Reading the Tea Leaves

Virginia voters began voting in this year’s presidential election on Friday, September 20; early voting continues through Saturday, November 2, and everyone else will vote on Tuesday, November 5. All of the graphs in this essay are taken from The Virginia Public Access Project (https://vpap.org).

This is what the early votes in Virginia look like through October 22, 2024.

First, a total of 1,191,881 Virginians have voted so far this election year; that is about 42% of the total votes cast through election day in 2020.

The number of people voting has increased gradually over time after the burst of enthusiasm on the first day of early voting – September 20, when 56,000 Virginians voted.  Including me.  On October 21, 87,220 people voted, followed by 69,317 on October 22.

This map shows early voting by Congressional District.  I live in the darkest green Congressional District, the First District of Virginia.  Voters in my district have cast more votes than in any other district.  Yay CD1!  This accomplishment is made possible by the Richmond suburb counties of Chesterfield and Henrico (which rank #2 and #6, respectively, among all counties in Virginia) and my own James City County, which ranks #14.

This is a different display of similar information.  Voters in CD1 have cast votes amounting to 48% of the total votes cast through Election Day in 2020.

The olds have voted more than the youngs.  That makes sense.  We’re more likely to have the time to vote during the day during early voting.

Women make up 55% of the voters, compared to 45% for men.  Not surprising. 

Identifying early voters by political party is a little trickier in Virginia than in some other states, because Virginia is one of the states where voters don’t register by a political party preference.  As the preamble to this chart tells us, this data is based on “likely” partisanship – identified by whether voters participated in a party primary, are members of a local party organization, or donated to a party candidate.

This doesn’t tell us anything about who these voters voted for.  That’s true, also, in the states where the news organizations are breathlessly informing us that “Republican turnout is at an all-time high” or some such thing.  I’ve decided to believe that this means that Republicans are eager to vote for Kamala and Tim.

If your state has begun early voting, have you voted yet? If not, go vote! Unless you’re planning to vote for the other dude, in which case there’s no rush. Take your time.