You’re probably tired of seeing endless campaign commercials for gubernatorial candidates Terry McAuliffe and Glen Youngkin whenever you turn on your TV, but they’re not for naught: early voting has increased more than 250 percent in Virginia compared with where it was four years ago.
The Virginia Public Access Project keeps data on the number of people voting by mail and in-person, which can also be broken down by congressional district. VPAP reported as of Tuesday, October 25, nearly 725,000 people have voted early, compared with only 195,634 total in 2017. Opinion polls show the hotly contested gubernatorial election is essentially tied.
District 10, which includes Loudoun County, has the highest turnout with about 102,000 residents voting early. Districts 7, 8, and 1 follow, each with more than 90,000 people turning out to cast their ballots ahead of next week’s election. District 9 has the lowest turnout so far with 50,000 early ballots counted.
Of the districts with the highest turnouts, 10 and 8 have a history of voting Democratic, while district 1 is more Republican, though not by much, according to the Cook Political Report. District 7 was very even in the 2020 presidential election, only going to Biden by 1 percent, but Cook’s partisan voter index has the district coded as performing slightly more Republican for 2021.
In-person voting has been the more popular option in every district so far, and you can find early voting locations on the Department of Elections’ site. Check out a visual of the breakdown from Axios DC.
The election is next Tuesday, November 2. Only one more week of endless ads.
