan.

09:44.36

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, I get that this story will probably be more than 1%, but, you You know, is it 5%? I mean, I’m having a hard time thinking it’s going to come up to 10%.

09:55.54

Sam Shirazi

You know, that’s just my personal opinion, but I don’t want to go with my personal opinion. I want to wait for polling. And I want to see, you know, is there any sort of movement at the attorney general spot of of the ticket?

10:06.31

Sam Shirazi

And again, the the issue is it’s going to probably take before, you know, the the story gets out, it gets processed and we get new polling. It’s going to be like two weeks. So it’s just got a huge lag before we actually find out what’s going on.

10:19.07

Sam Shirazi

And I just wanted to flag a couple other things before we end this podcast. you know, one of them is the fact that 10% of voters have already voted. There’s over 350,000 votes cast in early voting already.

10:32.29

Sam Shirazi

And I think we’ll probably get around 3.5 million total turnout. And typically the people who voted at the beginning are the hardcore partisans. So it’s a little bit of an open question whether that many votes would have been switched anyways. But regardless, you got 10% of the people off the board. So you have 90% of the people who are left.

10:48.56

Sam Shirazi

And then of those 90%, I mean, how many are they going to hear this story? Is it going to be... 50%? Is it going to be 75%? it going to be 25%? I mean, we really don’t know. And even if they hear the story, how many people are going to say, okay, I’m going to switch my vote from governor and attorney general because of the story.

11:05.55

Sam Shirazi

You know, it’s really unknown. And, you know, the one thing i will say, you know, I understand the Republicans want to to going talk about this story and I get it. I mean, that’s what a party would do in this situation.

11:20.49

Sam Shirazi

But I’m also mindful of what happened in late August with the sign in Arlington. I mean, obviously that sign was also inappropriate and it was a story for a few days. But at the end of the day, I mean, voters, they don’t necessarily want to spend an entire campaign talking about, you know, one issue or one story.

11:37.63

Sam Shirazi

They’re concerned about their lives. They’re concerned about, you know, their jobs, putting food on the table, their health care. I mean, those ultimately are the things that voters fundamentally care about. I mean, that’s the point of the elections is more about those issues. And so...

11:53.64

Sam Shirazi

To the extent the Republicans want to talk about this, I get it. And, you know, it makes sense. I just I wonder how long this can be sustained, because I think at some point voters are going to say, like, all right, we understand what happened with this story. But I’m also have questions about health care or I have questions about taxes or I have questions about these other things.

12:15.40

Sam Shirazi

And if the entire election becomes about this, at least the Republicans try to make the entire election about this, I don’t know if the voters are going to go there. And last podcast yesterday, I talked about the trans issue.

12:27.88

Sam Shirazi

You know, the Republicans were trying to basically make this a referendum on the trans issue. And I think they’ve basically come to the conclusion that’s not going to happen because the voters don’t want to have that conversation. It’s just not the top issue on their minds. The top issue is primarily the economy.

12:42.87

Sam Shirazi

And so while the story with Jay Jones, I understand it’s a serious story and it’s it’s worth covering. I also understand that voters are not going to want to spend the and next month of the campaign talking about it, especially when there’s a shutdown going on in D.C.

12:58.29

Sam Shirazi

It’s probably affecting some of their jobs. They’re probably worried about some of these Medicaid cuts that are coming out of D.C. potential cuts to Obamacare subsidies.

13:08.56

Sam Shirazi

I mean, these are things they’re hearing about. And frankly, i mean, it’s probably more on voters’ minds than some of these other issues that, you know, for individual candidates, while they matter, ultimately voters decide on the party and the brand and,

13:26.12

Sam Shirazi

You’re either on team red or team blue. And I think partisanship is become very powerful. and And I think it’s an important reminder not to underestimate partisanship. I am trying to keep an open mind.

13:37.07

Sam Shirazi

I don’t want to assume things one way or another. i think there’s a lot of jumping to conclusions when a story like this happens.

13:44.96

Sam Shirazi

I do think there’s a tendency among the political class to focus on certain issues because, You know, it’s just what everyone’s talking about. But in the real world, there are other things going on that perhaps for the average voter is more important because they are not living and breathing politics. They are not following the nuances of all these stories. They’re mainly just trying to get their kids to school. They’re trying to go to work.

14:08.79

Sam Shirazi

They’re trying to put food on the table. i mean those are so typically things that the voters are thinking about more. And so all that’s to say is, like, I don’t want to discount the story. I don’t I understand.

14:20.95

Sam Shirazi

It’s important. We’re going to have a debate on Thursday. I think that’s going to be really interesting. I’m sure this will come up during the debate for the governor candidates.

14:27.27

Sam Shirazi

They’re going to be asked about it. But I also don’t think it’s going to be the entire debate. So we just have to kind of wait and see how this plays out. I’m trying to keep an open mind. I’m really curious to see what polling is going to say in a couple of weeks. I’m not necessarily saying it’s going to go one way or another. I’m just kind of thinking this through and trying to give an objective assessment of where the story might head.

14:48.33

Sam Shirazi

And yeah, so, I mean, we’ll see. I’ll obviously update it. There’s a lot going on, both nationally and in Virginia, other than the story. But for the past couple days, it’s been dominating the news. So I did want to do this podcast about it. And yeah, I mean, I appreciate, I mean, the thing with this Virginia election, there’s a lot, lot of surprises, especially here at the end. And I haven’t even covered some of the other surprises that have have happened because there’s not even been enough time. So,

15:16.08

Sam Shirazi

I’ll keep everyone updated as best I can. i appreciate everyone who’s been listening. And this has been Federal Fall Out. And I’ll join you next time.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode, we will first go over some of the fallout about what’s going on in D.C. with the shutdown.

00:11.01

Sam Shirazi

And then I wanted to talk about a bunch of polls that we got this week in Virginia and specifically look at the question of turnout versus persuasion. All right, to begin, let’s talk about the shutdown in D.C.

00:24.48

Sam Shirazi

As of the release of this podcast, the shutdown is still ongoing and there hasn’t really been any indication that it’s going to end soon. And if you remember, one of the factors I had discussed previously about the shutdown was the length of any shutdown. So the longer the shutdown, the bigger the deal it’s going to be in the Virginia elections.

00:45.14

Sam Shirazi

So this one is probably going to be at least a week at this point. And so that’s getting into the territory where it’s starting to become a bigger deal. So I do think the shutdown is going to have a bigger impact on the Virginia elections.

00:57.02

Sam Shirazi

ah Still unclear the overall impact and still unclear which party is going to benefit or perhaps it just doesn’t really affect the Virginia elections in terms of helping one side or the other.

01:09.85

Sam Shirazi

i will say there have been some polls released ah that have been taken before the shutdown, kind of assigning ah blame and which side the voters assign blame to.

01:20.86

Sam Shirazi

I will say that the polls generally have said that President Trump and the Republicans took more of the blame, particularly more independents blame them. ah Now, obviously, that could change. That was a snapshot in time. But that is one data point to consider as the shutdown um fight continues.

01:38.77

Sam Shirazi

And obviously, it also just depends how the shutdown plays out. And so currently, there has been some talk that um the figures within the Trump administration may want to go ahead with further federal layoffs as a result of the shutdown, also known as rifts.

01:55.58

Sam Shirazi

And so obviously, if that happens, there’s going to be more of an impact to what’s going on in Virginia if there are more rifts at the federal level. And so all that is just things to consider as we are analyzing the shutdown right now, because um there is a debate coming up on...

02:13.07

Sam Shirazi

Thursday between the Democratic and Republican candidates for governor in Virginia. It appears that’s going to be the only debate. And I think that’s going to be a really big moment. If the shutdown is still going on on Thursday, I think it’s going to be a major issue in the debate. And that’s going to be one of the many things that um is going to be discussed that is more of a federal fallout from what’s going on in D.C.

02:35.81

Sam Shirazi

And obviously, the beginning of the year, I had called this podcast Federal Fallout. The reason I did that was because I just had this feeling, which was not a huge surprise given everything going on in DC, that the what was going on in the federal government was going to have an impact on the Virginia elections.

02:52.23

Sam Shirazi

Obviously, at the beginning of the year there was more of an impact with Doge and the federal firings. I think um once Elon Musk left the stage, that quieted a little bit, although it’s still in the background. But now with the shutdown, it’s really come at possibly the worst time for the Virginia Republicans because it’s brought all these issues back to the forefront.

03:12.09

Sam Shirazi

We’re talking about not just a shutdown, but we’re talking about federal potential federal layoffs, which would have an important consequence here in Virginia. So I think one possibility is what’s going on in D.C.

03:24.14

Sam Shirazi

is generally going to help the Democrats in in the Virginia elections because there’s more focus on D.C., there’s more focus on Trump, and there’s also another focus, again, on the federal and job cuts potentially. um I do think there’s also a world where the shutdown could potentially help the Virginia Republicans.

03:43.30

Sam Shirazi

you know In theory, if the shutdown is just dragging on and on and people start blaming the Democrats because they they look like they’re being unreasonable and they’re unwilling to vote for the continuing resolution, it could hurt the Democrats.

03:54.60

Sam Shirazi

And there’s also the potential that eventually the Democrats will just – there’s too much pressure on them. They will essentially cave because – and frankly, I think that’s the Republican strategy. I think the Republican strategy right now is to just wait out the Democrats – They feel like eventually the Democrats are just going to vote to reopen the government and then they’ll get the win in the shutdown fight because the Democrats didn’t get what they wanted.

04:17.39

Sam Shirazi

So all that’s to say is, you know, there is a potential that it helps the Virginia Republicans. And and again, i think it’s a it’s a total wild card in this election. um i mentioned it was basically an October surprise. We had something similar happen in 2013.

04:31.29

Sam Shirazi

that I think did change the dynamics of that election and help the Democrats in that election. So we’re just gonna to wait and see. I mean, I wish I had a more definitive answer for people about what the impact of the shutdown is gonna be on the election.

04:43.88

Sam Shirazi

I do think given that it’s gonna be at least a week, I do think it’s gonna have some impact on the election. The question becomes again, who does it help? Does it hurt one side? too too unpredictable right now. I think we’ll get some more polling um on this specific question that might help answer some of the question. But again, i think i think it’s a wild card. And I’m going talk about all the Virginia polls that we’ve gotten so far. And I think all of them have pretty much were right before the shutdown. So I think it’s important to keep in mind while the polls right now are looking pretty good for the Democrats, it’s not taking into account this potential shift with the shutdown. So I’m not going to

05:22.57

Sam Shirazi

speculate too much about how the shutdown is going to impact the election until I have some more data and I can kind of give you a more definitive answer. I did want to talk about the polls and I’m going to do that in a minute, but just kind of want to reiterate that the shutdowns, this total wildcard could completely change the election um if it continues. And, you know, if it’s getting into later in October and the shutdown still going on,

05:43.41

Sam Shirazi

i mean, that’s pretty much going to be the dominant issue of the campaign. And so while there isn’t a lot more else to say about it right now, I do want to kind of keep in mind that it is going to be a major issue um in the election going forward.

05:56.24

Sam Shirazi

All right. Now let’s go talk about something that’s a little bit more certain, which are these polls that came out again before the shutdown, but still good to have more Virginia polls. And we got a bunch of Virginia polls this week. I will try to go through them pretty quickly to not...

06:10.57

Sam Shirazi

get too bogged down in each poll. However, i did want to discuss each poll, and then I’ll talk a little bit about this thing about turnout versus persuasion at the end. So in terms of the polls, I think we got two good nonpartisan polls this week, which I was really happy about because We’ve been getting um kind of inconsistent polling and some of it’s been more partisan polling. And I had specifically been waiting on a poll from the Washington Post because they have a collaboration with the Schar School at George Mason.

06:43.00

Sam Shirazi

And frankly, I find that these polls are very high quality polls, particularly in Virginia. I think they know how to poll Virginia. Their past polls have been pretty accurate. So in 2024, their last poll had Harris up by 6%. And that was exactly the margin that she won Virginia by. And I still remember in 2024, people were a little bit surprised by that last poll because it was closer than other polls had showed and it was closer than 2020. And in hindsight, I think that was a little bit of a warning sign to Democrats that maybe the election wasn’t this huge cakewalk that they thought it might be with Trump and that actually they might be in some trouble.

07:20.51

Sam Shirazi

And you know obviously it was one poll, so you you know you’d never knew if it was 100% accurate. um But in hindsight, the Schar school ah poll for 2024 was pretty accurate. And so that’s why when their 2025 poll finally came out, and this is their first poll in a long time, I was excited because I do think of the polls, and I mentioned before,

07:41.44

Sam Shirazi

There are some polls I pay more attention to, and this is one of them. All right, so I’m just going to go through the numbers first. In the Washington Post-Shar school poll, it had for the guy governor race, Democratic nominee Abigail Spanberger at 55%.

07:55.99

Sam Shirazi

For the lieutenant governor’s race, it had Winston Merle Sears at 43%. For lieutenant governor, it had Ghazal Hashmi, the Democratic nominee, at 49%, and the Republican nominee, John Reed, at 45%.

08:08.92

Sam Shirazi

For Attorney General, it had the Democratic nominee, Jay Jones, at 51%, and it had the Republican nominee, Jason Meares, at 45%. It also had a couple other interesting nuggets in here. So the Trump approval was 55% disapprove, 45% approve.

08:26.33

Sam Shirazi

And the Yunkin approval was 50% approved and 46% disapproved. And I thought the Trump approval was especially interesting because to be perfectly honest, this is not um that bad of an approval for President Trump in Virginia. Remember, President Trump has never won Virginia. He lost it three times in a row.

08:45.23

Sam Shirazi

ah He got about um this number in 2024. So it’s not like he’s lost that much support. ah He’s down negative 10. But still, the Democrats at the top of the ticket with Spanberger are up by 12%.

09:00.86

Sam Shirazi

So even in a poll, so that tells the Trump number tells me the poll itself is not super friendly to the Democrats. Because if it was super friendly to the Democrats, Trump’s approval would probably be closer to 60% disapproved.

09:12.98

Sam Shirazi

But he’s only at 55% approved. But then Spanberger also at 55% in terms of her number. And this is one of the highest numbers I’ve seen for Spanberger in terms of just pure margin.

09:24.45

Sam Shirazi

what’s that What that’s telling me is everyone pretty much who disapproves of Trump is voting for Spanberger. So again, I’ve said this since the beginning of the podcast that these off these um Virginia governor’s election often become a referendum on the president.

09:38.01

Sam Shirazi

If this poll is correct, it is essentially become a referendum on Trump. If you like Trump, you are voting probably for the Republicans. If you don’t like Trump, you’re voting for the Democrats. Overall, that’s good news for the Democrats because Trump has 55% disapproval according to this poll.

09:53.64

Sam Shirazi

And obviously, look, 12% margin at the top of the ticket. I mean, that’s going to be tough for anyone to overcome with one month left in a campaign. i will say that, um you know, the shutdown is a wild card and we we can’t take anything for granted. But this was not a great poll for the Republicans.

10:12.36

Sam Shirazi

All right. And I wanted to talk about one other nonpartisan poll that we got, and that was from Emerson. So I’ll give you the numbers quickly for the Emerson poll. For governor, it had Smair Burger at 52%.

10:23.58

Sam Shirazi

And then it had Winston Merrill Sears at 42%. For the Trump approval, it had disapproved, was 46% approved, 41% disapproved. prove yu k approval was forty six percent approve forty one percent disapproved And I like getting these two polls pretty close to each other because you can compare and contrast.

10:41.35

Sam Shirazi

And frankly, they’re pretty similar. The Trump approval is pretty similar. And then the Spanberger margin is pretty similar. In in Emerson, she’s at 10 percent. In Washington Post, she’s at 12 percent.

10:54.06

Sam Shirazi

And keep in mind with Emerson in New Jersey, very recently they found a tie. And so this is not necessarily a pollster. I think Emerson’s a pretty good pollster, pretty nonpartisan. They’re not a pollster that’s necessarily super favorable for the Democrats.

11:07.64

Sam Shirazi

They found a tie in New Jersey, but then they they’re finding Democrats are doing 10% better than in Virginia. So again, the nonpartisan polls taken prior to the shutdown are giving us a pretty clear signal that the Democrats are doing well.

11:21.25

Sam Shirazi

Spanberger is above 50%. She’s getting at least all the ah Harris 2024 voters to back her, if not getting all the Trump disapprovers to back her. so um you know,

11:33.79

Sam Shirazi

It doesn’t take a genius to look at these polls and say that things are going pretty well at the top of the ticket for the Democrats. I did want to just talk about one other poll ah briefly because, you know, to to give you a sense of what some other polls are looking like. So there’s a polling organization called Trafalgar.

11:50.09

Sam Shirazi

I will say that they’ve had a mixed record in the past and they’re definitely more... I would say leaning towards the Republicans in terms of their alignment. But I wanted to give you their numbers just in in terms of you having all the numbers in terms of polls that came out this week. So for governor, of the Trafalgar poll found Spanberger 47%. It found ear Sears Lieutenant Governor, it had Hashmi at 48% and Reid at 44%. For Attorney General, it had Jones at 49% and Mears at 45%.

12:20.61

Sam Shirazi

And you know keep in mind, again, this is similar to other Republican internals or Republican-aligned polls, which typically show Spanberger up about 5%.

12:31.83

Sam Shirazi

So almost all the internal Republican polls or Republican-aligned polls have shown Spanberger at 5% in recent weeks. um weeks But compare that to the nonpartisan polls. Nonpartisan polls typically have spam murder up by about 10%.

12:46.86

Sam Shirazi

So while it’s helpful to have these Republican polls, you also want to keep in mind that there might be a little bit of um you know different numbers than what the nonpartisan polls are finding. Okay, so now that we have all those numbers out of the way, we can kind of think about why is the race where it is?

13:03.30

Sam Shirazi

And I often get this question about turnout versus persuasion. So but people on both sides will ask me kind of essentially the same question. What’s more important in election, turnout or persuasion?

13:15.75

Sam Shirazi

So turnout is the idea that you just need to really motivate your boy your base to go vote. Whereas persuasion is the idea, no, what you really need to focus on are the voters in the middle, the swing voters.

13:26.82

Sam Shirazi

And I often give the same answer, which is basically you got to worry about both. the The elections, the campaigns where you do really well, it’s when you both have turnout and you have persuasion.

13:38.79

Sam Shirazi

So you think about 2021 with He was able to win because he brought out his base. He had a lot of turnout among Republicans, and he was able to persuade some of those voters in the middle to back him.

13:50.79

Sam Shirazi

That’s how he was able to win in 2021. needed both. I think there are scenarios where maybe you could win with one or the other, but again, the really big wins are done when you have both. So if you’re a campaign, you want both turnout and persuasion.

14:04.48

Sam Shirazi

And I will give you an example in ah democratic history, not too long ago, but 2008, obviously there were a lot of um things going right for the Obama campaign, but they were able to get their turnout up.

14:16.58

Sam Shirazi

They were able to persuade voters in the middle that gave you a landslide. um That’s the kind of thing that you want to do. You want to get your base excited and turning out and you want the voters in the middle to back you.

14:29.62

Sam Shirazi

And I think sometimes there’s this false choice presented that, oh, no, all you need to focus on is your is your base. Just turn out your base and who cares about voters in the middle? um Or who cares about your base?

14:41.08

Sam Shirazi

You just need to focus on the voters in the middle. ah you know Again, i think it’s important to think about both and you need both. I think the advantage just structurally that Spanberger has, and again, this is an advantage that the party out of the White House typically has in the Virginia governor’s election.

14:56.24

Sam Shirazi

The structural advantage she has is that her base is going to be fired up. So a lot of Democrats, they’re frustrated at what’s going on in DC. They want to send a message. They’re going to come out and vote. And so the Spanberger campaign knows that they’re going to get a certain amount of votes from the base.

15:11.74

Sam Shirazi

And so that means they can spend more of their time focused on the vote the voters in the middle. They can try to persuade voters. And you’ve seen her do that with a lot of focus on cost of living, ah talking about you know, the tariffs and those issues. And yes, she’s trying to tie them to to Trump, but it’s not this super red meat stuff that maybe you would think the Democratic base would like. She’s more focused on everyday concerns people have, you know, gossip groceries, those types of things, because she has that space, because she knows her base is going to turn out, given how angry they are at what’s going on in D.C.,

15:45.93

Sam Shirazi

I think the problem that Winston-Merle Sears has had, and this is again the problem the party in the White House has, is their base is never fully engaged in the Virginia elections because they’re generally happy because Trump is in the White House right now, or if it it’s a Democratic president, you have a Democratic, ah the Democratic base is not necessarily as fully engaged. That was part of the problem in 2021.

16:06.37

Sam Shirazi

And so I think what Earl Sears, she has to do both. She has to both engage her base and she needs to persuade the voters in the middle. And I wanted to talk about one other issue this week that came up, and it’s been the focus of the Winston-Murl Sears campaign that she’s had so much focus on the trans issue. And I think even some Republicans are now but starting to speak out and saying, you know, maybe she’s starting to go a little bit overboard in terms of the focus on the trans issue. And I’m going to read to you something that former Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, Bill Bowling, he’s a Republican. He’s still a Republican. He voted for President Trump in 24.

16:45.73

Sam Shirazi

I will say he’s more of an establishment Republican, but he’s still a Republican. And this is what she wrote he wrote because Winston Meryl Sears released a new ad that was focused on the transgender issue this week.

16:57.88

Sam Shirazi

And ah Bill Bowling said, quote, I guess... um The thought is that this issue will turn out the conservative base and maybe cut into Spanberger’s support in Northern Virginia localities where these issues are being hotly debated.

17:11.03

Sam Shirazi

But if this is all the Sears campaign has to talk about, I think they are in serious trouble. And so we’re seeing even... Republicans are starting to question the Earl Sears strategy of just focusing on the trans issue.

17:23.43

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, I wanted to just step back and kind of explain what the Earl Sears campaign was trying to do and why it might not be totally crazy. Because I’ve been hearing certain things about like, why is Earl Sears spending so much time on the trans issue? I wanted to kind of explain it from their perspective, where what they might have gotten right and I think what they might have gotten wrong.

17:42.65

Sam Shirazi

So if you remember, in July, there were some panic pieces that came out and the Republicans were really nervous because they thought they were going to lose the the election in July. And so there was a reboot of the Winston-Marcel Sears campaign. She made some changes in her campaign.

17:55.06

Sam Shirazi

In August, they started talking more about the trans issue. There was obviously the incident in Arlington, which gave them injection of energy. And so that’s kind of how ah the July-August timeframe looked like.

18:06.96

Sam Shirazi

And to be perfectly honest, I think in August, in august purely from... a political standpoint, I think there was some, it did make sense to a certain extent to try to do something to energize the base. Because as I said, they had a turnout problem. They needed to get the base energized in order to at least get to a certain number this year in Virginia.

18:27.79

Sam Shirazi

And so in August, I think the focus on the trans issue made sense to a certain extent if you’re the Winston Earl Sears campaign. Because, again, it’s an issue that they think it doesn’t turn off the the middle voter, but it really excites their base and they need it based excitement. So in August, it kind of made sense for that to be part of the campaign.

18:48.68

Sam Shirazi

However, I think the issue Winston-Marcel Sears had, and I actually flagged this all the way back in August, if you listened to the podcast back then. is that at some point they would need to shift to the voter in the middle because this is not the type of issue that wins the voter in the middle, in my opinion. And it’s not just my opinion. There’s also polling backing that up. So both in the Washington Post poll and in the Emerson poll, the trans issue is just not the top priority for voters. It’s just...

19:15.41

Sam Shirazi

you know, well below the other ones. Economy is always the top issue for most voters. And so while I think the trans issue to a certain extent made sense in August for the Winston Earl Sears campaign, in October, it’s not the issue you want to be running on because the voters in the middle, they don’t necessarily care about it. They care much more about the economy.

19:32.88

Sam Shirazi

The Washington Post and Emerson polls show this. If you dig down into those polls in terms of the issues, the vast majority of voters are much more concerned about the economy than they are trans issues. So I think the salience of the issue is not what the Winston-Marcel Sears campaign ah thinks it is.

19:49.42

Sam Shirazi

And I think they’ve probably started to get the message that they need to shift ah messaging to to maybe more of the economy. If I had to guess, they’re going to focus on the car tax issue. So If you’re familiar with Virginia, Virginia has a car tax, which is burst basically a personal property tax with some exemptions where essentially you have to pay a tax on your car and most people don’t like it. And obviously...

20:13.62

Sam Shirazi

Politically, it’s popular to get rid of it. ah you know You can debate about the policy and how are you going to make up the lost revenue? And are you goingnna have to cut services? are you goingnna have to raise taxes other places? But obviously, from a political standpoint, it makes sense. And it it makes sense to the point that the Spanberger campaign has also talked about how they that she’s open to potentially repealing the car tax. So I think that The Earl Sears folks are going to try to maybe go down that road. You know, the problem is a little bit ah too little too late.

20:41.37

Sam Shirazi

Also, like this is not necessarily the most important single policy in the world. So while, yes, it’s pretty popular, like, are you going to suddenly shift 10% of voters just off the car tax? um We’ll see. But I do think they they might shift their focus a little bit. And obviously, the trans issues got gotten to the point where they got enough, they got them as much mileage as they could from it, but it’s it’s getting old. and And I honestly had flagged in August that the danger for the Republicans was they were going to beat a dead horse. And at some point, people just get, they get the message. And, and you know, you can’t just talk about one thing over and over again, especially an issue like this that,

21:18.65

Sam Shirazi

Well, I know some people on both sides have passionate views about it. The reality is most people, they’re trying to get through the day. um They’re trying to pay groceries. They’re trying to pay rent. There’s stuff going on with the shutdown. um you know Most people are not thinking about this issue every single moment. And so you know as a campaign, you just have to be realistic about what is it that is exciting your base versus what’s going turn out your base versus the things that the average voter in the middle cares about. And so I think that’s the challenge with turnout versus persuasion. You you need to do things that will get your base excited.

21:57.18

Sam Shirazi

But at the same time, you can’t forget the voters in the middle. You have to be able to persuade them. And I think right now, given the polling, Spanberger definitely has the right formula. Her base is excited. They want to turn out. They’re angry at what’s going on in D.C.

22:10.54

Sam Shirazi

And yet, because of her money, because of the focus on economic issues, she’s able to win the voters in the middle. She’s winning independents. That’s why you see that she has such a big lead in these polls right now.

22:22.26

Sam Shirazi

All right. One last thing. And it’s kind of similar to the persuasion thing I talked about earlier, because there had been a few stories that have come out this week. To be perfectly honest, I don’t necessarily have the time to go in the ins and outs of each story. There was one story about Lieutenant Governor candidate John Reed, and there was a couple stories about the attorney general candidate Jay Jones.

22:44.61

Sam Shirazi

Again, um I don’t want to necessarily spend a whole bunch of time talking about it because it’s still unclear how much of an impact it’s going to have on the race ah for both those ah races.

22:55.99

Sam Shirazi

But I did want to talk about ticket splitting and also the issue of persuading voters down ballot, because I think One of the things I’m grappling with is how much ticket splitting there’s going to be this year. I think I’ve been pretty consistent saying there’s not going to be a lot of ticket splitting.

23:10.51

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, my gut is still telling me it’s most people don’t necessarily split their ticket. It’s just the reality that voters like to pick the blue team or the red team and they just go straight down the ticket. They don’t think too much about each candidate.

23:24.20

Sam Shirazi

ah You know, it’s just an easy thing to do because, you know, who’s going to spend time researching every single candidate? Obviously, if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re probably the type of person that might. But most people, they’re not necessarily living and breathing politics. They’re not thinking about this stuff all the time.

23:40.19

Sam Shirazi

And so the question becomes, OK, how much of there how much could there be ticket splitting? And I think there certainly is a possibility that that at least ah for a certain amount of voters, that they will probably split their ticket either way. And so I don’t think we’re going to get 100% exactly the same margins for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general.

24:02.44

Sam Shirazi

the The challenge is when you have a race where Spanberger is winning by this much, and um again, unless something changes, and i and I don’t know if it will, ah you know, with the shutdown, you know, assuming Spanberger gets a double digit win, which is what the Emerson and and Washington Post polls are showing,

24:19.70

Sam Shirazi

you know Yes, there will probably be a certain amount of ticket splitting, but I just don’t know if it’s getting to the point where you can overcome 10% at the top of the ticket. maybe Maybe if the Republicans or the Democrats spend a lot of time investing in individual races, um maybe, but even then it’s going to take a lot lot of time.

24:39.83

Sam Shirazi

By the time you know the average voter learns about something, it takes some time. so I’m you know keeping an eye on it. I really do hope we get new polls in October that will both talk about the shutdown and also take a look at the lieutenant governor and attorney general races a little bit more closely.

24:57.01

Sam Shirazi

you know The reality is most people in the world are not living and breathing Virginia politics. I know if you’re listening to this podcast, it’s probably something you’re passionate about. I obviously spend a lot of time thinking about Virginia politics. That’s why I did this podcast.

25:12.39

Sam Shirazi

But I’m also mindful, and I think this is one of the hardest things to do when you are very politically engaged, is to think about the average voter. you know What are they actually thinking about in terms of politics? What are they seeing?

25:24.09

Sam Shirazi

And I think um I want to be a little bit um humble and don’t want to take, presume anything and too much one way or another without some sort of data backing me up. Because I do think the reality is most voters,

25:39.34

Sam Shirazi

They are um you know worried about their lives. They’re worried about the economy. They are not necessarily following every single story. and And I think the extra challenge this year in the Virginia elections is what’s going on in D.C. is really dominating things. So the shutdown in Northern Virginia is a big story.

25:56.28

Sam Shirazi

And everything going on with Trump and Congress and federal cuts and this and that, I mean, most voters, i mean, that’s more of what they see in their news to the extent they’re even watching the news, because frankly, some people just want to tune out the news these days. And so I’m mindful that that’s what’s dominating a lot of what’s going on. um The Virginia specific issues, Virginia specific questions,

26:20.58

Sam Shirazi

I’m just unsure about how much that’s seeping through to the average voter. And we’ve really seen this since 2005, where the Virginia elections essentially just become a referendum on the incumbent president.

26:32.44

Sam Shirazi

And so to the extent the Emerson and Washington Post polls are showing that that’s kind of what’s happening, um that is telling me that people are just going to vote straight ticket. And I don’t know how much these individual stories are going to matter.

26:44.55

Sam Shirazi

Now, I’m trying to keep an open mind. I’m obviously going to look at the data as it comes in. I want to look at more polling, both nationally and Virginia, about the shutdown, which party is taking more of the blame. I also want to take a look at more Virginia polling that’s been conducted in October that looks at the Attorney General, Lieutenant Governor of race.

27:00.87

Sam Shirazi

And I’m going to keep my mind open, but right now, you know my gut is still telling me there’s not going to be a lot of ticket splitting. So let’s just see how it plays out. um I’ll probably cover it more in future podcasts as we get more information. but Yeah, I mean, Virginia elections are certainly ah a wild ride. There’s a lot going on. I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. I’m trying to do my best to cover everything. And I will keep everyone updated. I’m i’m keeping a look at everything and trying to you know be reasonable, trying to be objective about what I’m seeing, try to report it as best I can. i appreciate everyone who’s been listening. And this has been Federal Fallout, and I’ll join you next time.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This is a shutdown special because today is October 1st, 2025, and the government is officially shut down because Congress was unable to pass a bill to fund the government.

00:18.54

Sam Shirazi

And so that means as of the release of this podcast, the government is shut down. Now, I was thinking about this. I think technically this is an October surprise because we’re in October and it is, I guess, a surprise. Although the way I like to describe it, it’s the least surprising October surprise you could possibly imagine because everyone kind of saw this from a mile away that there could be a government shutdown.

00:43.02

Sam Shirazi

And I actually did a podcast in the spring when there was the shutdown fight that time and the shutdown was narrowly avoided. But I had flagged all the way back then that on October 1st, there could have been a shutdown. So again, not a huge surprise that we’re getting this shutdown.

00:59.01

Sam Shirazi

i think the big question mark right now is how long is it going to last? And what is the end game? How do we get out of this? Because it seems like the two sides in Congress are unwilling to move.

01:11.21

Sam Shirazi

So just to kind of lay out what’s going on. So the Republicans have been trying to pass a continuing resolution to fund the government. It included some extra language about tariffs and how the Congress couldn’t override President Trump’s tariffs, but otherwise was a continuing resolution.

01:30.04

Sam Shirazi

And the Democrats basically said, okay, well, you need our votes to break the filibuster in the Senate because you need 60 votes in the Senate to move legislation along, at least most legislation.

01:41.40

Sam Shirazi

And the Democrats said, if you want some of our votes, then you will need to negotiate with us. And the Republicans said no. So the Senate was unable to pass a bill last night. And so that means that the government funding ran out.

01:55.05

Sam Shirazi

And I think obviously both sides are going to want to blame each other. The Democrats are going to say that the Republicans are unwilling to negotiate negotiate with them and that the Republicans control Washington, all the levers of power. So how can they blame the Democrats for the shutdown when they’re in charge and when they weren’t willing to negotiate with the Democrats?

02:15.07

Sam Shirazi

I think the Republicans obviously want to point the finger back at the Democrats and say that the Democrats are not willing, are the ones who are shutting down the government because they didn’t pass this continuing resolution to fund the government and they’re being unreasonable in their demands. And in the past, they have said the Republicans shouldn’t be expecting to get any sort of policy wins with the government funding.

02:37.27

Sam Shirazi

So anyways, long story short, I think both sides try to blame each other. That’s typically what happens in a shutdown. and think the big question for the Virginia elections is one, the impact and two, who do the but voters blame?

02:49.40

Sam Shirazi

I think this time is a little bit more complicated for various reasons. So I use the example last time, 2013, there was a government shutdown right before the Virginia elections. The Republicans controlled the House of Representatives and in 2013 and they basically were unwilling to fund the government unless there were major changes to Obamacare. Obviously, the Democrats weren’t going to go along with that.

03:12.86

Sam Shirazi

I think in the public perception at that time, because the Republicans were in the majority in the House, there was this idea that the Republicans are shutting down the government over Obamacare, and the Republicans took most of the blame. And I think the perception was that helped the Democrats in the Virginia elections in 2013, where they were able to turn back the tide of history, where the Virginia Democrats won the governor’s election,

03:35.47

Sam Shirazi

even though there was a Democrat in the White House. So that was the first time that happened in a long time. So obviously, ah in hindsight, people say the shutdown was a major reason for that. All right, fast forward to the next government shutdown, which was at the end of 2018 going into the early parts of 2019. We often don’t talk about that in the Virginia elections context, but in 2019, there was a Virginia election.

03:57.50

Sam Shirazi

Now, it was all the way in November, and you could argue that voters probably forgot about the shutdown by the time the November elections in 2019 came around. that The elections in 2019 were for state senate and for the House of Delegates.

04:09.62

Sam Shirazi

So long story short, obviously the shutdown in that was the longest shutdown we’ve ever had. i think in hindsight, the Republicans and Trump took most of the blame for that one because President Trump was hoping to use the government shutdown fight to get funding for his border wall.

04:27.50

Sam Shirazi

And that didn’t end up happening. And in 2019, the Virginia Republican brand really took a hit. I think a lot of stuff happening in D.C. And you could argue that the shutdown at the beginning of the year was really part of the thing that led the Virginia Republicans to not be super popular in 2019.

04:43.81

Sam Shirazi

Democrats were able to win both the state Senate and the House of Delegates. That led to the first trifecta in a long time for Virginia Democrats. And as a result of that trifecta, they were able to pass a lot of laws. So all that’s to say is these shutdown fights in the past have had an impact on Virginia elections. And so now we got to think about, okay, how is it going to impact the Virginia elections this year?

05:04.09

Sam Shirazi

I mean, I think there’s a few different possibilities. And I would caveat all this by saying the length of the shutdown really matters. If it’s a one or two day shutdown, like sometimes we’ve seen not a big deal. No one will really remember. Everyone will move on.

05:16.64

Sam Shirazi

Obviously, if it’s like two weeks or a month shutdown where you’re really coming across, coming up up on the election day itself, that’s going to be a very big deal in the Virginia elections. It’s generally because that’s going to dominate the news, but specifically places like DC, Hampton Roads, a lot of federal workers, there’s going to be a lot of impacts.

05:36.25

Sam Shirazi

And so No doubt it’s going to have an impact on this election the longer it lasts. So I think there’s few scenarios. So one scenario is I would describe it as kind of the pox on both your houses scenario where voters are just fed up with Congress, fed up with what’s what’s going on in D.C.

05:55.49

Sam Shirazi

They blame everyone. And it doesn’t really impact the elections at the end of the day because you know Both the Democratic and Republican Party brands take a hit and voters blame both parties.

06:07.29

Sam Shirazi

And so it’s just kind of this thing going on in D.C. that voters find annoying, but it doesn’t really affect their decision this year in Virginia because, again, it kind of is a wash in terms of who’s to blame.

06:18.87

Sam Shirazi

I think that’s one scenario. The perhaps helps Democrats is is if The Trump administration takes more of the blame because there’s this idea that Trump is just inherently a divisive figure or he’s just not able to effectively run the federal government.

06:34.31

Sam Shirazi

And so it’s just kind of going back to the 2019 idea that the Virginia Republicans have kind of tied their wagon to Trump and Trump is not able to kind of really help Virginia because, you know, obviously the federal government is not functioning if the government’s not open. And so that’s going to hurt the Virginia economy. And so that kind of feeds into some of the themes that the Virginia Democrats have tried to push this year, that the Trump administration is hurting Virginia and hurting the economy.

07:00.63

Sam Shirazi

I think the thing that will really supercharge that or turbocharge that is if um government If the Trump administration figures within the Trump administration decide, okay, well, now this is our chance to do some mass firings because the government shut down, there’s less oversight, we’re just going to go ahead and start firing people.

07:19.33

Sam Shirazi

I mean, i think I think the story will shift from the shutdown to the mass firing, but I think that’s really going to potentially blow up in the face of... the Virginia Republicans, if there is some sort of thing where the Trump administration decides to do some sort of major overhaul or total change of the federal government, because it will just obviously impact a lot of people.

07:38.33

Sam Shirazi

And it will also bring back kind of the memories of Doge in the beginning of the year that have kind of died off. So I think there is that scenario where it could potentially help the Democrats politically this year in Virginia. you know, there’s also the possibility could help help the Republicans politically because, you know, realistically, let’s assume all these kind of layoffs don’t happen. It’s just a regular shutdown fight. I think if the Republicans hold firm in their minds and they don’t negotiate, at some point, the Democrats are going to cave because their constituencies care more about the federal government. So at some point in their mind, the Democrats are going to cave.

08:11.74

Sam Shirazi

And so they’ll just vote for this a bill that the Republicans tried to pass and everything will be fine eventually. But During the shutdown at the end, the Democratic base is going to get a little demoralized because they didn’t get anything out of it. And the Republican base is going to get enthusiastic because they they feel like they won the shutdown fight.

08:31.24

Sam Shirazi

And that’s basically kind of what happened in 2013 and 2019. So at the end of both those shutdown fights, the Republicans didn’t get anything, even though they were the ones kind of pushing the shutdown fight. And so you know I think that probably helped the Democrats a little bit just in the fact that they won the shutdown fight.

08:48.63

Sam Shirazi

And if the Republicans feel like they can do that this time, then at the end of it, they’re going to feel like they’re going to win the shutdown fight. I don’t know. I mean, I think it’s really unpredictable right now. It really depends how things play out. depends how long it is. depends on if there are a major restructuring of the federal government when this is happening.

09:07.36

Sam Shirazi

You know, My sense is that a lot of the things that hurt Trump sometimes are the perception that he’s not in control or there’s a lot of chaos or that Washington’s not working because he’s in charge.

09:20.89

Sam Shirazi

And so I think that is one thing to keep in mind, you know, even if the Democrats eventually decide, OK, we’ll we pass something or they wanted to make a stand here, but they And so at the end of the the day, the Republicans in their mind feel like, okay, we won the shutdown fight. I think there’s still this public perception that Trump is perhaps kind of this chaos agent and maybe some of his supporters like that, but maybe voters in the middle don’t want that. They basically won an orderly federal government.

09:48.34

Sam Shirazi

They want things to work. You know, in terms of the Biden administration, obviously, there were things that didn’t go right during the Biden administration. But one thing that never happened, there was never a government shutdown during the Biden administration. And so I think to the extent that President Biden had certain strengths that maybe weren’t always appreciated, one of them was making these deals in Congress and making kind of last minute compromises with the Republicans to keep things like the government open. And obviously, President Trump has a very different attitude. He’s much more confrontational. He’s unwilling to kind of compromise sometimes. And so I think in the public perception, that could potentially hurt the Republican brand. Now, obviously, his hardcore supporters like that. They like that he is kind of a fighter and he’s unwilling to maybe negotiate with the Democrats sometimes.

10:34.74

Sam Shirazi

But again, voters in the middle typically like compromise. They like politicians working together. They like last minute deals. And so I think in that sense, it could potentially hurt the Virginia Republicans, even at the end of the day, they kind of come out on top, quote unquote.

10:50.43

Sam Shirazi

And again, i think the big unknown is the length of the shutdown. I think ah you know if this ends by next week, probably no one in November will really remember about this anymore because there’s so many other things that are goingnna happen between now and then.

11:04.72

Sam Shirazi

and it’s not really enough time for there to be any sort of major impacts of the shutdown. But the shutdown that happened last time Trump was in office, I think it was like 35 days, which is just like a crazy amount of time if you think about it.

11:16.87

Sam Shirazi

And that’s pretty much the amount of time left until the Virginia elections. And so, I mean, it I don’t think this is going to happen, but it would be pretty crazy if the Virginia elections happened while the government was shut down.

11:28.15

Sam Shirazi

imagine that’s going to really create a lot of chaos. And I do think there’s a possibility that... this will become the dominant issue if it if it doesn’t get resolved. Like this will dominate the closing days of the campaign.

11:39.20

Sam Shirazi

So, you know, in that sense, it might shift the message away from some of the things Republicans want to talk about. Remember, typically the party out of power likes to make this a national election, talk about what’s going on in D.C. The party that is in power in the White House likes to make this a Virginia specific issue, talk about local issues.

11:57.04

Sam Shirazi

And so we’ve seen that this year, the Virginia Republicans don’t really want to talk about what’s going on in D.C. They don’t want to talk about Trump. They want to make it a local issues race. And we saw Winston Merle Sears do that, talking a lot about the trans issue.

12:09.50

Sam Shirazi

Uh, The Democrats with Abigail Spanberger, they want to make this more of a national race, talk about the firings, talk about inflation and the impact of tariffs and those types of things to basically talk about what’s going on in D.C.

12:22.26

Sam Shirazi

And if if the campaign does become dominated by shutdown stuff, then basically the Democrats are going to get it be able to talk about what’s going on in D.C. all day long. And obviously the Republicans are going to try to blame it on the Democrats. But Still, the focus of the campaign is going to be on D.C. and not necessarily on Virginia-specific issues. And typically, that helps the party that is you know not in the White House. We’ll see what happens this year with this election.

12:48.08

Sam Shirazi

And yeah, I mean, i think i think the other thing to keep in mind, I’m also humbled to know that i don’t I don’t know what the impact is going to be. I think there’s a lot of unpredictability in elections. And obviously, it looked like things are going pretty well for the Democrats.

13:00.68

Sam Shirazi

I’ve tried not to make any sort of assumptions. I’ve tried not to say, oh, Democrats are going to win 100%. And there’s nothing that could change the outcome at the end of the day. Like, I don’t know. there Elections are unpredictable. Events are unpredictable.

13:13.09

Sam Shirazi

There’s still a decent amount of time left where things could change. And I don’t want to say that, and it could go but both ways. Like, I mean, this could help the Republicans. So the race narrows or perhaps the Republicans end up winning. It could also help the Democrats to the point where, especially if, you know, things go really differently in Washington where there are mass layoffs. I mean, that’s the kind of environment where the Democrats could get a huge win in Virginia. So we just don’t know. We don’t know right now. There’s a lot of unknowns. I don’t want too speculate too much. I just want to kind of lay out some of the things I’m seeing as the Virginia elections are underway and early voting has been going on and we have over 200,000 early votes already. So those votes can’t be changed, but obviously a vast majority of votes are still going to be cast in the final few weeks. So we’re just going to have to wait and see. I think it’s always interesting what’s going on in the Virginia elections. I hope everyone can stick around with me as we are in the homestretch and it’s really unpredictable, but, you know, I’m going to try my best to cover it all and see, see where things take us in the Virginia elections, but I appreciate everyone for listening. And this has been federal fallout. I’ll join you next time.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

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.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. i am Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This episode will go over everything early voting as early voting has started this Friday in Virginia. And then at the end, we will take a quick look at a new poll that came out from the CNU Wason Center. So...

00:20.13

Sam Shirazi

To begin, I really wanted to talk about early voting because it's here. Voting is happening. People are casting ballots. I think we're going to have really strong amount of turnout for early voting. And it's just really exciting to see the election come to its final phase, which, you know, i think once early voting starts, we're pretty much at the home sprint because people are casting their ballots and it's really just crunch time because there's not a lot of time left to convince people. And then some people, they're already going to make their decision.

00:48.67

Sam Shirazi

so I wanted to kind of lay out what early voting is going to look like and then talk about some issues that I think might happen during the early voting cycle in terms of the data as it comes in. Not going to spend too much time on that, but I did want to just flag that right now.

01:05.40

Sam Shirazi

So big picture, Virginia has a lot of early voting, 45 days. People no longer need an excuse to early vote in Virginia. They can do it either in person at a early voting location, or there's also mail voting in Virginia. So they those are the two basic ways someone can early vote.

01:26.98

Sam Shirazi

Let's go over mail voting first. Typically this is done through the permanent absentee list. So this is a recent addition where someone can sign up and get a mail ballot every election.

01:38.29

Sam Shirazi

And I think in the 2024 election, There were nearly 380,000 people in Virginia on the permanent absentee list. That number has probably grown since then. So we're talking about almost 400,000 people on the permanent absentee list.

01:52.76

Sam Shirazi

That means tomorrow when, you know, they look at their mail, there potentially could be the ballot in the mailbox because those are getting sent out. And so...

02:03.48

Sam Shirazi

A lot of people getting those mail ballots, primarily those are overwhelmingly Democrats on the permanent absentee list. So a lot of Democrats getting their mail ballots. Obviously, they're not going to return them all at once.

02:13.81

Sam Shirazi

It might take a while. Some of them might mail it back at the end. There's also the option of requesting a mail ballot specifically for this election. That happens to a certain extent, but I would say most of the mail applications are going to be through the permanent absentee list.

02:28.68

Sam Shirazi

And there's a few ways to return your mail ballot. You can obviously mail it back the old school way. There are also drop boxes in most places, so you can leave it at your Dropbox. You can also return it to an early voting location.

02:41.00

Sam Shirazi

or you can return it to the polling, normal polling place on election day. So mail ballots, I think that's going to be roughly about a quarter or so of the early vote, maybe a little bit more, but definitely most of the early voting is going to be in person, but it is important that there's going to be some mail ballots and those are going to be overwhelmingly democratic. um and And it's a thing to keep in mind as the results start to come in Virginia on election that The mail ballots are going to be one batch of votes that are going to come in and they're going to be overwhelmingly Democratic.

03:13.41

Sam Shirazi

But as I mentioned, primarily people vote in person. And one of the reasons in-person early voting is more popular than mail voting is that most Republicans feel more comfortable voting in person.

03:25.24

Sam Shirazi

They don't necessarily vote by mail, whereas Democrats, I think they're more comfortable voting in person or by mail. ah And You know, the in-person early voting, it's going to really pick up at the end, I would say. i think there's going to be this initial batch of people really excited to vote, the really diehard political people who are going to vote at the beginning.

03:44.32

Sam Shirazi

Then, as I usually mentioned, there's a lull in the middle of the early voting period. Partly that's just because there aren't as many early voting locations open right now. Typically, there are satellite locations opening at the end of early voting in most counties and cities.

03:59.54

Sam Shirazi

And then the last two Saturdays before the election, there will be early voting required. And so you're going to see more early voting towards the end as there's more locations, there's more hours, and that people kind of wake up from and realize there's an election.

04:14.12

Sam Shirazi

You know, right now, the early voting is primarily taking place at the election office in each county or city. So that is where there's an office and people can go in and vote. Every single locality in Virginia is required to do that, least at that one location. Now, some of the bigger counties will have more satellite voting locations.

04:35.12

Sam Shirazi

Obviously, somewhere like Fairfax County already has their satellite voting locations open because there's just so many people in Fairfax County. Not all of their satellite locations are open, but ah there are a few that are open right now.

04:47.77

Sam Shirazi

And actually, Fairfax County has Saturday early voting as well for the first Saturday of early voting. So today in Fairfax County, Virginia, there is early voting going on. I think that's pretty much the only place there is Saturday voting today.

05:02.39

Sam Shirazi

will see that each county and city does it a little bit differently. Virginia state law mandates that people early vote, sorry, that localities have early voting for at least the last two Saturdays before the election.

05:15.16

Sam Shirazi

Some places have more more voting on the weekends. Some places even have Sunday voting to a limited limited extent on certain dates. And so you're just going to want to check with your local county or city to make sure you know your early voting location and you know the hours of early voting.

05:31.94

Sam Shirazi

And yeah, I mean, that's basically how people are going to early vote in Virginia. Obviously, 45 days is a long time. I think we're going to see a lot of early voting this time. I wouldn't be surprised if we're getting maybe record early voting in Virginia.

05:48.15

Sam Shirazi

I still think the majority of votes are going to be cast on Election Day in Virginia. In 2021, we had almost 1.2 million early votes.

05:57.97

Sam Shirazi

I think we could get up to that number again. I'll be curious to see if we break that record. There's a lot of factors you have to look into about, you know, 2021, maybe people were were voting more by mail. So that's one thing to keep in mind. But Republicans have been pushing in-person early voting.

06:14.97

Sam Shirazi

Glenn Youngkin was really one of the first Virginia Republicans to see the why early voting made a lot of sense. And he really pushed that. And I think the Virginia Republicans have kind of kept going with that. And last year, the Trump campaign kind of realized they also needed to do early voting. So they also pushed in-person early voting.

06:33.60

Sam Shirazi

And so I think this year we're going to see more Republicans early vote. Traditionally, Democrats have had an advantage in early voting. I think because of the mail voting, Democrats are still going to have the advantage this year in Virginia. But I'm curious to see if the in-person early voting is more even in terms of what happens because the Republicans are pushing early voting in person.

06:55.52

Sam Shirazi

So, you know why is early voting important? Why should you care about it? I think there's a few different reasons. So if you're a campaign and you're thinking, okay I need to get out as many of my voters as possible.

07:08.08

Sam Shirazi

And there are basically two batches of voters. There's high propensity voters and there's low propensity voters. So high propensity voters are typically older, they're typically wealthier, and they will vote no matter what.

07:20.21

Sam Shirazi

And so those types of voters, you would want them to vote early. Why? Because one, you get them out of the universe of voters The campaigns can know which voters have voted and which ones haven't.

07:33.56

Sam Shirazi

And so if you can make sure your hardcore supporters are voting early, they're off the list. You don't have to worry about them. You don't have to send them mail. You can just, they're done. Their votes are banked. You know, if something happens, they can't make it to the polling booth on election day. It doesn't matter because they already voted.

07:50.06

Sam Shirazi

So you want to make sure your hardcore partisan high propensity voters vote early. the The second batch of low propensity voters, I think you do want them to vote early as well, because the more you can kind of get them off the couch, the more you can get them to go early vote, the better.

08:07.29

Sam Shirazi

I do think the reality is a lot of those types of voters vote on election day, so you may not be able to get them to go for early vote. However, If all your high propensity voters go vote early, that's a universe of voters you don't have to worry about on election day when you're knocking on doors.

08:23.69

Sam Shirazi

Plus the lines are gonna be shorter on election day because a bunch of people early voted. So if you think about your typical low propensity voter, I'm kind of stereotyping, but it's kind of like this 18 year old who doesn't really care about elections that much, but heard there's an election on you know this year and wakes up on election morning and is like, huh, i should probably go early vote.

08:44.24

Sam Shirazi

or i should actually go vote in person this year on election day. And so they they wake up and then they they go to their local polling place. If there's an hour line because everyone waited till election day to go vote, good chance that person may not end up casting their ballot.

08:59.59

Sam Shirazi

But if there's only a 10 minute line because a bunch of people early voted, i think there's much more likelihood that low propensity voter is going to vote on election day. So I think election, that's kind of two ways that early voting can boost turnout. One, kind of takes care of a universe of voters. And so you can focus on getting your low propensity voters out. And two, it keeps the line shorter on election day.

09:21.45

Sam Shirazi

So I think, frankly, both sides understand the importance of early voting. I think one of the flaws in the Trump campaign in 2020 was they really kind of downplayed early voting.

09:32.60

Sam Shirazi

And that didn't really make a whole lot of sense. I think Glenn Youngkin understood the importance of early voting in 2021. And then in 2024, the Trump campaign also started emphasizing early voting.

09:43.08

Sam Shirazi

And so I think this year, both sides are going to be emphasizing early voting. I do think the Republicans are going to have more of an in-person early voting boost than in previous years. So that's something to keep in mind.

09:54.62

Sam Shirazi

Again, remember, the Democrats will have the advantage with mail voting. All right. So now this is the kind of part of the podcast. i you know Not that I'm dreading it, but I think One of the disadvantages of early voting is people start to really over interpret the de results because, you know, it's data coming in, it's votes that have been banked. So, you know why not try to see what you can read through the tea leaves?

10:19.74

Sam Shirazi

And I, in 2021, started doing this, and I thought it was really interesting to see, and I could tell that there was going to be a lot of turnout in 2021 because there were so many people voting on both sides, frankly, in 2021 during early voting that just kind of knew this was going to be a super high turnout election.

10:36.71

Sam Shirazi

So I think early voting can kind of give you a glimpse of what the turnout is going to be like. So I think it's really good to kind of gauge turnout. I think when things start going off the rails a little bit or is when people start thinking, oh, well, early voting is going to show this person's going to win.

10:53.19

Sam Shirazi

i think 2024 was a little bit of a mixed bag because people were doing that kind of analysis. And some people said it was better for the Democrats. Some said it was better for the Republicans. I think overall, um there were probably some tea leaves that in hindsight could have been read from 2024 early vote data.

11:09.74

Sam Shirazi

At the same time, I think there's kind of over extrapolation of early vote in the sense of there's a lot of different things you have to think about. You have to think about Republicans are pushing early voting more. You have to think about what are independents going to do.

11:23.75

Sam Shirazi

You have to think about who is actually going to show up on election day that you're not modeling for, for example. the college kid who gets off the couch and goes votes. Virginia has same day registration. So even if you're not registered to vote, like a random person who's not in the universe of registered voters can just show up on election day.

11:42.62

Sam Shirazi

So all that has to be taken into account. You don't know who's going to show up on election day. You don't know who's who the people early voting are voting for. You can kind of try to extrapolate that from the location they're voting for. Obviously, if they're voting in a red county, more likely they're voting for the Republicans.

11:58.91

Sam Shirazi

Obviously, if they're voting in a blue county, more likely they're voting for the Democrats. You can... You can kind of try to look at their voting history and try and primary voting history because at that micro level, you can see who's actually early voted.

12:13.29

Sam Shirazi

So I'm not saying it's impossible to figure out any information from early voting data. I like looking at early voting data. I like trying to figure out I'm going to report it. i It's exciting to see people voting. I think it's great to see democracy in action.

12:27.53

Sam Shirazi

i am just not going to go out and say really bold things based on early voting data. I'm not going to say the Democrats are 100% guaranteed to win or the Republicans are 100% guaranteed to win just purely on early voting data. I just don't think you can do that. I don't think...

12:42.65

Sam Shirazi

It's really responsible to say things like that. I also think on the other end of the spectrum, you do hear things like, oh, early voting data is irrelevant. I don't know why anyone even would take a look at early voting data.

12:54.10

Sam Shirazi

I do think there's things you can learn from it. Again, more on the turnout side. You know, if you tell me some early voting data, I can give you a rough estimate of what the turnout is going to be. So,

13:04.95

Sam Shirazi

I don't want to say that there's no use of looking at turning at early vote data, but i just I get nervous because I think people draw huge conclusions from the early voting data. And even in Virginia in 2024, the Democrats won the early voting.

13:19.04

Sam Shirazi

and When the results came in, they won early voting. And so I think it even though President Trump did better than expected it in Virginia in 2024, I still don't think the early voting data really told you that. I mean, in hindsight, you can say, oh, look, like this in the early voting data showed that. But I still think You know, the Democrats won the early vote in 2024.

13:41.93

Sam Shirazi

And so, again, I'm going to be cautious. I'll try to give you some updates on early voting, but I'm not going to go crazy in the early voting analysis. Just be wary when you see things online one way or another.

13:56.55

Sam Shirazi

I think the more over the top or the more definitive the statement about Virginia early voting, the more leery of it I would be. I mean, if you hear something like, oh there's a lot of turnout in Virginia early voting, like that's not a that's probably true.

14:10.66

Sam Shirazi

If you hear something like, you know, the Democrats are going to get a 22 point win because of early voting. I mean, that's probably not true. And so you don't want or the Republicans are going to get a 15 point win because of early voting. i mean, that's almost certainly not true. So you just don't want to make those big jumps on limited data of just early voting.

14:29.16

Sam Shirazi

All right. Well, I don't want to belabor the point. I hope everyone goes in early votes if they want to do that. I hope everyone you know is excited that early voting has started. I appreciate that everyone gets to make their choice. And in this podcast, I'm not going to tell you who to vote for. But if you're in Virginia, I do encourage everyone to go vote, whether that's early, whether that's on Election Day.

14:50.76

Sam Shirazi

you know That's totally up to you. i guess the last thing I wanted to say about early voting before we turn to this new poll was The fact that election day is still important.

15:00.56

Sam Shirazi

I think a lot of times people are so hyper-focused on early voting, they don't remember. In Virginia, the majority of people vote on election day. I still think the majority people are going to vote on election day.

15:11.46

Sam Shirazi

Why do people vote on election day? I think part of it is their local polling place might literally be a five-minute walk from their house, whereas the early voting location, some of these localities are very big places.

15:23.14

Sam Shirazi

localcities maybe the early voting location that you have is like 10 miles away. And while yes, there are more satellite low voting locations now, some counties, some very big counties, both geographically and population wise only have one but early voting location.

15:39.74

Sam Shirazi

And so for some people, it's not convenient. Some people don't like to vote by mail either because they don't trust it or they think their ballot is going to get lost in the mail. So plenty of people still vote on election day.

15:52.05

Sam Shirazi

And I think typically election day is this wild card because you get the most low propensity voters showing up on election day. There's a group of voters who wake up on election day and just realize there's an election and go show up and vote. And as I mentioned, Virginia has same day registration. So you're going to even have an extra group of voters who even registered to vote.

16:10.93

Sam Shirazi

who are eligible potentially to vote on election day. And I guess just to break down same day registration, someone who goes to go same day register, you have to be obviously a qualified voter, you have to be 18 or over, you have to be a US citizen, you can't be disqualified otherwise.

16:31.55

Sam Shirazi

You fill out a voter registration form, you vote, your ballot will be cast provisionally. After the polls close, they will review your voter registration. They'll review your ballot if you are legally allowed to be a voter.

16:45.76

Sam Shirazi

you will be ah your vote will be counted in the election results. So that's the same day registration process. um That really only happens once the voter registration deadline ends.

16:56.79

Sam Shirazi

And so if you're not registered to vote and you go show up to early vote right now, you will have to register to vote first, and then you can come back another day to to ah early vote.

17:07.76

Sam Shirazi

But once the voter registration deadline passes at the very end of early voting, people can go at the end of early voting and same day register. So getting into a lot of the weeds of Virginia election stuff, probably more than we need to cover in this podcast. But as you can tell, I'm a big fan of early voting. I appreciate everyone who also likes early voting. So thanks, everyone, for that part of the podcast.

17:31.65

Sam Shirazi

Before I go, I did want to talk about one other interesting nugget because as you know, I like early voting and I also like polls. So we got a new poll and this was from the Christopher Newport University Wason Center.

17:47.06

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, there were certain pollsters that I pay attention to maybe a little bit more than others others. And that's partly because I think they've had a good track record. or I just think they have a good methodology. And CNU Wason, while they're not like this famous national pollster, I think in Virginia has a pretty good reputation.

18:05.33

Sam Shirazi

know, it's not to say that their polls are 100% right all the time, but they're generally in the ballpark. And so, for example, 2024, their final...

18:17.29

Sam Shirazi

Virginia poll had Harris at 52%. And so they got the Harris number pretty much exactly correct. They undercounted Trump a little bit in, and I think at the end, there were some undecideds that went to Trump and probably some low propensity voters who ended up showing up for Trump. So they underestimated Trump a little bit, but they got the Harris number right in 2024. And so I will go over 2025,

18:41.09

Sam Shirazi

twenty twenty five poll This is the first poll that they've released basically in the second half of the year where the campaign was really in high gear. And I'd be curious to see if they release one more, but I'll go over the the poll that they released on Thursday.

18:56.07

Sam Shirazi

So here is the CNU Waste and Center poll. For governor, it had Democratic nominee Abigail Spanberger at 52%. For Lieutenant Governor Winston Earle-Sears, the Republican nominee for governor, she's at 40%.

19:11.80

Sam Shirazi

For lieutenant governor, it had Democratic nominee Ghazal Hashmi at 48%, and it had Republican nominee John Reid 37%.

19:21.58

Sam Shirazi

Attorney General Democratic nominee Jay Jones was at 48 percent and the Republican nominee incumbent Jason Meares was at 41 percent. So that's kind of the top line statewide numbers. I did want to go over a few other numbers that were in this poll that I thought were pretty interesting.

19:37.38

Sam Shirazi

For House of Delegates, the generic ballot was 51 percent Democratic, 43 percent Republican. For the Trump approval, 58% disapprove, 39% approve disapprove in virginia And I wanted to make one last point, and that was about the top issues for voters in this Virginia poll.

20:03.18

Sam Shirazi

So 21% of voters had inflation as their top issue, and that was the number one issue. And that includes 25% of independents as their top issue was inflation.

20:14.95

Sam Shirazi

I'll run down quickly the other top issues. Threats to democracy were 18%, education was 9%, immigration was 9%, crime was 9%, and taxes was 7%.

20:23.60

Sam Shirazi

tSo lot of stuff in this poll, a lot of good data. I thought it was interesting that it was basically the same as the SoCal poll that came out a few weeks ago, which is almost the same number.

20:35.41

Sam Shirazi

So Spanberger's at 52%. Obviously, if you're running a campaign you are above 50%, that's good news because that means it doesn't really matter what happens with the undecideds.

20:46.13

Sam Shirazi

You've pretty much hit the number you need. 52% is also the same number that Kamala Harris got in 2024 in Virginia. So it it seems like basically almost all the Harris voters in 2024 are going to be voting for Spanberger in 2025. Now, obviously, it's a little bit more complicated than that, but that's kind of like the simplified version of it.

21:03.51

Sam Shirazi

I do think Winston Earle Sears has room to grow. don't think 40% is probably her final number. I do think she's going to get higher than 40%. The question becomes how much higher? Does she get to 43%? Does she get to 45%? And then the real tough question and then the real tough question that Winston-Marie Sears has is how does she get to 50.1% to win? i think I think the numbers are looking pretty tough for her in this poll.

21:28.19

Sam Shirazi

And that is also reflected by the fact that the generic ballot for the House of Delegates has the Democrats at 51%. So, I mean, that basically means that 51% of people are not willing to vote for the Republicans this year in a generic sense. And and obviously that's a tough number.

21:43.67

Sam Shirazi

I think down ballot was also interesting for the other races. It's similar to what we've seen before. ah Hashmi and Jones are running a little bit behind Spanberger. Partly that's because their name ID isn't as high.

21:56.17

Sam Shirazi

Again, i don't think there's going to be that much ticket splitting. I think people are just going to vote straight ticket. And so you know Jason Miyares is doing a little bit better than Reed, probably just because his name ID is higher than Reed because he's the incumbent.

22:11.11

Sam Shirazi

But both Hashmi and Jones are at 48%. So, I mean, yes, they're not at 50%, but it's hard to imagine that they are not going to get what they need to do if these results end up correct.

22:23.74

Sam Shirazi

Obviously, Trump approval is hard for the Republicans. 58% disapprove. know That's a tough number to try to overcome for any party that's running a Virginia governor's election if the incumbent president is at 58% disapproved in the state.

22:38.79

Sam Shirazi

In terms of the issues, I mean, i think it's not a huge surprise that inflation is the top concern for most people, at least a good chunk of people, especially independence. Inflation is the top concern.

22:51.22

Sam Shirazi

And you know I had talked about this when I was discussing what was going on with Williamson Earle Sears and the trans issue. I mean, i get that their polling, of the way they were framing the issue, their polling was probably looking pretty good for them. And so they just kind of went all in on this issue.

23:07.61

Sam Shirazi

I think the problem they have is the salience of the issue is not what they think it is. And yes, maybe some people agree with how Winsome Earle-Sears is framing this issue, but those people are probably going to be hardcore serious supporters regardless of you know this issue or not.

23:24.32

Sam Shirazi

I think the question becomes, does this win people in the middle? And the thing with Spanberger, I would say she's shifted her message a little bit more to cost of living and inflation in past months. Partly that's because the the stuff coming out of DC and the federal fallout has maybe lessened.

23:42.28

Sam Shirazi

Obviously, Doge has kind of gone away, it doesn't mean that some of the things they were trying to do hasn't stopped, but definitely Doge less of a big deal than it was at the beginning of the year.

23:54.07

Sam Shirazi

And I think Spanberger is maybe trying to shift away from exclusively running on the federal cuts to maybe more of a broader economic argument. Not just talking about how the federal cuts are hurting Virginia, but also how the cost of living issues are hitting people hard and talking about the tariffs, which are a little bit different, although kind of related to what's going on in the sense of it's all coming out of D.C.

24:17.11

Sam Shirazi

So long story short, I mean, Spanberger’s running a campaign on... more of the cost of living and economic issues, it might not necessarily be as flashy as some of the things Winston Merle Sears is doing with the trans issue. But at the same time, i mean, there's really not a whole lot of indication that that is the top issue for people in terms of what they're thinking about every day.

24:40.37

Sam Shirazi

and I think the results kind of show that where Winston Earle-Sears, yes, she's getting her base. She's getting up to 40%. That's not super hard for a Virginia Republican to do. The question is, like what is she doing to win the people in the middle?

24:53.46

Sam Shirazi

And I think that's where the Republicans have struggled this year. Maybe their base consolidation problem is kind of going away, but that’s not the only problem they have. And so I think they have to figure out a way to reach the people in the middle. And there's not a a whole lot of time left because early voting is starting.

25:11.25

Sam Shirazi

Now, as I said at the beginning, early voting, the people at the beginning tend to be the most hyper-partisan people. So I don't think a lot of swing voters are going to be voting in the next few days, but some probably are. Some probably are on the permanent absentee list and they're going to get their absentee ballot in the mail and they're going to fill it out and send it back in.

25:27.25

Sam Shirazi

So there are going to be fewer and fewer swing voters in the middle as the election goes on, because some of them are just going to early vote. And so I think time's running out for the Republicans. They've...

25:40.27

Sam Shirazi

you know had The fundraising numbers are not necessarily where they want it to be in terms of comparing that to the Democrats. These polling numbers are not where they want to be. And I think at some point people are going to think maybe this election is not going to be super competitive after all. And there's been more attention, I would say, being paid to New Jersey because that looks like it could be closer this year.

26:02.65

Sam Shirazi

And we'll see. We'll see if that's where the Republican donors choose to spend more of their money as the campaign comes to a close. I do think Virginia will get a little bit more attention in the next few days as early voting gets going. And obviously, New Jersey has not started their early voting yet. So it's super exciting to actually get these ballots being cast.

26:24.40

Sam Shirazi

you know I always like the first day of early voting, and I like the idea that people are going out there making their voices heard. And choosing the candidate that they want to be their governor, their lieutenant governor, their attorney general, their member of the House of Delegates, and then obviously the local offices. So anyways, I appreciate everyone who's been on this ride with me of the Federal Fallout podcast.

26:47.56

Sam Shirazi

I hope it's been informative. I hope that you can learn. And I'm trying to inform people as best I can. The next 44 days are going to be pretty crazy as the election comes to a close.

27:00.16

Sam Shirazi

I did want to leave with one ask. If you enjoy the podcast and you think there are people who would be interested in Virginia elections, feel free to share this podcast with people, send them the link.

27:11.84

Sam Shirazi

And then whatever podcasting format you use, if you want to leave a review of the podcast, that would also help because people get to see that you enjoy the podcast.

27:22.77

Sam Shirazi

And I appreciate it. I think, I think it's been been trying to do. to In some weeks, it wasn't there wasn't a whole lot going on. I was trying to do my best to to keep people informed. But now we're going to be in the homestretch. A lot of stuff going on. There'll be a lot more updates. i'm going to try to do more podcasts as information comes in, polls come in early voting data comes in.

27:43.95

Sam Shirazi

So lots going on in Virginia. appreciate everyone who's on the ride with me. i will continue doing it as best I can until election day. And so I appreciate everyone listening. And this has been Federal Fallout and I'll join you next time.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi everyone, I'm Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode we will go over the latest campaign to finance numbers and see what they might tell us about the Virginia elections.

So on Monday it was the deadline for the campaigns running this year to file their campaign finance reports and it covered the months of July and August.

00:25.33

Sam Shirazi

So big picture, I think overall it was a pretty good report for the Democrats. I'll go over the statewide offices, then I'll talk a little bit about the House of Delegates, and then I'll talk about what it might mean for the Virginia elections.

00:37.67

Sam Shirazi

At the top of the ticket, the Democratic nominee Abigail Spanberger raised more money than the Republican nominee Winston Earl Sears. So just kind of break down the numbers, Spanberger raised over $14 million dollars. And she has about $11.5 million of that in cash and about $2.5 million in in-kind contributions. I don't always break down the difference between cash and in-kind contributions.

01:06.89

Sam Shirazi

Because Spanberger got a decent amount of in-kind contributions, I just wanted to break it down here. But usually I'm, I don't go into that level of detail, but just wanted to note that, uh, once in Earl Sears, she raised, uh, 5.2 million and most of that was in cash with a little bit of in kind.

01:24.79

Sam Shirazi

Obviously Spanberger has raised almost three times as much as Earl Sears during this time period. In terms of cash on hand, Spanberger had 12.2 million, whereas Earl Sears had about 4.9 million.

01:38.29

Sam Shirazi

And one thing I wanted to talk about, because I think i tend to fall in this trap where I just look at the amount raised and the cash on hand, and that's kind of the numbers that most people look at. But I also like to look at the amount spent because...

01:52.38

Sam Shirazi

At the end of the day, you know the money the reason you're raising all this money is not so you can file a fundraising report and say, look how much money I raised. It's so that you can actually spend the money to try to win the election.

02:04.75

Sam Shirazi

And I thought what was interesting was Spanberger, she spent in those two months seventeen over $17 million. dollars And that's compared to $4.8 million for Earl Sears.

02:15.70

Sam Shirazi

And even though Spanberger spent $17 million, she still had... she still had all that cash on hand. So she still had over $12 million dollars cash on hand.

02:26.27

Sam Shirazi

And so when you look at the fundraising numbers, it's not just the fact that Spanberger is raising a lot more than Earl Sears. She's just spending a lot more than Earl Sears. So that means that she's got more ads out there. She's reaching more voters.

02:40.02

Sam Shirazi

So I think the fundraising numbers are a little bit of a reality check for the Republicans. There have been some polls that have also been a bit of a reality check for the Republicans.

02:50.18

Sam Shirazi

I think, you know, it's just a difficult ah ah reality that they're facing where they're in a tough environment and they aren't necessarily having the cash advantage, at least at the governor's level, to really, you know, compete on the airwaves. Now, we've talked about how during the Winsomey Earl Sears reboot strategy, she has tried to do more social media engagement, try to get some more free media, local and national media.

03:16.41

Sam Shirazi

you know, I think that that's worked to a certain extent. I think the problem Earl Sears has with that approach is a lot of it's preaching to the choir. So she'll she'll post a lot on X and she'll get, you know, a decent amount of engagement.

03:29.62

Sam Shirazi

it's unclear how many like swing voters that that's reaching because frankly, most people and aren't on X and it's just not like, you know, the most important thing in the world, even though, you know, we sometimes think like that if if all you do is spend all day on X. So it's unclear like how many voters in the middle she's able to reach. And even, even with the free media she's getting often, she's going on very sympathetic media,

03:54.87

Sam Shirazi

So while, yes, going on Fox News every night probably doesn't hurt and you can get some donations out of that and you may reach some voters in Virginia. I mean, realistically, if you're watching Fox News, almost certainly you're already going to be voting for the Republicans if you are in Virginia. I mean, not 100 percent, but a good amount of the Fox News viewers are probably going already vote for the Republicans.

04:15.08

Sam Shirazi

So I think. the The reboot strategy makes sense to try to get free social media and free traditional media coverage if you're Earl Sears because you don't necessarily have the money. I think the flaw in the strategy is she's not engaging enough with non-conservative media and non-conservative social media potentially to maybe...

04:34.04

Sam Shirazi

make it worth the while or maybe be able to catch up to some of the inherent fundraising advantage that Spamburger has. And if you think about where Spamburger is running all these ads, she's running them on streaming, she's running them on social media, she's running them on traditional TV.

04:47.98

Sam Shirazi

And so those people typically are not tuned in streaming. politics And so you are not necessarily the type person that's watching the news. If you're watching a football game on Sunday and then you see a Spanberger ad, I mean, you're probably not a diehard politico. And so you're reaching people that maybe – through this free media strategy that Earl Sears is trying to do doesn't reach. So, you know, Earl Sears posting on X or Earl Sears going on Fox News. I mean, those people are already probably very highly engaged voters who are going to vote no matter what.

05:20.73

Sam Shirazi

I think the problem Earl Sears has is the people who she needs to reach who are watching football on a Sunday afternoon. I mean, I'm not sure what her strategy is to try to reach those people because she doesn't necessarily have the cash to do that.

05:33.67

Sam Shirazi

All right. Now I'll also talk about some of the other statewide offices. Lieutenant governor does not as interesting as the numbers aren't as big, but a democratic nominee is all hash. We definitely has the advantage. She raised about 1.4 million.

05:47.14

Sam Shirazi

She spent about 480,000 and she has 2.2 million cash on hand. So obviously she's got a good chunk of change to work with in the closing months of the campaign.

05:59.28

Sam Shirazi

John Reed is far behind. He's only raised $317,000. He's spent about $220,000. think his problem is he only has about $317,000 cash on hand. So I think John Reed is just like not necessarily raising the money that he needs to run at the level of some of these other campaigns.

06:22.93

Sam Shirazi

Again, I think the one thing on John Reed is good at is he's good on social media. He's good at getting free media to maybe... fill in some of the gaps he has in the fundraising. But just like Winston Merle Sears, he has a similar problem where he tends to preach to the a choir. He tends to go to places that are already conservative media.

06:40.37

Sam Shirazi

And so are you really flipping any voters if you just go on conservative talk radio all the time? Probably not. And so I think that's another problem that John Reed's going to have is he just doesn't have the fundraising numbers to really run his own ads or anything like that.

06:55.57

Sam Shirazi

All right, rounding rounding out the statewide offices, we'll go to Attorney General. I ah this is the race where the Republicans have a little bit of an advantage. But I should note that the Democratic nominee, Jay Jones, did out-raise Jason Meares this last reporting cycle. So Jay Jones, he raised $4 million, dollars and he spent about $1.5 million, and he has $3.7 million cash on hand.

07:19.04

Sam Shirazi

Jason Meares, the incumbent Republican, he raised $3.7 million. He has, he spent around about 3.6 million and he has 7 million cash on hand. So overall, you know, Meares still has an advantage in the money race, but Jay Jones was able to out-raise him. And obviously Jason Meares is an incumbent. So anytime a challenger raises an incumbent,

07:40.08

Sam Shirazi

Out raises an incumbent. I think that shows, you know, the incumbent is facing a real race. And, you know, obviously, Meares is running his ads. I think Jones is also running ads.

07:51.84

Sam Shirazi

So attorney general, both sides spending, raising money. The Republicans have a little bit of advantage in the attorney general race. But I'd say the problem Jason Meares has is that the top of the ticket is just not keeping up.

08:03.14

Sam Shirazi

in terms of his top of the ticket versus Jones' top of the ticket. And while obviously money helps, Meares can run the ads. It kind of reaches those swing voters who aren't super tuned into politics.

08:15.57

Sam Shirazi

The challenge that Meares has is just, you know, if if Earl Sears is not able to keep up at the top of the ticket, then, you know, it's going to make his race that much harder. So overall, I mean, i don't want to say that the money shows that the Democrats are definitely going to win and the Republicans are in a huge amount of trouble.

08:33.84

Sam Shirazi

Typically the way that election analysts look at elections, you look at different metrics, you look at polling, you look at... the enthusiasm of the different sides, you look at potentially fundraising. And so that's one of the metrics among many that you're looking at when you're trying to see which side has an advantage.

08:51.06

Sam Shirazi

In 2021, you know, I will say Glenn Youngkin put a lot of his own money in. He was able to fundraise pretty strongly. And so I think in 2021, the Virginia Republicans didn't have really a money issue that they do in this cycle. So while The Republicans tend to say, oh we're always you know trying to compete with the Democratic money, and we're always behind. i mean, I think in 2021, they weren't behind. And I think generally they spent more, at least on the governor's race in 2021.

09:20.55

Sam Shirazi

And that was one of Youngkin's keys to success. So if you think about what's different between 2021 and 2025 for the Virginia Republicans, one of them is just the fact that they don't have the same amount of money to run the ads to the Democrats. So again, doesn't mean that Democrats are 100% guaranteed victory because they're raising more money.

09:39.43

Sam Shirazi

But I think it it is one thing among many other factors have to consider this year in terms of you know which side has has the advantage. All right. Now let's talk about the House of Delegates. So overall, Democrats raised almost twice as much as the Republicans in all the House races. So in the House Delegates, Democrats raised close to $8.9 million, whereas Republicans raised about $4.4 million.

10:01.100

Sam Shirazi

whereas republicans raised about four point four million That's total overall in all the races. And I think that's generally reflected in the battleground districts that Democrats are targeting.

10:13.26

Sam Shirazi

And basically, the Democrats out-raised all the Republicans in all the battleground districts, with the exception of one where the Republican was able to raise more than the Democratic challenger. That's House District 75. So the Republican in that district was able to out-raise the Democrat. But every other district...

10:30.92

Sam Shirazi

The Democrat outraised the Republican. And in several districts, the Democrat both outraised the Republican and has more cash on hand than the Republican. So again, and and these are typically almost all Republican incumbents that are trying to survive in a tough environment.

10:46.17

Sam Shirazi

And the Democrats are outraising them. And in some cases, the Democrats have more cash on hand in those races. So that What we're seeing at the top of the ticket is also reflected in the House of Delegates where these local candidates have more money on the Democratic side.

11:02.10

Sam Shirazi

And I think you they're obviously so going to spend that on trying to get their name out and particularly on TV ads. And I think what these local HACA delegates candidates will want to do is really minimize the ticket splitting.

11:16.84

Sam Shirazi

Because the way it works is typically the top of the ticket is going to perform best for the Democrats. I'm guessing Spanberger is going to have the best performance of the Democrats this year in Virginia.

11:29.73

Sam Shirazi

So you might see her winning certain battleground districts by five or four points. And I think that's the margin where down ballot, you want to minimize ticket splitting. Because if there's a Spanberger five point win in your district and you're able to minimize ticket splitting to maybe 2%, you're going to win that race.

11:49.37

Sam Shirazi

And so you need the money to get your name out there to counter the incumbent Republican to maybe minimize ticket splitting. The reverse of that, if you're a Republican, you would like as much ticket splitting as possible.

12:01.24

Sam Shirazi

I mean, ideally you'd like your candidate to win your district, but if your candidate doesn't win at the top of the ticket, win the district, you have to get some ticket splitting. And so obviously if you have money that can help you get some ticket splitting.

12:13.36

Sam Shirazi

I'm guessing in the House of Delegates that like 5% is the magic number that a candidate will need in order to, where ticket splitting doesn't really matter. I think if it's more than 5%, almost certainly the party that wins that district at the governor's level is gonna win at the House of Delegates level.

12:30.41

Sam Shirazi

And really in the trenches between, you know, one to 5%, that's when it's really gonna be dicey and the ticket splitting could make the difference So we'll just have to wait and see. Again, Democrats have an advantage at the House of Delegates level.

12:45.75

Sam Shirazi

I think the problem the Republicans have is time is running out. And so Friday, obviously, is the start of early voting. I will do a podcast probably coming out Saturday morning where I will analyze all the early voting and just give you the background about what early voting will look like.

13:02.37

Sam Shirazi

But that's happening on Friday. And so people are going to go in there and vote. i mean, most of the people who vote early tend to be very highly engaged voters. So I think the Republicans are holding their fire. they're going to say, we don't want to waste our money right now when most people aren't paying attention. We don't have as much money as the Democrats. We need to hold. We need to hold.

13:22.01

Sam Shirazi

And then at the end, When everyone starts tuning in that's when we can kind of dump our money and hopefully be able to make a difference. I think that the challenge with that is there's more early voting now traditionally than there has been in Virginia history.

13:36.54

Sam Shirazi

So, So the strategy of holding your fire till the end is certainly risky. And there is a risk that you are going to get defined because the other candidate is spending all this money. And so by the time your ads come up, it's not really going to be enough.

13:50.43

Sam Shirazi

And frankly, when your ads go up, it's not like the Democrats are going to pull all their ads. So at that point, it's just going to be ad saturation and people just tune it out. So like even if you have some ads running at the end, I mean, most people are going to be so tuned out of it or the Democratic ads are going to kind of cancel out your ads.

14:06.84

Sam Shirazi

That at the end of the day, it just doesn't really matter how much you're spending at the end if you haven't been able to kind of keep up during the entire spending period.

14:16.77

Sam Shirazi

All right. Well, I think that is a lot on campaign finance. So we will a pause and... focus on early voting for the next podcast. So I appreciate everyone who's been listening along.

14:30.58

Sam Shirazi

think early voting, it's almost here. It's really exciting. I'm excited to see actual votes being cast. And then obviously we're off to the races in terms of what's going to happen in a November. So thanks everyone for listening. This has been Federal Fallout and I'll join you next time.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. I'm Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This episode, I will be interviewing Stacey Carroll. She is the Democratic nominee in the 64th House of Delegates District, and that is in Stafford County.

00:16.44

Sam Shirazi

She is running against incumbent Republican Paul Milde, and I'm happy to have him on at another time. But today we have Stacey. So thank you for joining me.

00:26.14

Stacey

Absolutely. Sam, thanks for having me. Great to come here and talk to your listeners about what's going on here in District 64. Sam,

00:34.56

Sam Shirazi

Great. Well, I really appreciate it. So I usually ask this question from people running for office. Why did you want to run?

00:42.59

Stacey

saying where do you want me start? Just long story short is I got tired of cussing at the TV, just being very candid. um think on so many levels, I started to feel and look as if government was not working for us.

00:56.69

Stacey

And I say us for me as um as a particular person and wanted to be a part of the solution. I love this country. I have five mobilizations. have served this country in so many other capacities, but just literally wanted to roll up my sleeves and do something in a different capacity that continues my service and ensures that from a legislative perspective, we are truly supporting the people.

01:20.90

Sam Shirazi

that That makes sense. And I wanted to ask you in terms of your district, um are some of the issues people are are talking to you about?

01:28.92

Stacey

So when I'm on the doors, people are talking to me about, ah surprisingly enough, how government is just not working for them, whether that be just the price of ah groceries or various household items are just sit consistently going up.

01:43.88

Stacey

Or whether the conversation is have a large propensity of federal workers and contractors that are here in the district that are affected by what's going on right now in Washington, D.C., or how transportation to get to and from work, it's just exhausting to be able to live. And when it comes to health care, the wait times, right?

02:06.20

Stacey

or whether people absolutely mentioned the name of the current president on how various things that are currently being implemented, they totally disagree with because we have a large portion of veterans here in the district as well. So out of all of those, what I consider to be notes, I sum it up into one is that government is just not working for the people is one of the sentiments that I hear under the doors.

02:30.46

Sam Shirazi

Right. And so in terms of the district for people's reference, it's in northern Virginia and Stafford County. Obviously, there's been a lot of changes to the federal government since the change of administration. um What have been some of the impacts to the federal cuts in your district?

02:47.65

Stacey

So more than 40% of our residents are commuters and they commute more than average of 40 minutes to and from Northern Virginia into the DMV area. So we know simply because of our close proximity to DC, well as the wages, people come down to Stafford and I say down, down 95 to Stafford for more affordability when it comes to housing and just an all aroundund environment that's different. And I say that because when I first PCS tier nearly 10 years ago, I chose Stafford as well because of the support of my family here in Stafford.

03:41.25

Sam Shirazi

but That makes sense. And you mentioned commuters.

03:44.33

Stacey

Yes.

03:44.83

Sam Shirazi

I did want to ask about I-95 because many people may have driven in the district on their way up and down I-95. And think i think There has been generally a lot of frustrations about I-95.

03:58.65

Sam Shirazi

i would say so since the express lanes have been completed all the way down to Fredericksburg, I think it's gotten a little bit better, but obviously there's always traffic.

03:59.60

Stacey

yeah

04:05.21

Sam Shirazi

So could you talk about what you might want to do in terms of dealing with those issues on I-95?

04:12.08

Stacey

Yes. So to um address congestion head on, I think that there are two basic solutions. One of them is we need to upgrade infrastructure and expand our rail capacity. There are already projects in the works to add a third railroad track.

04:25.61

Stacey

but i But as our population grows, we need to ensure that we continue making those upgrades to infrastructure. ah ah such as maybe extending routes and expanding hours of operation to accommodate the flexible schedules that may be needed for the residents of the district.

04:40.98

Stacey

Secondly, i would say we need to just simply work together. know a lot of times in various situations we operate as various silos, but we need to work together from a local and regional level to ensure that Local infrastructure can sustain the population growth.

04:57.41

Stacey

When I get elected, Sam, I'll do just that. I'll drive the state funding that Stafford needs to build the connectors and bridges on surface streets that commuters can use as alternates to I-95.

05:10.82

Stacey

I am committed to working with my colleagues at the state funding level to ensure that our local projects are considered for federal funding and grants.

05:20.86

Sam Shirazi

And in terms of the district in 2024, it voted for President Trump by about two points. And so, you know, in theory, you would have to win over some voters who may have voted for President Trump to vote for you this year. um How do you plan on convincing some voters who may have voted for the Republicans in the past to maybe vote for the Democrats this year?

05:43.77

Stacey

So when I'm on the doors, I try not to talk about party affiliations and I focus more on policies, how everyday things that matter to just the voters are encompassed in this current election and and identifying where and how I'm going to stand on that issue.

06:02.97

Stacey

So when we're talking about fully funding schools and providing that level of insight and or oversight, to me, that's not a Democrat or a Republican issue. That's a Stafford County resident issue. we you know The public schools provide that free child care for students that are ranging from grades K through 12. We need to fully fund those.

06:23.38

Stacey

I talk about fully funding veterans' um earned benefits, A lot of those are not even, again, some of those um Republican or Democrat issues. They're just literally Stafford County issues.

06:36.12

Stacey

So as I talk to people, I relate on commonalities instead of the areas on where there may be some disagreement. I focus on specifically how and where I can serve them.

06:47.69

Stacey

this upcoming election um why they should vote for me. And once I do assume office, some of the benefits that they're going to get out of me. And I remind them that I'm not here to play politics.

06:57.73

Stacey

I give them a little bit of my resume on how I have been serving the community in various capacities and ask them to do their research on me as to why I'm running and what that true capacity is.

07:10.97

Sam Shirazi

ah Well, i I did want to ask about Stafford and and the district in general, because I think there's a there used to be a conception of Stafford as pretty conservative place.

07:20.74

Sam Shirazi

It's changed over time, and Vice President Harris barely carried Stafford in 2024, so it's become basically like a swing county. Could you kind of tell us a little bit about your district and how it's maybe changed over time?

07:36.06

Stacey

So yes, there has been a lot of drastic growth here in Stafford County with the expansion of a few, I say few as very modestly, but a few housing communities here in the local area, specifically our Embree Mill subdivision, as well as a few subdivisions that were enacted along courthouse roads, specifically in district, as well as a few communities that have been open the last five years in our Hartwood district.

08:01.61

Stacey

lot of the the families that now call Stafford home have come to the area from various spaces and locations within the Commonwealth, some without as being military families, got to choose this specific area upon their retirement and or some families from Northern Virginia that just wanted a different field and or space for their family as they as their family expanded.

08:24.17

Stacey

They chose Stafford to be their home. Inside of those changes and opening of the new new developments, we have seen the swing or change in the actual voter base here in Stafford County, and that's directly resulted in some of the changes that you've seen.

08:39.64

Stacey

We've seen in our strong Democrat precincts, we've seen voter registration outpace general growth in the region by as much as 26%. We've seen the Hispanic population double in voter registration, and we've seen Black voter registration increase by as much as 58%.

08:58.55

Sam Shirazi

Yeah. And could you speak about some of that diversity? Because I think there there used to be this conception of Stafford as kind of a traditional suburban place. But it sounds like there's a lot of different communities and how they are interacting with each other in and a place that I think is sounds like a nice place to raise a family.

09:17.39

Stacey

It is a beautiful place to raise a family. family. um A lot of people, including myself, because of the close proximity to D.C., have chosen Stafford to be our home. And I say that with full confidence and fledge that everyone here in Stafford absolutely loves Stafford.

09:35.50

Stacey

I am going to believe that without question. I mean, every district has its level of struggles and triumphs, but Stafford is a great place to raise family. That diversity has sprung specifically from just various people choosing and seeing the affordability of Stafford all the things that we're able to see.

09:54.57

Stacey

We have a large Muslim community presence here in Stafford County. We have as well as a large Hispanic community here in Stafford as well.

10:03.76

Sam Shirazi

Well, I wanted to talk about after the election. so I think if you become a delegate or when you become a delegate, depending on the results, what are your priorities when you get into the General Assembly?

10:17.90

Stacey

If I had to sum it up, Sam, I would say first and foremost is to bring we need to fully fund education. I'm not quite sure when or where public schools became the talking point of whether or not we would fully fund the education. i am a product of public education. My children.

10:38.05

Stacey

are products of public education right here in Stafford. I have children that currently attend public education. We need to ensure that our schools are fully funded.

10:49.68

Stacey

That includes proper salaries for teachers and the support staff and everyone that it takes to fully fund the schools to make sure that our kids, without question, get a world-class education here in Stafford County.

11:02.55

Stacey

Secondly, I am committed to ensuring that from an economy perspective, there are investments that we make in our economy because we know when we have a strong economy, we have a strong middle class. And if we have a strong middle class, we have that again, a strong economy.

11:22.27

Stacey

I am committed to supporting and standing with workers and ensuring that they are protected and heard. And there's there's also ah another thing that's near and dear to my heart, and that's health care.

11:32.78

Stacey

We have seen... Unfortunately, a few of the things coming from the the current Trump administration to where some of those budget cuts will drastically affect Virginians. And we have to make sure that we when I get to Richmond that we balance the budget. I am a licensed CPA, so I understand the importance of debits and credits.

11:51.40

Stacey

But we do so in a manner to where it still fully funds all the programs and supports that we need to be a vital commonwealth, specifically the District 64.

12:01.50

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, to talking about those cuts, there's a potential down the line that there could be cuts to Medicaid. ah Do Do you know what the plan would be in Virginia to try to make sure people who need it don't lose health care?

12:16.13

Stacey

So there is some some current plans that I know without question, the Speaker of the House as well as Abigail has a plan that they have been innately working on how we can make sure that specifically in Virginia that Medicaid is expanded. Some of the Obama administration plans.

12:34.24

Stacey

Provisions are expanded and enshrined here in the Commonwealth of Virginia and making sure that people get the necessary help that they need to get well so that they can get a job. I am committed as as the delegate this coming November will be decided to ensure that we support that.

12:51.24

Stacey

and We have to make sure that health care doesn't become privilege for some but becomes a right for all. And we need to make sure that proper support is provided so that people in our community can stand up straight and support themselves.

13:05.62

Sam Shirazi

Well, I wanted to ask a little bit more about your experience as a candidate and what it's been like to actually run for office.

13:11.66

Stacey

when

13:13.69

Sam Shirazi

Because I know, i imagine it's pretty crazy and you're pretty busy these days.

13:18.35

Stacey

Listen, it is exhausting, Sam, but also rewarding at the same time. After I work my day job, I get off in the evenings and I find myself taking these calls, talking to various people out on the doors and in some way, shape or form, introducing myself to the community.

13:37.62

Stacey

it it is absolutely one of the most rewarding things that I am doing. You'll be surprised when you're knocking on the doors. People just simply have lost faith.

13:50.59

Stacey

or the desire to even be bothered with politics in any way, shape or form, whether that be politics, government, anything that has to do with voting or what the government is doing.

14:01.59

Stacey

People are just tuned out and have decided to just do something different. I am... um daily reminded. I love it when I'm able to have authentic conversations with people about the power that they do currently have, about how the state government and local government, because here in Stafford County, we have our local candidates on the ballot as well to include our board of supervisors and school board.

14:28.63

Stacey

And I remind them how from a state and local perspective, there there are a lot of things that we can address that impact their daily lives. And I enjoy or get invigorated by watching that level of understanding show on their face to where it's no longer this doom and gloom and lack of hope, but it becomes this newfound level of um knowledge as well as empowerment on how we're going to tackle the tomorrow.

14:56.26

Stacey

So though it is physically exhausting and draining for me and the fact that I, you know, may not may or may not get a chance to tuck my daughter in at night because my aunt and uncle are serving in that particular capacity, I enjoy watching everything else unfold and being able to remind my fellow Virginians about what tomorrow can be if they just simply come out and participate and cast their vote and not sit this one out.

15:23.82

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, I mean, that that sounds like ah you're running a campaign trying to get people excited, which is always good. And i wanted to ask what it's like to run specifically in a district that's really competitive and is one of the ones everyone's keeping an eye on this year.

15:41.75

Stacey

pressure, Sam, but it is, ah um I am up for the challenge. My life has been all about triumph and challenges.

15:50.69

Stacey

and various experiences. The heat is on. People are watching what's going on here in Stafford, as you alluded to. I personally block out that noise. I don't care who's watching and try not to pay attention to that.

16:04.95

Stacey

I daily remind myself of who I am and why I decided to run. And I decided to run because I felt or consistently saw that government just simply was not working for me.

16:19.13

Stacey

if I knew that and felt that as optimistic as I am, as me having ah ah having a CPA license and understanding money the way that I do, I knew without question that 50 other people to my left and to my right, irrespective of party alignment, understood and felt that as well.

16:36.27

Stacey

so as So I utilize that in my authentic conversations with people and just simply, and I hate to say it, blot out the noise. I don't get confused you know and or distracted by that of everybody paying attention or anything or any potential things We just focus on what the actual goal is, and that's restoring hope in what Virginia can be and how Stafford can contribute to that and making sure that people are reminded of what the solutions or power that they do have to create the solutions that they desire to manifest.

17:10.31

Sam Shirazi

Well, I think that's good advice for people running in in ah races like yours. So to close out, I did ah ah have one, i guess, more fun question about the district because lot of people driving down I-95 and they see Stafford. And what would you recommend people see in the district or what is your favorite part of the district?

17:29.73

Stacey

Oh, if I had to say my favorite part of the district is the food. And I would have to say that because, again, and again, you have to be a part of the district to better understand it. and I mean, some people will say it's Crow's Nest and the and and the nature preserves that we have here. But for me, I'm a natural foodie.

17:48.87

Stacey

So I love to go to the restaurants that are here within Stafford. specifically that of people that are residents of Stafford that are thriving here in this area, whether it be a smoothie or whether it be some pizza and or some hibachi. I enjoy eating the food of people that love and live here in Stafford as well. yeah So if there's something I would say from Stafford, I would say the food.

18:17.24

Stacey

I would say the food.

18:18.28

Sam Shirazi

Well, you you heard it from her that if youre if you need some food when you're on INA5, get off Stafford. And there sounds like there's a lot of great places. So, I appreciate you taking the time. If people want to learn more about your campaign, how do they find out more?

18:32.56

Stacey

They can go to my website at StacyCarroll4VA.com. StacyCarroll4VA.com. Go on, check me out. I tell everybody to just simply audit who I am and what I stand for. Do your research and better understand.

18:47.76

Stacey

if you at all want to get involved, get involved. There's some phone banking and or connections that can be done from external place. So if you just want to come on down and visit to Stafford, jump on I-95, stop on by here.

19:00.60

Stacey

And we can absolutely connect you with some voters in the district to do some canvassing. And or just look us up and send us a note and tell us to keep going. Either way, stay connected, be involved, because this November, Stafford, Virginia, District 64 will be a race to watch.

19:16.34

Sam Shirazi

Well, I know we'll all be watching it as the results come in. And thank you so much for joining me. And this has been Federal Fallout, and I'll join you next time.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com