Is Virginia more competitive for Trump than it appears, and could he turn it around?

Could Virginia go to Trump and become the unthinkable?

After the first week of early voting in the commonwealth, some Republicans are beginning to feel cautiously hopeful about their prospects of winning the swing state that has gone blue in November. However, even these same Republicans would admit that there is still a possibility.

In Virginia, Democrats are still winning, at least when it comes to the presidency. Since President Barack Obama turned the state blue in 2008, they have won all of the presidential contests; in 2020, President Joe Biden won by a margin of ten points. However, Republicans had a partial resurgence in 2021 when Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, emerged victorious in the contest for governor and conservatives took home other statewide positions.

Republicans are aiming to repeat that feat in November, but polls indicate that Vice President Kamala Harris is still in the lead, but not by as much as Biden did when he won the state four years before.
Virginia became one of the first states to open polls ahead of the election on September 20 with the start of early voting.

Only slightly less than the 226,385 votes cast at the same time in 2020; 223,998 had been cast in Virginia at the end of the day on Thursday. However, information from the Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP) indicates that the makeup of those votes changed from four years earlier.

Virginians in rural, Republican-leaning counties cast a much higher number of votes during the first week of early voting than they did during the same period in 2020. In addition, fewer votes were cast in Democratic counties than in the first week of early voting the previous four years.

It’s risky to read too much into those first results. It is impossible to determine if the votes in question were cast by Republicans or Democrats since party registration is not available in Virginia. Moreover, early trends are not always permanent. However, it does imply that Republicans in Virginia are eager to support the former president.

According to VPAP statistics, Democrats just slightly outnumbered Republicans during the first week of Virginia’s early voting in 2020, but the difference widened throughout October.

First Week of Early Voting Sees Increased Turnout in Rural Counties Compared to 2020
Republican PAC director of The Virginia Project David Gordon told media report Turnout surged in conservative areas, at least in part, because of Republican attempts to encourage conservative voters to vote early.

Because they have a stronger predilection for early voting by mail and in person, Democrats often win by wide numbers. But Republican organizations this year prioritized encouraging early voting in person,” he added.

The county with the biggest increase in voter participation during the previous four years was New Kent County, a rural area close to the Chesapeake Bay shore that supported Trump by a margin of thirty points in 2020. 946 people had cast ballots as of Thursday; at the same time in 2020, only 391 had done so.
In the affluent Washington, D.C. suburbs of Alexandria, Arlington, and Prince Williams County, voter participation is declining in more Democratic regions compared to 2020. 5,411 voters in Arlington have cast ballots thus far. VPAP claims the figure was 8,576 in 2020.

Naturally, this does not preclude voters in these districts from casting ballots in the run-up to the election.
Only one voting location has opened so far in Prince Williams County, a heavily populated suburban county that supported President Biden by more than 26 points in 2020. Additional polling locations are slated to open in October.

In Loudoun County, a once Republican bastion that has shifted to the Democratic side and easily supported Biden in 2020, turnout is similarly lower. Given that Virginia is one of the first states to release the results, Loudoun is something of a predictor of how suburban counties around the nation will vote. As such, it will probably get a lot of attention on election night.

Fairfax County serves as an example of why preliminary statistics may not always predict final turnout. Its figures from Thursday showed a smaller turnout than in 2020, but it hasn’t disclosed any results from mail-in votes.

Democrats are still predicted to get a large number of mail-in votes, just as they did in 2020. According to Pew Research Center statistics, 58% of Biden voters cast their ballots by mail in 2020, compared to 32% of Trump backers.

Larry Sabato, a political scientist and expert on Virginia elections, told a media report he doubts Republicans can win in Virginia this year.

“While surprises are always conceivable, Harris is most likely to win Virginia. The state’s sizable, potentially presidential electorate is obviously skewed Democratic in terms of demographics. It hasn’t altered that Trump has never been popular in the state,” he remarked.

Yet, Gordon of the Virginia Project, which is affiliated with the GOP, said that Virginia Republican attendance is “off the charts,” citing a comparison to 2021.

“What’s most startling about it is how many disgruntled voters are returning to the GOP. A large number of voters just stopped casting ballots entirely as a result of the ongoing gulf between the national leadership and the base of voters. They’re coming back into play because of crushing inflation, he added.
Democrats have a slight lead in the first few days of early voting, according to VPAP statistics from 2020. Democrats had a roughly seven-point advantage in the early voting on September 26, 2020. But as October arrived, they began to pull ahead of Republicans, sometimes by 20 points.

According to a media report, Jeff Ryer, a spokesman for Trump’s Virginia campaign, says the team has worked “diligently to ensure an impressive—aand winning—pperformance in Virginia’s early vote.”

“We have been preparing President Trump’s supporters to come out in historic numbers across the state. Republicans are voting early at a rate higher than ever before, according to the findings, he said.
Virginia’s Presidential Race: What the Polls Say

In Virginia, Harris is leading the polls, and many believe she will easily win in November.

Harris was ahead in recent polls by an average of seven points, according to FiveThirtyEight’s aggregate polling data.

In a September 22–24 Emerson College survey of 860 prospective voters, Harris led by seven points (53 percent to 46 percent).

Meanwhile, Harris was leading by almost seven points (51 percent to 44 percent) in a Morning Consult survey that was conducted among 899 likely voters between September 9 and September 18.
According to a recent Rasmussen poll, which is often considered to have a Republican slant, the Virginia race is closer than expected, with Harris leading Trump by only 3 points (49 to 46 percent). The contest is within the margin of error according to that survey.

The race is categorized as “likely Democratic” by the Cook Political Report, which indicates that although it is “not considered competitive at this point,” it has “the potential to become engaged.”

With 54.1 percent of the vote to Trump’s 44 percent in 2020, Biden prevailed in the state. When former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won the state in 2016, it was closer than it is now—her 49.8% of the vote against Trump’s 44.4 percent.

Trump’s advantage in Virginia may help Congressional Republicans maintain their slim majority in the House of Representatives, even if the state is unlikely to elect him.

There are two competitive House elections in Virginia that will depend on voter turnout: one in the Second District, which Representative Jen Kiggans is running for, and one in the Seventh District, which is being vacated by Democratic Representative Abigail Spanberger. Although Biden won all seats in 2020, this season both parties are vying for the districts.