What Went Down During The 2021 Elections

With what appear to be early/absentee votes reporting in the special election for Ohio’s 15th District, Republican Mike Carey leads Democrat Allison Russo 54 percent to 46 percent. With Election Day votes likely to skew Republican, it looks like Carey has this sewn up — but of course, that was expected in this R+19 district. The margin, though, will be yet another data point to throw in the mix as to whether tonight’s results were a good omen for Republicans or Democrats.

Prediction markets (which are sometimes dumb but have been following the polls pretty closely in Virginia) now show McAuliffe with only about a 12 percent chance, which is roughly equivalent (I am contractually obligated to say this because I’m in Las Vegas) of drawing to an inside straight.

Using our benchmark vote margins in each Virginia locality, Youngkin is off to a good start, as most places are voting more Republican than the figures we set out at the start of the night. However, it’s very important to note that many places have not reported absentee ballots, which we know will lean fairly Democratic and could shift these results much closer to the benchmark margins, one way or the other.

The big story at this point would probably be Loudoun County, where McAuliffe only leads by about 6 points, which is about 10 points more Republican than our benchmark there. In the 2020 presidential election, Biden carried the northern Virginia county by 25 points, when it made up about 5 percent of the state’s vote. But now with 82 percent of the expected vote in from Loudoun — with around 17,000 early votes left to be tallied, according to the Virginia Public Access Project — there’s a possibility things narrow there further for McAuliffe.