Virginians have been early voting in the June 17 Democratic and Republican primaries since at least May 2nd. What does the early vote data say thus far about the state of the two statewide Democratic primaries? To attempt to answer this question, State Navigate analyzed the publicly-available early vote voter metrics from Digital Poll Watchers (dot) Org as of this morning. We then combined that data with the May voter registration statistics from the Virginia Department of Elections.
Here’s what you need to know:
- Democratic early turnout is anemic – just slightly over 97,000 Democratic ballots have been cast or received thus far: approximately 71,000 by-mail and 26,000 in-person.
- On the Republican side, turnout is worse – just 8,745 voters. This is somewhat understandable because there’s no statewide Republican primary.
- Virginia has about 6 million active registered voters. That means Democratic turnout is about 1.6% of all active registered voters, and Republican turnout is just over 0.1%.
- Most Democratic early voters live in the suburban Democratic strongholds of the state. These include the areas from which some of the LG and AG candidates hail – the Richmond suburbs and Hampton Roads areas – as well as highly-educated Charlottesville.
- NoVa’s turnout picture is mixed, with turnout slightly higher in Arlington and Alexandria than most of Fairfax County and points beyond.
- With such low turnout, it’s difficult to make any predictions about which LG and AG candidates are currently “leading” in the early vote, but some candidates’ areas are turning out better than others.
Now, let’s get into the weeds with some pretty maps:
Registered Voter Turnout is Better for Some Candidates than Others
Combining the early vote and registered voter precinct datasets allows us to map early vote turnout as a percentage of registered voters. In the map below, turnout lags the 1.61% statewide rate in purple precincts and exceeds it in green precincts. The more saturated the color, the greater the departure from the statewide rate in half-point steps:
Virginia doesn’t have partisan registration, but the map clearly shows that Republican-leaning areas of the Commonwealth aren’t turning out in the Democratic primary. At the regional level:
- Northern Virginia: Democratic turnout is slightly higher than average in most Arlington and Alexandria precincts, but lagging further away from the nation’s capital.
- Greater Richmond: Turnout is generally higher in the suburbs than much of the city. In particular, turnout is higher in the home bases of AG candidate Shannon Taylor (Henrico County) and LG candidate Ghazala Hashmi (Chesterfield County) than LG candidate Levar Stoney (Richmond City). Turnout is also higher than average in Petersburg.
- Hampton Roads: Turnout is generally higher-than-statewide in AG candidate Jay Jones’ Democratic-leaning Norfolk and mixed in LG candidate Aaron Rouse’s more politically mixed Virginia Beach. Turnout is also generally better-than-statewide on the Virginia Peninsula.
- Rest of Virginia: Only the college towns of Charlottesville, Williamsburg and Blacksburg generally have higher-than-average Democratic turnout, though the college precincts themselves have below average turnout since school’s out.
Raw Vote Maps Show More of the Same
We also mapped the number of raw votes by precinct from the Digital Poll Watchers (dot) Org data below. These maps are side-by-side in a gallery for comparison; click on any for a larger image.
97.1K Democratic votes were cast as of yesterday. The overwhelming majority of these, 70.9K, were by-mail. Only 26.2K votes were cast in-person.
Like in the turnout map, precincts along the I-64 Richmond-to-Norfolk corridor largely lead the state in total returns, alongside Charlottesville and patches of NoVa. Precincts in most of the state outside those areas are very pale shades of blue, suggesting fewer than 20 total or 10 by-mail/in-person votes have been cast in most of Virginia precincts.
Data willing, we’ll be back next week with an update.