What Went Down During The 2021 Elections

I agree, Micah, and would also add that as long as Trump continues to baselessly blame his 2020 loss on election fraud, he’s going to continue to pressure Republicans to conduct audits and implement voting restrictions.

Another thought about the high turnout in Virginia: I’ve seen some people wondering if Republicans will rethink their efforts to make it harder to vote, seeing that higher turnout isn’t always bad for them. But I think the answer there is no.

For one, many of the GOP’s policies making it harder to vote disproportionally affect Democratic-leaning groups (young voters, voters of color). So it’s not like the GOP is blindly making it harder to vote for everyone. And second, remember that turnout is high in Virginia relatively speaking. McAuliffe was doing better among registered voters than among likely voters in pre-election polls (which are looking like they’ll end up being pretty accurate). If somehow everyone in Virginia had voted, the result likely would have been different.

Put another way: It’s possible for turnout to be high and for Republicans to make it harder to vote (especially for certain groups), and it’s possible for both of those things to help the GOP.

The early votes are counted in the Buffalo mayor’s race, and 65 percent of them went to a write-in candidate. Write-ins won’t officially be tabulated for a while, but we can assume that the vast majority of those are for incumbent Mayor Byron Brown, who lost the Democratic primary to democratic socialist India Walton in June and has now mounted a write-in campaign.