How will Virginia races be affected by record early voting for nonpresidential election
As early voting winds down, the number of early ballots cast this year is at a record high for a nonpresidential election in Virginia, according to the Virginia Public Access Project.
The general election is set for Tuesday and the last day to vote early is Saturday.
The election will determine Virginia’s next governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, as well as all 100 seats in the Commonwealth’s House of Delegates.
WTOP asked Karen Hult, a professor of political science at Virginia Tech, why so many people voted early in this election — and how it might affect the results.
“People tend to vote early, just to get it out of the way, so they’re not stuck in traffic on Election Day, or have difficulty getting to polls,” Hult said. “They think, ‘I know who I’m going to vote for, so I’ll go cast that ballot early to show my enthusiasm, and check it off my to-do list.'”
“What’s different about this election is that Republican leaders within the state of Virginia have said, in fact, it’s fine to early vote,” unlike in previous elections, she said. “To the extent that we can find out who’s voting, most of the people that are voting in-person early voting are Republicans.”
Hult believes Republicans have been “suggesting early voting, in part to help mobilization of Republicans, and getting people excited early and getting them out to vote, as well as allowing the ground game to work effectively.”
Depending upon the media market in which one lives, “There’s a barrage of ongoing campaign ads and texts and banners on emails,” Hult said.
“Some of us are being told (by campaigners), ‘If you cast a ballot, then we will no longer contact you’ — and for many people, that itself is a bit of an incentive,” she added.
All votes count the same
Regardless of whether they cast their ballots early, or on Election Day, they all count the same.
“The people at the polls on Election Day know how many ballots have been cast in their precinct, and so those people are in the system as not being able to vote,” Hult said. “There is no way people can double-vote.”
What’s not clear is when the results of the early voting will be announced.
“That typically comes toward the end of election night, and into the next day,” Hult said.
“It may well be that some of the early votes, depending on the area, some of those will be tallied ahead of time,” she added. “Others will not be released to the public until well into the ballot-counting process.
VPAP provides an updated map of early ballots cast by House of Delegates’ districts, and compares the turnout to each district’s partisan lean.