What Went Down During The 2021 Elections

In a few minutes, we’ll have some preliminary exit poll numbers for you (you might already be seeing them circulate on Twitter), but we just want to remind you: These are early, preliminary numbers, and you should take them with a healthy grain of salt. Exit polls are polls just like any other, so they have a margin of error. Plus, these preliminary exit polls don’t account for folks who will vote between now and when polls close, and they haven’t yet been weighted to the final result of the election (which is the big advantage that exit polls have over regular old pre-election polls).

Although today is Election Day, voting has already been underway in Virginia for several weeks. According to The Virginia Public Access Project, 1,142,308 people had already voted (either early in person or by absentee ballot) as of Oct. 31. And according to Democratic data firm TargetSmart, approximately 53 percent of these voters are Democrats, 31 percent are Republicans and 16 percent are independents.

But don’t read too much into this early voting data. It does not tell us much about who is going to win.

First, while a sizable number of Virginians have voted early, a substantial number will vote on Election Day. In fact, a recent Washington Post-Schar School poll found that 56 percent of likely voters plan to vote in person on Election Day, with these voters favoring Youngkin by 19 points. So although Democrats have likely taken a strong lead with early votes, Republicans can easily close the gap with strong turnout on Election Day.

Second, early voting data tells us who has voted, but it does not tell us how they voted. Although “it all comes down to turnout” is a popular axiom, vote choice among swing voters matters. And a major reason the Washington Post poll found a competitive race was that independent voters favored Youngkin by 18 points, a turnaround from favoring Biden by double digits in 2020. It’s possible, too, that some of these voters voted early.

And finally, we don’t really have a good comparison point to benchmark this year’s early voting statistics. In the 2017 gubernatorial election, early voting was far more restricted, while in the 2020 presidential election, many voters who would normally vote in-person voted absentee because of the pandemic.

So while it is encouraging that many voters have already cast ballots, we’ll have to wait until election night to find out who’s going to win.

Our colleagues at ABC News, Kenneth Moton and Beatrice Peterson, are on the ground in Virginia today, and they said in an email that voters were lined up to cast their ballots early this morning in Fairfax County — one of the state’s most populous counties.

In an effort to better understand how voters were feeling in this closely contested race, they talked to several women earlier this morning, and at least two women outside of the suburban polling location told them that they voted for Youngkin. For Susan Moore, education was top of mind, while for her friend Lynne Kirk, the big-ticket issue was abortion.

Kirk told them on camera that McAuliffe “had the opportunity to be governor before, and I don’t feel like he did a great job at that time.” Kirk added, “It’s time to give somebody else another chance.”

But Moira Skelley told them that she voted for McAuliffe, telling ABC News, “I just feel like if Youngkin was to become governor, I just don’t know what would happen to Virginia. I would really not like to see it turn red.”