Turnout Up Slightly in VA Early Voting
Only 4% but that's up over the past four years of early voting, including 2020. Ballots are starting to surge back into election offices. Some early takes so far.
One week into Virginia’s seven-week stretch of early voting shows just under 4% of ballots in countable state, out of about 6 million registered voters. That’s up a bit.
About 7% of the electorate should be receiving or mailing back absentee ballots by now. Both those numbers are up over years’ past, including the 2020 election.
They may have taken the advice of the Commissioner of Elections’ advice to get them back in as soon as possible due to a history of delays with the U.S. Postal Service.
Quick stats so far:
—Ballots in “countable” state (mostly in-person) = 224,271 as of Thursday, Sept. 26.
—Ballots listed as “issued” = 438,365, meaning absentee ballots out in the mail.
See EPEC Team’s volunteer Executive Director Jon Lareau’s Live DAL Summary Data feed on his DigitalPollWatchers blog.
Our take: Absentee ballot tallies are averaging about 2:1 ratio compared to in-person voting, which began a week ago on Sept. 20th and ends on Saturday, Nov. 2nd.
Game Day for the Presidential Election is Tuesday, Nov. 5th, 2024.
New This Year: Likely Lean in Voter Data
Lareau has worked up some calculations with other datasets to estimate voters who may “Lean Republican,” Lean Independent,” or “Lean Democrat” to help voter-participation groups’ Get Out the Vote Efforts, and inform the public.
Based on his estimates and Senior Analyst Rick Naigle’s analysis, we see the following after one week of early voting:
—Lean D ballots = about 320,000 ballots out or countable. Data analysts peg that down by about 1.3% from years’ past, which aligns with EPEC’s data from 2020.
— Lean R ballots = about 160,000. Other data outlets peg that up +7.7% over 2020.
— Lean I = about 250,000 ballots cast so far, estimated to be up slightly.
The stats align with an apparent surge in early voting in Republican-leaning congressional districts that analysts have been tracking.
Republican voters historically tend to wait until later in the voting period but that trend has been steadily changing since 2020 and 2021 when Virginia elected Republican Glenn Youngkin as Governor with historic turnout numbers.
Data Wonks Rule
EPEC team is also tracking many other data sources, including VPAP.org and Michael Pruser, a data analyst with DecisionDeskHQ.
Pruser’s “X” feed is tracking Virginia’s turnout by percent tallies with updates here.
After some enthusiasm over the numbers, he posted on his “X” feed today:
“We're now one week into Virginia's early voting season, and it's becoming more apparent that we will likely set a turnout below 2020.”
He’s watching Prince William County, which has shown a slower in-person voting start among the 300,000 or so registered voters in the Northern Virginia locality.
“Absentee requests have slowed; the expected return rate this year in Virginia is 88%,” Pruser wrote. He’s expecting over half a million absentee ballots this year.
But other analysts see a lot of surging early interest in voting. The next weeks will tell.
Much of the early vote depends on the U.S. Postal Service, which has been plagued by delays. Commissioner of Elections Susan Beals recently flagged widely documented problems with the U.S.P.S. as her biggest security concern ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Her advice to by-mail voters: plan ahead to get it in the mail.
The data already show big numbers of ballots are flowing into the election offices earlier than usual after registrars teed up about 450,000 to be mailed this week.
Track Lareau’s summary data DAL feed here.
For an area chart view, see EPEC’s output of the feed here.
Pollwatchers are out watching, and gearing up to watch absentee-ballot processing.
There is still time to get involved. Find out how to get started or refreshed on training with Virginia Fair Elections.
Find your polling location here. Check your registration here.
EPEC is publishing more frequently during early voting. Look for our report each Saturday, including wide analysis of the Daily Absentee List data and deeper dives compared to 2020.
For now, that’s a wrap. We urge readers to get out and vote! #
