Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the Virginia Elections. This episode, we will first go over Super Saturday and the expansion of early voting that is happening today in Virginia. And then I wanted to also talk about Spanberger, Governor Spanberger’s approval rating and some commentary around that, and just wanted to share my thoughts because I’ve seen lot of hot takes about it, and I thought I would give you mine.

00:24.22

Sam Shirazi

But before we get to that, obviously redistricting referendums coming up. It’s not that far away. We are just around the corner in terms of election day. Election day is April 21st.

00:35.64

Sam Shirazi

However, before that, there will be a lot of early voting. There has already been a lot of early voting. And there will be even more early voting in the final days. That’s typically when you see the most early voting is the last days of the early voting cycle.

00:48.98

Sam Shirazi

And I really wanted to emphasize April 11th, which is today, Super Saturday. The reason I call it Super Saturday is because... It is the first day of early voting on a Saturday across Virginia. So everywhere across Virginia, there will be early voting.

01:03.52

Sam Shirazi

But then on top of that, it’s the first day that many satellite voting locations will be opening this cycle for early voting. I’ll kind of go through where they’re opening, where they’ve already been open, So let me break down early voting a little bit. So early voting, typically the way it works in Virginia is every city or county has to have at least one early voting location.

01:23.60

Sam Shirazi

And that’s typically the registrar’s office, usually in the a government center where the the county has the rest of the government facilities. You can go there and do some early voting.

01:35.18

Sam Shirazi

But in some of the bigger locations across Virginia, big counties, big cities, they will have what are called satellite voting locations. These are secondary or other locations where people can go and early vote.

01:46.02

Sam Shirazi

There’s really no law that governs that in Virginia. You have pretty big counties in Virginia that only have one like early voting location. And then you have other relatively smaller counties that might have two.

01:58.04

Sam Shirazi

so there’s really no law in terms of how many early voting locations a city or county has, other than obviously they have to have one. And then the other rule that governs early voting is that the last two Saturdays before the election, there needs to be Saturday early voting. Otherwise, there’s no real law. Some places have more weekend weekend early voting. Some places have less, but you have to have at least two weekends.

02:21.19

Sam Shirazi

two Saturdays before the election, you have to have early voting. And so typically what we see in Virginia, especially for general elections, is the satellite early voting locations tend to open up earlier in the cycle, probably a week or two before they have opened up right now.

02:36.61

Sam Shirazi

However, because this is, I would say, a not a general election, it’s a special election, essentially, I think we’re seeing satellite early voting locations opening up later this cycle.

02:47.56

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, I I think maybe part of that was just the fact that there was less time to get prepared for this special election. And frankly, I think the but local county election officials might not have thought we were going to get it this much early voting. We have gotten a lot of early voting. They probably thought it wouldn’t be this busy.

03:05.70

Sam Shirazi

And so they scheduled it for later in the cycle. But, you know, we are seeing a lot of early voting. So, you know, right now, going into Super Saturday, we are seeing – early voting that is almost matching how much early voting we had in 2025, which is really crazy to think about. And keep in mind in 2025, there are more satellite early voting locations open at this point.

03:27.73

Sam Shirazi

So going into Super Saturday, we are you know well over 850,000 early votes, which is just a lot of early voting in Virginia for an election that is not a general election. It’s in the spring.

03:40.96

Sam Shirazi

We typically don’t have elections in spring. So lot of early voting. And that is also telling me that we are going to see a lot of early voting on Super Saturday because we’ve already seen a lot of early voting. The other reason we’re going to see a lot of early voting on Super Saturday is because typically on weekends, there is more early voting because people a lot of people don’t have to work. And it’s just more convenient for them to early vote on the weekend.

04:01.98

Sam Shirazi

And then finally, the final reason we’re going to see a lot of early voting, I think, on this Super Saturday is because so many places are opening up their early voting locations. And I’ll kind of go through the list of places that are opening up their early voting locations today.

04:28.90

Sam Shirazi

Currently, there are three early voting locations open in Fairfax County. And on Super Saturday, there will be 13 additional early voting locations opening up for a total of 16 early voting locations in Fairfax County. And a lot of people know that the early voting locations going to be opening up. So you may live on the other side of the county. You may be waiting for your early voting location to open up. So that’s why I think Super Saturday is going to see a lot of early voting because there’s a lot of pent up demand in terms of people who know that they were going to early vote. It’s just they were waiting for the early voting location to open up. So that’s in Fairfax County, big county, a lot of early voting locations opening up. So definitely one to watch on this Super Saturday.

05:09.11

Sam Shirazi

Okay, the next county that’s going to have early voting is Prince William County. And as you can see, early voting on the Super Saturday is going be really important in Northern Virginia, because a lot of the satellite early voting locations are opening up in Northern Virginia.

05:22.82

Sam Shirazi

On Super Saturday, there will be six additional locations that are going to be opening up in Fairfax County, excuse me, in in Prince William County. So you’re going have seven total early voting locations in Prince William County.

05:35.68

Sam Shirazi

And these seven locations are going to be open all the way through the end of early voting on Saturday. And that includes on Sunday. So Sunday, April 12th, Prince William County will also have early voting. And so we’re seeing a lot of early voting that’s going to be happening in Prince William County.

05:50.69

Sam Shirazi

This always happens. There’s a lot of pent-up demand for early voting and in Prince William County because the early voting location is around Manassas area. A lot of the population in Prince William County lives along the I-95 corridor, so they’re waiting for the early voting locations. I expect a lot of early voting in Prince William County.

06:07.64

Sam Shirazi

Okay, another location that’s going see satellite voting locations are opening up. That will be in Loudoun. Loudoun’s a big county, typically leans towards the Democrats, but is somewhat competitive sometimes in these elections. So Loudoun always gets a lot of attention, important county.

06:24.99

Sam Shirazi

On Super Saturday, they will open up four more early voting locations. So Loudoun’s another really important area where we’re just going to keep an eye out to see how much early voting there’s going on.

06:34.55

Sam Shirazi

And I’ll round up the satellite early voting locations that will be opening up in Northern Virginia in Arlington. Arlington currently has one early voting location and there will be two additional locations opening up on Super Saturday. So Arlington will have a total of three early voting locations.

06:49.88

Sam Shirazi

But that’s not all on the Super Saturday. There is also going to be more early voting locations opening up in Hampton Roads. The first place that will be opening it up is Virginia Beach. Virginia Beach is a big area.

07:01.63

Sam Shirazi

On Super Saturday, they they will open two additional locations. Now, I did want to note, this is less than they had last year for the governor’s election. Typically, they have more early voting locations. They only got to have three for Super Saturday, but still important given that you know that’s going to essentially double or triple the amount of early voting locations that are going to be available in Virginia Beach.

07:23.71

Sam Shirazi

And I’ll talk about one other location in Hampton Roads, and that’s Norfolk. Norfolk has has had one early voting location open this time.

07:34.56

Sam Shirazi

But on Super Saturday, it is going to be opening up additional early voting locations. There will be four more early voting locations opening up in Norfolk on Super Saturday, and those will also be open generally until the end of early voting. So that’s the thing with this first Super Saturday of early voting. It’s not that these satellite early voting early voting locations are going to be open just on Saturday. They’re going to be open on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. And in some locations, specifically Prince William County, they’ll also be open on tomorrow, Sunday, April 12th. And in other places, for example, Alexandria will have Sunday early voting.

08:14.94

Sam Shirazi

Richmond will have some Sunday early voting. So we’re seeing that the early voting is not necessarily uniform in terms of the hours and the locations across Virginia. And I should also not forget to mention, there are a lot of early voting locations opening up on Super Saturday, but there have been early voting satellite locations open up opening up this past week as well in places like Richmond, Henrico, Chesterfield,

08:43.00

Sam Shirazi

Newport News has been relatively less attention because there haven’t been as many of those opening up, but they have also been opening up. So as we can see, the end of early voting always sees a lot more locations opening up.

08:56.39

Sam Shirazi

People obviously are going to be paying more attention to the election because it’s getting closer. And so more people vote at the end of early voting, especially with the they take advantage of the Saturday early voting.

09:07.91

Sam Shirazi

And the other thing to keep in mind is typically the people who vote at the very beginning of the early voting period are the most highly engaged, most partisan people who pretty much know how they’re going to vote. So if you’re voting on the first day of early voting, you are probably not an undecided voter. You’re probably committed to one side or the other.

09:26.89

Sam Shirazi

I think the thing that’s interesting is... Towards the end of the early voting period and up through election day, the people who vote at the end typically are either the people who are undecided, who don’t know how to vote, and so they’ve been waiting on it, thinking about it, or also people who are just kind of lower propensity voters who may be not that engaged.

09:45.46

Sam Shirazi

independents who you know just wait till the end to to hear all the arguments or people who just are not super engaged, they hear there’s an election, they go vote in it. And so the importance of that is those people can be really swing one way or another towards a towards a party or in this case,

10:04.53

Sam Shirazi

Yes or no at the end. And I think that’s really important. Sometimes we see in these elections, sort for example, in 2025, clearly a lot of the late deciders seem to have moved towards the Democrats. Democrats had momentum in the end.

10:16.08

Sam Shirazi

They got a big win in 2025 in Virginia. And the question becomes, you know, who has the momentum here in the closing days of the campaign? I think the Yes campaign is putting a lot of efforts to get out the vote in these two weekends of early voting. Typically, Democrats do well in early voting on the weekends in Virginia.

10:36.12

Sam Shirazi

Why is that? You know, you have younger people who tend to vote more on the weekends. You have people who are working during the week. So they they like to vote on the weekends. So we’ll just have to wait and see how much early vote the Democrats are able to get out this Saturday and then also next Saturday during the last day of early voting.

10:52.88

Sam Shirazi

And we’ll have to kind of see is there kind of late momentum towards yes or no. You know, it’s it’s hard to tell. I think there’s a lot of different factors you have to look into. i think we’ll get some final polls that’ll be helpful to get a sense of where things are going. But anyways, I wanted to just kind of highlight Super Saturday. I’ve been pretty excited about it. I think it’s unique because most Virginia elections, a lot of these satellite early voting locations open up at different times. The counties don’t have this kind of uniform opening of early voting locations. I think this election is pretty unique. You’re going to have a lot of them opening up on Saturday.

11:24.62

Sam Shirazi

So I just wanted to flag that for everyone. Keep an eye out on it. Keep an eye out for the numbers. I think this Saturday, next week, and then the final Saturday of early voting is going to be really big. And I think the question is going to become how much early voting do we see?

11:39.14

Sam Shirazi

Currently, we by the end of this weekend, we will probably be close to a million votes. In 2025, we had just under 1.5 million early votes total.

11:49.24

Sam Shirazi

I’m curious to see, do we hit 1.5 million early votes this time? And if we do hit that number or get close to it, does that mean that a lot of people have just kind of shifted their voting patterns from Election Day to early vote?

12:01.03

Sam Shirazi

Or are we going to still see a lot of Election Day early vote? I think we’re going to see a lot of Election Day early vote. And the question becomes, do we get more turnout in this election than the governor’s election, which if you told me at the beginning that would happen, I would have really so doubted that. But it’s it’s plausible that we end up getting more total votes this election for the redistricting referendum than we got in the governor’s election, which is really kind of crazy to think about. And I think the reason for that is, I you know frankly, I think both sides are really...

12:29.80

Sam Shirazi

engage Both sides are really trying to get out their voters. I think in 2025, certainly Democrats had some momentum. I think the Republicans weren’t as excited about their candidates, so they didn’t get as as many of their voters out. I think they’re going to do a better job getting their voters out this time.

12:46.01

Sam Shirazi

We had about little over 3.4 million votes in 2025. I wonder, are we going to hit 3.5 million votes in this referendum? So lot of stuff to look up for. I think early vote, I flagged this before, is typically not great at predicting elections because you don’t know who are the independents voting for. you know, you there’s a lot of trying to read the tea leaves. And I think that stuff’s a little bit over overdrawn, but what I think early vote is really good at telling you is turnout.

13:11.90

Sam Shirazi

So if you were heading towards around 1.5 million total early votes, that is telling me this is going to be a high turnout election. I think we’re going to get at least 3 million total votes and we can get close to 3.5 million early votes, which, you know, is really high for a non-general election in Virginia.

13:29.60

Sam Shirazi

And anyway, so, Super interesting stuff. I won’t dwell too much more on Super Saturday, but did want to mention it. But now I will move on to a different topic, which is more so about Governor Spanberger’s approval. But I should talk about this poll that was put out by The Washington Post.

13:45.08

Sam Shirazi

And, you know, last time I put I put my podcast out, I had recorded it. And then the next morning, Washington Post had put out this poll, so I didn’t get a chance to talk about it in the last podcast. I do want to talk about it this podcast. this post This poll from Washington Post came from the Schar School at George Mason University.

14:04.17

Sam Shirazi

They’re one of the pollsters that do polls in Virginia. I typically look for the GMU Schar School polls because I think they have a pretty solid track record. They were pretty on the money in 2025 in terms of predicting the winners in the election. And so I like the GMU-Schar school polls. I trust them.

14:24.46

Sam Shirazi

Obviously, there are other pollsters in Virginia. I think State Navigate’s working on the poll. That’s going to be super interesting. But I’ll go over the Schar school poll. And then I’ll talk a little bit about the Spanberger approval, because I think that’s what honestly got a lot of attention from this poll.

14:40.56

Sam Shirazi

So to begin with, in terms of the redistricting referendum, The Washington Post GMU-Schar school poll found that and in terms of likely voters, they are 52% yes, 47% no.

14:53.42

Sam Shirazi

And if you look at registered voters, they are 53% yes, 44% no. And they also had the Trump approval at 57% disapprove and 40% approve.

15:05.12

Sam Shirazi

So I first want to talk about that number. I think pretty much that’s in line with the vibes. And what I mean by that is I think the vibes have been that the yes campaign has a slight advantage or an advantage in Virginia, but it’s not overwhelming. It’s not something where you can kind of a hundred percent be certain that the yes campaign is going to be winning. These aren’t the numbers we saw, for example, with Spanberger in, in polls around this time when she was winning by about 10% and everyone was pretty confident that Spanberger was going to win.

15:34.88

Sam Shirazi

I think, uh, you know a five point lead among likely voters is not insignificant, but it’s also not that the kind of margin where you can be certain about the outcome. And I also think it’s interesting that there are people who disapprove of President Trump who are going to be voting no on the referendum, at least according to this poll. And I think certainly that’s going to most likely be independents, people who may not like some of the president’s policies, but they also don’t like what the Democrats are trying to do with this gerrymander. so long story short, I would actually say that GMU-Schar school poll was not super interesting in terms of the referendum results because it was kind of like what we were thinking about. It it was you know not super super surprising. When I saw that poll, I said, yeah, that that makes sense to me.

16:20.46

Sam Shirazi

I think the thing that got a lot more attention in the Washington Post-Schar school poll was the Spanberger approval numbers. And I’ll just go over the approval first, and then I’ll talk about it. So Governor Spanberger’s approval, according to this poll, was 47% approve, 46% disapprove. And I think that was surprising because obviously Governor Spanberger got a big win, 15% last year. And so now, according to this poll, she’s only at 1% net approval.

16:46.21

Sam Shirazi

Typically, we see in Virginia, at least at the beginning of their terms, Virginia governors have pretty positive approval ratings because you know state governors are usually less partisan. And I think people who may be more polarized with national politics aren’t as polarized with state politics. However, the Washington Post poll has found that Spanberger’s approval is lower than other governors at this point in their administration. And I think there’s a lot going on. There’s a lot of commentary, a lot of reasons why people think this is what’s going on. The first thing I wanted to say, like right off the bat is it’s one poll. So as much as I think this GMU Schar is, is a good pollster, like you never want to base your entire worldview on one poll because for whatever reason, things could be off. And so I just put that caveat out there because think there’s a lot of commentary based on one poll.

17:54.23

Sam Shirazi

Spanberger doesn’t have overwhelmingly positive approval. like If this was 20% positive approval, even if the poll was a little bit off, you could say, okay, she’s still pretty pretty popular. I think there’s a lot of things in terms of why Spanberger’s approval may not be as high as previous governors at this point.

18:11.89

Sam Shirazi

Realistically, I think polarization has caught up to every politician. And I think we’re at a point where If you’re a Republican, it’s very hard for you to give a Democratic governor a positive approval and vice versa. I’m not saying that’s 100% true. We have seen more, you know, blue state governors. Sorry, we we’ve seen governors in Republican governors in blue states who have pretty decent approval. For example, Vermont’s a famous example where they have a Republican governor, but he has a strong approval rating because he’s...

18:41.84

Sam Shirazi

Viewed as not the typical Republican in Kentucky, we have a red state, but the Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, typically has a pretty positive approval. So I’m not saying it’s impossible, but I do think po polarization has caught up.

18:55.03

Sam Shirazi

And I think specifically with Spanberger, the issue she’s having is she’s kind of becoming the face of the redistricting campaign, whether she likes it or not, because she is the most prominent Virginia Democrat now. Obviously, the gerrymandering that is going to be happening is being done by the Democrats.

19:09.78

Sam Shirazi

I think the Republicans have done a successful job at kind of pushing that image that this is a very extreme gerrymander. And so I think they’re their voters, the Republican base, is very upset. And so they’re you’re seeing that being translated over into Governor Spanberger, where you know perhaps in the past you might have had some Republicans who who may have had positive approvals of a Democratic governor. I think that’s going to be very difficult in this environment.

19:34.54

Sam Shirazi

when the Democrats in Virginia are pushing a pretty partisan gerrymander and Spanberger, while she doesn’t seem to be the person who is most behind this, wasn’t the person necessarily who who’s been driving this the most, I think she certainly has come out in favor of it. And as the most prominent Democrat in Virginia is going to be part of the the face of the campaign.

19:54.89

Sam Shirazi

However, I don’t think it’s just a redistricting referendum because, frankly, according to this poll, the redistricting referendum is polling higher than Spanberger, or least there’s more people who are going to vote yes on the redistricting referendum than Spanberger. I think the Republicans have also done a good job of kind of weaponizing some of the bills that Democrats ended up proposing, but not passing.

20:17.51

Sam Shirazi

And so there’s been a lot of commentary about all these bills and tax rises, and frankly, most of them didn’t pass. And so the Republicans made a lot of noise, but most of the things that they said are going to happen didn’t end up happening.

20:31.35

Sam Shirazi

But a lot of, you know, less engaged voters, they might have seen something online. They may not have realized it never got passed. So I think there’s been a lot of a sense that the Republicans are certainly trying to paint it as the Democrats are going far left. They, you know, Spanberger campaigned as a moderate. Now she’s super left.

20:46.72

Sam Shirazi

And I think, you know, Spanberger is going to have to deal with that narrative that is being pushed by the Republicans. And frankly, I think you know maybe the next legislative session, I think the Democrats have to think about some of these bills they’re proposing. like If there’s really no way a bill is going to be passed, you know do you really need to propose it? like you know I get sometimes legislatures put in bills because they know it’s not going to pass, but they’re trying to get the idea out there. So maybe down the line it might pass. I get that. But at the same time,

21:14.44

Sam Shirazi

You have to think, how are the Republicans going to weaponize this bill? Is this the kind of best bill that we need right now in terms of getting our message out there? So, you know, I think i think there’s some some learning that Spanberger and the Democrats in the General Assembly can can do from this last session. I also think, you know, right now there’s a a really... Andy Combin feeling across the world, frankly, and it it goes all the way down to the state level. And I think that helps man burger a lot in 2025. You know, the Republicans were in charge of DC, they were in charge of Virginia. And so was easy for her to get up there, say, I’m change.

21:47.35

Sam Shirazi

I’m running against DC, I’m running against Richmond, I’m going to bring something different to Virginia. And the voters like that because they want to change and there’s a strong anti-incumbency feeling and that’s why Samanberger got such a big win.

21:58.70

Sam Shirazi

However, that’s a two-way street. And so once you’re in office, you are the incumbent, you are people are expecting you to make their lives better, or fix their problems. And you know realistically, a lot of what’s going on is being set in DC by policy in DC, but you as a governor are also accountable for people’s lives and they may feel that things are getting better, gas prices are high,

22:21.23

Sam Shirazi

You can say, you know, that’s because of the war with Iran, and that had nothing to do with Spanberger, and that’s almost certainly true, but at the end of the day, people are not feeling their lives getting better, and I think this is part of the challenge when, especially when you run on affordability, you have to end up delivering, and some of the changes you can make as governor are important, but they also might take time to implement. They may not, people might not feel them directly, so I think Spanberger is kind of dealing with that issue where once you’re in power, I think it’s easy for the other side to attack you and say, oh, things aren’t getting better. and And maybe, you know, the Democrat strategy is to just blame everything on Trump. And, and you know, that makes sense from their perspective, but it doesn’t. It also means that the Republicans are going to start blaming you because you’re in charge in Richmond.

23:05.59

Sam Shirazi

So I think I think there’s a lot going on with the Spanberger approval. I kind of caution everyone that it’s very early. There’s a lot that can still happen. It’s one poll. So I, you know, people need to talk about something. So there’s been a lot of commentary about it. i think, you know, Spanberger’s got a long time in office. She’ll be in office for you know almost four years left in her term. She’ll almost certainly have a trifecta for all four years. There’s a lot of things she can do that might boost her approval. There are lot of things that might she might do that might hurt her approval. Like, it’ll go up and down. We’ll just have to keep an eye on it. And I do think the last thing I’ll leave you a bit with is kind of tying this all back to the redistricting referendum.

23:42.05

Sam Shirazi

I think the reason why the redistricting referendum is so important is it’s going to be viewed in a way as in some ways as a referendum, both on Trump and now I think on Spanberger. And I think winning can fix a lot of problems. Like there are, you see this a lot when a politician has a problems, but you win an election, you know, people will forget about it. They’ll move on.

24:02.79

Sam Shirazi

You might say president Trump is in that camp. He obviously had legal issues after he left office. He won the election and, you know, a lot of people have kind of moved on from that. And, and so winning can fix a lot of problems for politicians, no matter which side of the aisle they’re on.

24:18.55

Sam Shirazi

And I do think if the redistricting referendum passes by healthy margin, I do think that will fix a lot of problems for Spanberger. She’ll be back in the news and she’ll kind of be the face of this redistricting referendum passing in Virginia.

25:09.68

Sam Shirazi

People have asked me like, you know, what is your sense of the referendum? And I often point people back to the governor, so excuse me, the attorney general’s race in 2025, because it’s kind of the same dynamic. People thought it was going to be close. The Republicans seem more energized by the attorney general race.

25:23.99

Sam Shirazi

And at the end of the day, Jay Jones almost won by 7% because I think people were just, you know, upset at what was going on in DC and wanted to send a message. Probably also benefited obviously from Governor Spanberger’s coattails, but long story short, it was a,

25:37.79

Sam Shirazi

thought to be a close election, one that even the Republicans might win in 2025, but Jay Jones won by 7%. So I think one scenario is like, this is kind of the we redo of the Virginia Attorney General race. It kind of looks close, or it looks like maybe the Republicans have a chance, but at the end of the day, it might not be close at all.

25:55.20

Sam Shirazi

And the yes campaign passes easily. i think the other alternative is that, you know, this kind of becomes like 2021 all over again where you know The Democrats feel confident. They think Virginia is a blue state, but the Republicans are just able to mobilize, able to get their grassroots upset, able to win over independence and kind of at the end get a so a kind of a surprise victory or come from behind victory where they’re able to pull it off and win in Virginia, which is a difficult state for them to win in. So I think there’s also that possibility.

26:26.02

Sam Shirazi

I’m kind of looking at the Jay Jones margin around six and a half to 7% as kind of the over under. I think if Democrats do better than the Jay Jones margin from 2025, I think that’s generally a good night for them.

26:39.50

Sam Shirazi

i mean, obviously, if it passes, a win’s a win, they’ll take it. But if it’s less than the Jay Jones margin in terms of the election being you know less than 6.5%, I think that’s a decent night for the Republicans. Obviously, if it doesn’t pass, that’s a very good night for the Republicans.

26:54.53

Sam Shirazi

But I think that’s kind of what I’m looking for in terms of the Virginia elections. And it’s kind of an interesting test because the national environment looks really bad for the Republicans right now. I don’t want to go into the ins and outs of the Wisconsin Supreme Court race.

27:13.08

Sam Shirazi

and that was a race that in twenty twenty five was at least somewhat competitive even though it was a ten point win and in the past certainly has been very competitive so we’re seeing in a swing the kind of classic swing state of Wisconsin democrats or the liberal candidate is winning by twenty points even in Georgia there was a special election for a congressional seat the. The Republicans still won that seat, and that was Marjorie Taylor Greene’s former seat, but there was about a 25% swing in terms of the overperformance by Democrats in Georgia. And so we’re seeing these like crazy overperformances by Democrats.

27:46.66

Sam Shirazi

And yet, you know, Virginia doesn’t seem like a done deal. And I think there’s the possibility that there are more state local dynamics. The independents are not loving this idea of gerrymandering, perhaps.

27:58.70

Sam Shirazi

The debate is more about the nuances of the districts as opposed to is this a referendum on Trump. And so I think there is a possibility that this is going to be close and closer than people expect. There’s also the possibility that I think we’re all kind of underestimating how much of a anti-Trump and anti-Republican feeling there is in the country. And if people just view this as a straight referendum, the ability to send a message on President Trump,

28:21.86

Sam Shirazi

and push back, then I think there is a possibility that this could pass by a pretty healthy margin. So we’ll just have to wait and see. I think it’s going to be super interesting. Keep an eye out for some of the numbers on Super Saturday. And then I’ll probably be doing a few more podcasts next week before the referendum as we’re starting to wrap things up. And I appreciate everyone who’s been listening.

28:42.58

Sam Shirazi

And I will join you next time on Federal Fallout.

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