What Went Down During The 2021 Elections

Apropos to my own media consumption right now … Readers, if you are watching cable news, please ignore all of the wildly early vote counts that are being highlighted. It’s not worth even mentioning the split when there is only 5 percent of a vote in at a particular location.

McAuliffe’s campaign says that Fairfax County is delayed in reporting its early vote count and numbers won’t be released by the planned 8 p.m. Eastern deadline.

Regarding your points, Leah and Jacob, I think it’s going to be largely location-dependent. The professional class in Republican politics knows the places where it needs to be more thoughtful about who it nominates. Virginia is obviously one of those places. I think they have levers to play with outside of totally skipping a primary to get non-fringe candidates elected, but it’s still an open question. I also think that Trump sometimes ends up endorsing more mainstream candidates in order to rack up wins for his endorsees. He may be more inclined to do that in competitive territory. In very red parts of the country, all bets are off.