What Went Down During The 2021 Elections

For sure, Nate. We at FiveThirtyEight have long maintained that exit polls are imperfect and, at times, misleading but they are a useful tool for getting an initial impression of what’s happening in a given race.

As the official provider of cold takes tonight, I suppose I should add that I’m a little skeptical that exit polls are the best way to determine demographic shifts in the Virginia electorate. Exit polls are always fairly imprecise, and particularly as they’re becoming harder to conduct in a world in which more people vote early or absentee, I’d tend to look at precinct- or county-level data instead for a sense of what happened and why.

According to preliminary exit polling data, education issues are still top of mind for commonwealth voters. Data so far shows that about a quarter of voters ranked education as their most important issue. Among those voters, Youngkin was ahead of McAuliffe by almost double-digits, 56 percent to 44 percent. Of course, these numbers shouldn’t be too surprising. Throughout the campaign, Youngkin really mobilized suburban parents’ fears and anger about what kids are taught in schools and repeatedly hit McAuliffe on issues related to K-12 education.