What Went Down During The 2021 Elections

We’re starting to get a handful of votes from all over the Commonwealth of Virginia — that’s right, it’s not a “state.” Much too early to say anything about those, but localities are beginning to report.

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.