Federal Fallout: The 2025 Virginia Elections

Hi everyone, I’m Sam and this is Federal the Virginia Elections. This episode is the grand finale where we will go over the Virginia Supreme Court ruling that finally came down on the redistricting referendum. And then at the end, I’ll talk a little bit about what what might be next for me. So to begin, I wanted to talk about this Virginia Supreme Court opinion we were all waiting for it. Oral arguments had happened. And really, everyone was on pins and needles waiting for the Virginia Supreme Court to rule. And luckily, they finally gave their order on Friday. 00:34.01Sam ShiraziAnd it was I would say a surprise I think a lot of people even some republicans at the end of the day thought the Virginia supreme court was not going to strike down the redistricting referendum because obviously it had passed and so a lot of people on the democratic side especially but even some republicans had said “As much as we may believe in legal theory, it’s just hard to imagine the Virginia Supreme Court overturning a referendum.” But that’s what the Virginia Supreme Court. In a 4-3 opinion, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the redistricting referendum was not lawful because the process which the Democrats put it the ballot did not comply with the Virginia Constitution.01:01.14Sam ShiraziAnd so I’m going to kind of break down the opinion. I don’t want to dwell on the opinion because at the end of the day, you know it is what it is. The Virginia Supreme Court ruled. And, you know we’ll have to see what happens,01:25.91Sam ShiraziYou know now that the new redistricting map is not going to happen we’re going to be using the same map in 2026. And actually, it was the Virginia Supreme Court that drew these maps through their special masters that they appointed. So kind of things coming full circle from the beginning of the the decade when the Virginia Supreme Court drew the maps.01:47.80Sam Shirazibut also something also came full circle in terms of the 2025 election so this podcast was started in 2025 for the Virginia elections that that year and this is really the last kind hurrah the 2025 Virginia elections. Why is that? Because the issue in this case was, what is the meaning election? And what it mean the 2025 elections to happen?02:02.86Sam Shiraz02:07.48Sam ShiraziAnd what I mean by that is in order to pass a constitutional referendum in Virginia which the Democrats needed to do in order to redistrict there are a few procedural things that have to happen. The General Assembly, both the Virginia State Senate and the Virginia House of Delegates, has to pass the constitutional amendment once and then the Virginia constitution says it has to be passed again after the next general election. 02:40.65Sam Shiraziand so the entire case essentially came down to what does the term after the next general election mean. So the Democrats, what they did about a week before the election last November, they passed the constitutional amendment. The election happened. The Democrats the election. In January, they passed the constitutional amendment again. And then it went to the voters and the voters passed it.02:57.18Sam ShiraziSo the Virginia Supreme Court say the maps can’t into effect? Why did hey say essentially the referendum was invalid? What the Virginia supreme court the majority the four four justices who ruled for the republicans in this case what they said was after the next general election means so, again, the entire case is what does election mean?03:21.71Sam ShiraziAnd what the majority said was, once voting starts, once early voting happened, the election is underway and so you cannot pass this thing when early voting is happening you cannot pass constitutional amendment voting is happening. you have to wait till after the next general election, which in the general election started.03:48.67Sam Shiraziso that was the majority opinion essentially what they were saying is this this two- time requirement thing yeah know there’s a reason it’s a in in the Virginia Constitution. You don’t want to rush these things. you want to give voters an opportunity to vote on it.04:01.73Sam ShiraziAnd you know that’s what the majority opinion said. The dissent was you know pretty clear that in their minds. Election day means election day, and that’s when you have an election. If you ask someone, when is the next general election, they’re going to say you know November 4 or whatever the date of the election is.04:18.98Sam ShiraziElection has not been thought of as a forty five today early voting period and so I think at the end of the day both of the majority opinion and the dissenting opinion were basically saying, we’re trying to figure out what election means. And the majority opinion says election is the entire voting season when early voting is going on. The dissent was saying election day is literally election day. That’s when there’s an election as opposed to the entire early voting cycle.04:38.80Sam Shirazi And I was surprised it was a 4-3 opinion, to be perfectly honest with I thought they either try to make this unanimous or maybe it’d be 5-2. But I think the fact that it was 4-3 shows that the court was really torn about this issue and it was not an easy issue.04:51.32Sam ShiraziI could tell honestly when right before the referendum the supreme court issued the Virginia supreme court issued an opinion allowing the referendum to go forward you could tell in that opinion that they were not happy with this result. And reading between the lines, you could tell that some of the justices really didn’t want the referendum to happen. I think they felt like they had to let the referendum happen.05:24.90Sam Shiraziand so we’re in this odd situation where Virginians voted for this thing and you had millions of people voting and it passed, and the Virginia Supreme Court at the last second saying it is invalid and it shouldn’t have happened. 05:40.60Sam ShiraziBut I had flagged in previous podcast, the Virginia Supreme Court very explicitly said they might that. They left that open that possibility. And the Virginia Supreme Court sometimes, I think, feels that it is not necessarily to to the either the voters they left that over that possibility and the Virginia supreme court sometimes I think feels that it is not necessarily going to you know bend to the will of either the voters or The General Assembly if they feel that the law is not being followed and they take the law seriously. And, you know i’m sure a lot of people have different opinions about what the Virginia Supreme Court did. But at at the end of the day, you know they are the highest highest court in Virginia.06:10.50Sam Shiraziand it’s important to respect the legal process and and you know that’s what they said essentially and and you know we we can kind of go on. 06:17.24Sam ShiraziNot surprisingly, Republicans were very happy. They felt felt vindicated. They felt that this is what they had been saying all along, that the Virginia Democrats were not following the law, and that once the Virginia Supreme Court finally made the ruling they were going to rule for them, and they were right. It was a 4-3 opinion, so just barely the Republicans were were correct, but obviously republicans were happy about this opinion on the other end this spectrum democrats were not happy about the opinion, some of them were blaming the court. Some them were more to accept the results. But at the end the day, it is what it is. We live in a system where have to abide the rulings that the judges make. And it was a 4-3 decision. And I think that the Democrats were06:50.52Sam Shiraziwere frustrated by this. However, I kind of urge both sides not to dwell on the opinion. And I’ll talk a little bit about what’s happen after this. But I really kind of encourage people on both sides. you know the Republicans are going to be wanting to celebrate and say, you know this is the greatest thing ever. The reality is the Virginia Republicans are in pret… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fall Out of Virginia Elections. This episode, we will look at what’s next with Virginia redistricting, specifically what’s going to be going on at the Virginia Supreme Court now that the redistricting referendum has passed.00:13.62Sam ShiraziSo last episode, we kind of broke down the results of the redistricting referendum. I may talk about that some more down the line. However, I did want to talk about basically the next step in the redistricting referendum.00:25.34Sam Shirazisaga that has gone on in Virginia. And that is the Virginia Supreme court, because while the Republicans put up a good fight, they weren’t able to defeat the referendum at the ballot box. And so before the referendum, they had brought a lot of legal challenges and now they are renewing those legal challenges specifically because the Virginia Supreme court has kicked the can down the road. The Virginia Supreme court said that they were not going to rule before the redistricting referendum, perhaps in their mind, they were,00:52.00Sam Shiraziwondering if this thing won’t pass. And if it didn’t pass, that would bail them out essentially, and they wouldn’t have to rule on the redistricting referendum. However, it did pass. And now the Virginia Supreme Court is in the position where they said that they would rule if it passed and it passed. So now they have to rule.01:09.15Sam ShiraziAnd I’ll kind of walk you through what happened in the last few days in terms of the legal process and what’s going to be happening going forward. So after the redistricting referendum passed, the Virginia Republicans went back to the judge that had previously ruled for them in Tazewell County. This is a deep red county in Southwest Virginia.01:29.58Sam ShiraziBefore the referendum, that had caused a lot of legal questions, which the Virginia Supreme Court eventually just said, we’re going to have the referendum and then we’re gonna figure everything out after the referendum. So long story short, Virginia Republicans go back to the judge in Tazewell County. The judge in Tazewell County, not surprisingly,01:47.57Sam Shiraziruled completely for the Republicans and basically said the redistricting referendum was not valid and interestingly prevented has placed the injunction telling the Virginia Department of Elections that they essentially cannot certify you a district referendum because it is not a valid referendum.02:07.11Sam ShiraziAnd obviously, this is going to be appealed. Both the Democrats and Attorney General Jay Jones have said that they are going to fight this and take it to the Virginia Supreme Court. And we all know that the Virginia Supreme Court is ultimately going to make the final call. So none of that was really surprising. You saw some reporting saying, well,02:24.18Sam ShiraziThe redistricting referendum has been held to be invalid. We basically knew that judge was going to rule that way. He ruled that way before the referendum. It’s not a huge surprise. And we all knew that essentially the Virginia Supreme Court is going to be the one that is going to make the call because they are the highest court in Virginia. This is a complex issue of Virginia state constitutional law.02:44.83Sam ShiraziAnd and The next few days are going to be important because on Monday, there will actually be oral arguments on this case. Now, it’s not exactly on the judge’s order that he issued right after redistricting referendum. it’s It’s basically a preexisting case. But I can’t imagine the Virginia Supreme Court is not going to be talking about the merits of the case.03:03.04Sam ShiraziAnd ultimately, I expect them to just issue a ruling one way or another deciding this case. So there’s a lot of procedural stuff I don’t want to get bogged down in because ultimately, what’s going to happen is the Virginia Supreme court is just going to rule and they’re going say either. Yes. The referendum was valid or no, it wasn’t valid. And they can’t kick the can down in the road anymore. The reason they can’t kick kick the can down anymore is because,03:25.22Sam ShiraziThe filing deadline in Virginia for the congressional seats is May 26th. So if you’re a congressional candidate, you have to know which district am I running in because the districts look pretty different. That was the point of redistricting.03:37.22Sam ShiraziSo maybe under the old maps, you might run in district A, but under the new maps, you might run in district B. So, you know realistically, the Virginia Supreme Court does not have a whole lot of time. They have to rule by May 26th. And I anticipate that they will rule before that.03:51.24Sam ShiraziAnd the thing is, I don’t think they were just sitting around while the redistricting campaign was going on. I think they needed more time to really understand this issue and to be able to come up with a decision that makes sense. However, they didn’t have that right before the redistricting referendum. They felt like they were being kind of rushed into it. So I think now they took this time during the redistricting referendum to try to figure out, okay, what are we going to do with this case? So I don’t think they were just sitting around doing nothing. And I do think this oral argument is going to be important because it kind of shows you know what are they... It could potentially show what they’re thinking, and and they’re going to be asking specific questions to the lawyers.04:45.04Sam ShiraziSo we’re going to have the oral arguments in the redistricting case on Monday in the Virginia virginia Supreme Court. I’m sure we’ll get you know some insights into what’s going to happen. And then i expect in May at some point they’re going to issue their final ruling and make a decision one way or another. – so I have had previous episodes where I kind of went really into the weeds about the legal issues. I don’t want to do that this episode because I think there’s a lot and you know I previously talked about it. What I wanted to talk about in this episode was something a little bit different and it’s really the framing of legal issues because I think that’s really important and it’s something that is not often talked about you know even among lawyers. I think it’s really important but lawyers don’t even think about this stuff sometimes.05:28.52Sam ShiraziAnd what I mean by it is, how do you present an issue? Do you present it big picture or do you present it really into the weeds details? And I think lawyers are known for being sometimes very technical, very in the weeds, you know, quibbling over very minor things. And I think there is obviously that’s important in the law and you want to get the details right.05:49.60Sam ShiraziHowever, I think some of the best lawyers, the real ability is to make very complicated things actually rather simple and not to overcomplicate things. So what I wanna do with this podcast is to actually make things relatively simple and kind of explain in more layman’s terms,06:04.98Sam Shiraziwhat are the Democrats’ strongest arguments and what are the Republicans’ strongest arguments and kind of why they might win on either side. And I do think a lot of this comes down to framing and how does the Virginia Supreme Court look at this? Do they look at this more big picture, which is what the Democrats, I think, want them to do, is to look big picture?06:23.06Sam ShiraziOr do they want it, or do the Virginia Supreme Court look at these things more in the weeds, details, which I think is more what the Republicans want to do? And I think this question of framing is really important because when it comes to a legal issue, it’s not just about, the way you approach the facts and the law. It’s really about how you’re thinking about the issue. And, you know, I had mentioned this before. So, uh, I am an attorney and sometimes when I’m grappling with legal issues,06:49.60Sam Shiraziyou get kind of bogged down in something, but then you kind … This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Will Fall Out of Virginia Elections. This episode we will go over the results of the redistricting referendum after the results came in on Tuesday night and it looks like yes is going to win by probably around 4% when all the votes are in.00:15.61Sam ShiraziAnd yeah, really interesting results. Honestly, kind of what we expected based off the vibes, based off the polls. So what I wanted to do is kind of break down the results, talk about them a little bit. I will do further analysis in other episodes.00:29.63Sam ShiraziBut I think the the thing that I wanted to note at the beginning is this podcast is called Federal Fallout. And people who have asked me, you going to change the name? And I thought about it. But, you know,00:39.74Sam ShiraziThere is still a lot of federal fallout going on in Virginia. i think this redistricting referendum is another federal fallout, not simply because President Trump started kind of asking Republican states to redistrict, which led to a response in Democratic states such as Virginia.00:55.88Sam ShiraziBut really, if you look at the results, the reason why YES won this campaign was in Northern Virginia. In all of Northern Virginia, YES did much better than the Harris margin 2024.01:07.67Sam ShiraziAnd given that this was a relatively close result, I think the reason you can say it passed was the federal fallout in Northern Virginia. Other parts of Virginia, like Southwest Virginia, no did better than even President Trump did in 2024. So there were parts of Virginia that were really upset at this redistricting referendum where the Republicans did well.01:27.58Sam ShiraziBut in Northern Virginia, a lot of votes, they just didn’t do that well. And I think the logical explanation is it’s federal fallout. People are still upset at what happened in D.C. last year and continuing into this year. Specifically, people are upset at Doge.01:42.68Sam ShiraziI think you know it was really toxic for the Republicans. That’s why they lost in 2025. And I think this redistricting referendum, while it was closer, certainly the Republicans ran a better campaign. I think they made they they did their best to try to make this a referendum really on the maps and gerrymandering. But at the end of the day, in Northern Virginia, a lot of those voters are just single issue voters and they’re gonna vote against the Republicans because they’re just upset at what’s going on. So I’ll kind of break all that down. I wanted is to talk about a few things before doing more of a deep dive into the federal fallout.02:17.20Sam Shiraziyou know Long story short, I think the early vote, the vibes and the polls were all on the money you know in terms of the early vote There was an indication that the more rural parts of Virginia were upset and they were turning out a higher number. I think the results here show that.03:05.07Sam Shiraziwith this result. And then finally, wanted to talk about the vibes. I think the vibes were very clear that yes had an advantage, but it was not overwhelming. We all had a sense that this was going to be closer than 25. had said in my last podcast that I thought the most likely outcome was a single digit yes win, and we ended up getting a single digit yes win. So not a lot surprising other than I would say the regional dynamics in Virginia in this election. And what I mean by that is really the blue parts of Virginia in Northern Virginia got bluer as compared to 2024. Most of the rest of Virginia got a little bit redder compared to 2024. And some parts of Virginia, like Southwest Virginia, got much redder. And I think, you know, there’s clearly an indication there was people upset in Southwest Virginia at the at this map.03:54.40Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, I think while The Democrats got a win and I don’t want to take anything away from them. A win’s a win. I do think it has hurt their brand in parts of Virginia.04:04.26Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, this kind of increasing polarization we’ve seen between rural and suburban areas has continued and this referendum has made it even worse. So I do think... you know not to rain on the Democrats parade, but they do get a temporary victory for this decade with these new maps. But I think going forward, it’ll be even harder to sell the Democratic brand in Southwest Virginia, other parts of rural Virginia, because I think a lot of those voters were clearly upset. And you could see that in the results and the turnout. So I don’t want to pretend like this is 100% great news for the Democrats. They didn’t get an overwhelming victory. And it looks like it’s going to be less of a victory than the attorney general race04:41.73Sam Shiraziin 2025, which was kind of my benchmark. I had said that if the Democrats got a bigger victory than the attorney general race, that’s a good night for them. I’d say, yeah i don’t want to say it’s a good night for the Virginia Republicans because they still lost, but I do think they did better than expected. I think at the beginning of this referendum campaign when really, you know, it looked like they had basically no shot and they made it competitive and they had a shot But look, in politics, coming up short is not good enough. Being close is not good enough. You have to win. And the Virginia Democrats won. And, you know, I don’t want to take anything away from them either.05:16.14Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, kind of going back to the the beginning of what I was talking about at the beginning of the podcast, you know, people that talk to me are going to change the name of the podcast. You’re continuing it. But, you know, it’s obviously things are different in 2025.05:29.01Sam ShiraziAnd I thought about it. One of the things I wanted to I was thinking about changing my podcast name to is one election after another, because i will talk about it probably in my next episode. But we will have a primary on August 4th in Virginia. So there’s going to be another election coming up.05:44.38Sam ShiraziBut I think the federal fallout concept is still valid in Virginia. And I do think, you know, we’ve gotten to this point where. The Virginia Republicans, you know, they are going to be very upset at Northern Virginia and they’re going to blame everything on Northern Virginia. And I get that. And I get that a lot of rural voters are upset at Northern Virginia. But I do think there should also be a little bit of self-reflection about why some of these counties voted so heavily against the Republicans again. And this is you know the second election and in a row where they very clearly sent a message that they were upset with the Republican Party.06:18.68Sam Shiraziyou know As I was looking, as the results were coming in, i had flagged Loudoun as really important. you know they get They report really quickly. And I was looking at the results in Loudoun and the final result seems to be about 61-39.06:32.68Sam ShiraziAnd as soon as I saw that Loudoun was going to be 61-39, I basically knew it was over because there’s no way the Virginia Republicans can win in Virginia if they lose Loudoun by 20 points. like Loudoun being 60-40 Democratic is not sustainable for the Virginia virginia Republicans. like They need to get that margin into the... you know they need to be in the 40s to be competitive in in Virginia. and And they just weren’t able to do it tonight. Even though in some parts of rural Virginia, they made up a lot of votes. They did better than I think people were expecting in parts of Virginia, but there just aren’t a lot of votes in these rural counties.07:08.76Sam ShiraziAnd so you can improve by 5%, 10% in some of these rural counties. But if if you’re not doing well enough in Northern Virginia, it’s not going to matter. Other parts of Northern Virginia, Fairfax County, biggest county, most populated in in Virginia,07:55.21Sam ShiraziIn 2021, Glenn Youngkin was able to keep these margins closer. For example, Loudon was about 55-45 … This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. i’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Feroa Fall Out the Virginia Elections. This episode, we will go over the election day here in the Commonwealth of Virginia as voters go to the polls to cast their ballots in this redistricting referendum.00:13.62Sam ShiraziAnd then at seven o’clock, we will start to see the results. So certainly an exciting day and the culmination of a... an Interesting campaign that is something that was unique in Virginia history, a redistricting referendum in the spring. And first I want to go over the vibes, see where we are, and then I’ll talk about what to expect as the results start to come in this evening. Adam So to begin with the vibes, I think this has certainly been a vibes election. And what I mean by that is we haven’t gotten that many polls.00:40.70Sam ShiraziHonestly, in terms of the high quality polls that I trust, we only got two of them really with the ballot language. One of them was from the Washington Post-Shar school. The other one was from State Navigate. And they both roughly show the same thing about a five point lead for the Yes campaign in a likely motor likely voter model.00:59.86Sam ShiraziAnd I think that is kind of where the vibes are. The vibes are there’s a single digit lead for the Yes campaign. This isn’t overwhelmingly a slam dunk for Yes. I think it’s certainly closer than 2025 in terms of the governor’s race.01:15.45Sam ShiraziAnd so... I think the thing that’s been a little bit challenging as a political analyst is we don’t have a lot of data. I’m going to talk about the early vote a little bit, but obviously you like to get polls. You like to get multiple polls from multiple different sources to get a little bit of a range. And we haven’t gotten that. We’ve essentially got these two polls.01:33.71Sam ShiraziI think both of them are solid polls. We had Chaz Naticom on talking about State Navigate. State Navigate was obviously very accurate in 2025. And so I trust they navigate Washington post. Sure also has a solid track record in Virginia. There’s been other polls and I haven’t really mentioned them. a lot of them have kind of been, you know, partisan junk that’s been put out there. And so I don’t want to spend too much time on it because I don’t think they’re super trustworthy.01:58.90Sam ShiraziBut there are not a lot of polls to go off of. So that’s challenging. I think the other set of data that we have to go off of are is the early vote. And, you know, I certainly like looking at early vote in Virginia. But I think there’s a lot, as I said, often an over extrapolation about early vote. And the really the thing we don’t know about early vote is how is how is it breaking down? We have a sense of, OK, these people probably are Democrats. These people are are probably Republicans, but we don’t know, are they voting yes or no? They could be voting more for yes than we’re expecting. They could be voting...02:33.03Sam Shirazifor no more than we’re expecting. And there’s no way of knowing that until the results start coming in. So while I will talk about early vote a little bit, I am always hesitant basically every election to overanalyze early vote. So for example, in 2025, if I saw the early vote, I’d say, yeah that’s pretty good for the Democrats, but it didn’t look like a landslide purely off the early vote.02:54.82Sam ShiraziAnd so If you showed me the early vote and then you showed me the final results in 2025, I wouldn’t be able to predict that just off the early vote because it showed the Democrats were doing well, but not that they were going to get a 15 point win in the governor’s race. There’s really no way of extrapolating that from the early vote.03:10.95Sam ShiraziAnd again, there’s no way of really extrapolating what’s going to happen in this election off the early vote. I can give you some initial thoughts based on some modeling that State Navigate has done and that L2 has done in terms of the early vote.03:26.34Sam ShiraziAnd most people are comparing the early vote to 2025. And I think that’s a fair comparison. And I think there are some things you can learn from the 2025 comparison. However, I’m also a little bit hesitant because I think it is a little bit of apples and oranges. So i I don’t want to go too crazy with the early vote analysis. What most of the modeling has shown is that the early vote compared to 2025 is a little bit redder, maybe two to three points redder, at least if you’re just kind of purely modeling party ID.03:55.51Sam Shiraziyou know I think there’s a few reasons for that. i I do think the Republicans are more energized this year than they were in 2025. You can see that in some of these counties, like rural red counties in southwest Virginia, where there hasn’t been any change to satellite voting locations. And the early vote is up in those counties. So I think i the early vote, you can say there’s a little bit more enthusiasm on the Republican side compared to 2025.04:34.73Sam ShiraziAnd I think if you look at the turnout in some of the blue areas in Virginia, I think it’s pretty much matching 2025 with some minor exceptions. And I think those minor exceptions, for the most part, you can explain by changes in satellite voting locations. And you hear me talk a lot about the satellite voting locations issue because in some localities, it can make a big deal. So I’m going flag Chesapeake.04:56.74Sam ShiraziChesapeake is a locality in Hampton Roads, pretty big actually, even though you don’t always hear about it. Tends to be a swing county. Democrats did well there in 2025. There were a bunch of satellite voting locations in Chesapeake in 2025.05:10.71Sam ShiraziThere were zero satellite voting locations. There was only one early voting site in Chesapeake, which is a big county population-wise, big county geographically. And so naturally, we’ve seen a big fall in the early vote in Chesapeake this election.05:24.89Sam ShiraziThat doesn’t mean those people aren’t going to vote. It just tells me Because there were no satellite voting locations, those people are probably going to vote on election day. And so I think that’s where you start getting this apples to oranges type comparison where you can’t just purely compare 100% to 2025 because there will be in some places more election day turnout than there was 2025. So the fact that the early vote is a little bit redder than 2025. While I do think part of that is the Republican enthusiasm, I think part of that is also the reduced satellite voting locations. And another indication that might be the case is on Saturday was the last day of early voting. We got a lot of early voting, over 99,000 early votes Saturday didn’t quite hit the number of early votes we got in 2025 on the final day, again, because of the satellite voting location issue. But in a couple localities, I’m thinking about Arlington and Loudoun.06:17.68Sam ShiraziThose two locations, which are generally, Arlington is very blue and Loudoun leans blue. Those two locations had the biggest day of early voting ever. So that includes presidential elections. So Loudoun and Arlington had more early votes on a single day on Saturday than they’ve ever had before. And that is telling me there’s something going on with the satellite voting locations. And I think that is part of the story. And so long story short, I do think there is a possibility on election day, we see more more votes coming out of blue localities that didn’t have as much satellite early voting as they did in 2025.06:54.02Sam ShiraziI think when you when you take that all into account, I think the early vote is perhaps a little bit redder when you’re looking at some of these counties. There’s a little bit more enthusiasm for the Republicans. so But it’s not to the point where I can tell you who’s going to win or I can give you a confident number based on the early vote. I think we can say... It’s going to be closer than 2025 governor’s race. I can say that pretty confidently based … This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout the Virginia Elections. This episode we will go over the final days of the redistricting campaign and some of the dynamics we might see as the results start coming in on Tuesday.00:12.44Sam ShiraziBut before I get to that, I did want to talk about something a lot more tragic and that is the news that I’m sure many of you have heard about former Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax.00:23.51Sam Shiraziand his wife. For those of you who are not aware, the former lieutenant governor shot and killed his wife, and then he took his own life. Obviously, a very tragic situation.00:34.68Sam ShiraziMy heart goes out to their children and the Extend family, and just a really, really awful news that came out this week. I did want to talk about it because, obviously, it’s an important event.00:47.21Sam ShiraziI’m not going to give you my commentary. There’s really nothing more for me to say other than It’s just a huge tragedy and I’m sorry that it happened and I wish everyone involved who knew them the best as they continue to process this this horrible event.01:02.68Sam ShiraziSo anyways, I will turn over to the redistricting referendum because it is coming up. It is going to be on Tuesday. All eyes will be on Virginia as the results start coming in. So on this Saturday, April 18th, this is the last day of early voting. Early voting will be going on across Virginia.01:19.54Sam ShiraziThe satellite voting locations are open. So we’re going to probably see the biggest day of early voting definitely so far. for this election and then possibly could be the biggest day of early voting for a Virginia state election in Virginia history. We’ll just have to wait and see on the final numbers.01:34.42Sam ShiraziI think, honestly, the early voting is pretty much what we expect or what it typically is in these elections where on paper, the Democrats have an advantage, roughly 60-40 advantage. That’s traditionally what happens in Virginia.01:46.84Sam ShiraziI think The caveat to that is the Democrats could be not doing as well as they did last year. And we’ll talk about some of those dynamics. But I think at the end of the day, I don’t think the early vote going to tell us a whole lot other than turnout probably going to be pretty high. I think we’re going to be approaching the turnout of 2025 and potentially we can get more turnout to hit 3.5 million voters, which is very high for a state election, also very high for an election that is not a general election. It’s a special election in the spring.02:15.58Sam ShiraziSo not going to turn talk about turn early vote so far until we get the final numbers. And then, you know, probably I’ll do one last podcast before the election and I’ll give you kind of my final hot take on Virginia early vote.02:27.38Sam ShiraziThis episode, I wanted to talk about a different dynamic, which is what I call the dynamic between the shy yes voters. versus the no skeptical independent voters. and what And I’ll unpack what all that means, but I think sometimes in elections, there’s just a complete focus on turnout.02:45.66Sam ShiraziAnd you know from what I’m seeing, I think turnout is gonna be high on both sides. I think Democrats are getting out their voters, Republicans are getting out their voters. That’s why it’s gonna be a high turnout election.02:55.88Sam ShiraziI think honestly, the Republicans are doing a better job than they did in 2025 in certain parts of Virginia. But that doesn’t mean they’re going win just off, you know, slightly better turnout because 2025 was a really bad year for them.03:08.36Sam ShiraziAnd while the turnout is up, unless something really, really crazy happens on a election day, it is not astronomical Republican turnout. And certainly compared to the Democrats, the Democrats are keeping up with the Republican turnout.03:19.14Sam ShiraziSo if we’re comparing this election to maybe the 2025 Virginia governor’s election, i Democrats won by 15 points. Perhaps Republicans will get some better turnout than they did last year. That’s really only going to give them a point or two. I can’t imagine that they’re going to overcome 15-point deficit purely on turnout. There just aren’t enough Republicans in Virginia to do that. So I think while the turnout dynamic is important, it’s part of the equation for the Republicans, I just don’t think turnout is is necessarily going to win it for them. And I think for Republicans, the turnout is sufficient, but not necessary. In other words, they need to get turnout, but just having good turnout not going to win it for them. And frankly, I think the Democrats have more upside in terms of turnout. Why? Because remember we talked about the satellite early voting locations.04:04.58Sam ShiraziA lot of places like in Northern Virginia, Richmond area, Hampton Roads, there were reduced satellite early voting locations. And so I think in theory, there could be a lot more Democrats coming out on Election Day, just purely based on that dynamic where there was less early voting this time. And I also think some of the voters, the Democrats...04:24.24Sam Shirazipotentially could get out or or some of the lowest propensity voters like young voters who typically don’t show up for an election like this. You know, it’s possible the Democrats get them out on Election Day. So I think in some ways, the Democrats have more of an upside in terms of the early vote, excuse me, in terms of getting out more turnout.04:40.32Sam ShiraziHowever, the Republicans certainly could drive up their rural turnout. And, you know, the thing with rural voters, a lot of them The counties are big geographically. There’s only one early voting location.04:50.49Sam ShiraziAnd for a lot of these people, it’s a lot easier to go five minutes down to your local polling place than it is to go all the way to the early voting location that could be 30 minutes away. So I think there’s a lot of unknown with election day turnout dynamics. I think the Republicans could have a surge. Democrats could have a surge. Both sides could be surging.05:07.10Sam ShiraziBut kind of bottom line with turnout, I just don’t think that the Republicans can win purely on turnout alone. They’re going to need persuasion. I think the good news for the Republicans is that they are getting persuasion more so than they got in 2025, which is again, not super surprising because 2025 was such a low bar.05:23.96Sam ShiraziBut what I mean by they’re getting persuasion is that the Republicans are winning more people over to the no side than I think perhaps people had predicted, at least according to some of these polls. We had Chaz Nadiqom on last time. He talked about how true independence, people who don’t lean one way or another, are breaking towards the no side. i think that’s good news for no.05:46.54Sam ShiraziSo I do think that no people are getting these persuasion dynamic on their side. And I think at the end of the day I talked about what I describe as kind of skeptical independents who are under leaning no. and And those are the true independents that Chaz Natikom talked about.06:02.70Sam ShiraziAnd i think that’s good a good thing for the Republicans and the no campaign. However, you have to keep all of that in context, because if you think about the no campaign, they’re winning over some of the independents. But the people who are probably less least likely to come out,06:18.70Sam Shiraziyou know, in terms of Democrat, Republican, true independent, I think are the true independents, because this really just seems like more of a partisan fight. fight. And so a lot of independents may just think like, and i don’t have a dog in this fight. I don’t really care.06:31.49Sam ShiraziI don’t like gerrymandering, but I’m not going to bother go vote because I don’t like Trump or I don’t like the Republicans, whatever reason. So I think that’s kind of the challenge the No Campaign faces is that they have this pool of … This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout the Virginia Elections. This episode, we will have Chaz Netticombe back on, and it’s the perfect time because State Navigate has put out a new poll, and I really want to go over all the details with Chaz. So thanks for coming back on.00:16.60Chaz NuttycombeHey, Sam, thanks for having me. Thanks for having me on. You know, I think last time it came on, I was there’s less data to work with. And now there’s a little more data to work with now that I’m happy to talk about that our poll has fetched.00:27.94Sam ShiraziYeah, definitely. So your poll got a lot of attention. In 2025, you were, i would say, among the pollsters that polled every race in Virginia, you were the most accurate pollster. So I think definitely when you drop a poll, I’m going to be paying attention. And this one, i think, in some ways what was what we were expected expecting, but I think had some surprises in there, too. So do you want to kind of big picture go over the poll to begin with?00:52.51Chaz NuttycombeYeah, absolutely. And, you know, like what I will preface with is I have a saying, which is I don’t care who wins. I care about being right.01:01.97Chaz NuttycombeRight. It doesn’t matter. The candidate it doesn’t matter. This is the first poll we’ve done for like a issue. Right. For the constitutional referendum or referendum, whatever. So, you know, i care about being right. That is my job as a forecaster and as the executive director of State Navigate. and And, you know, also my co-forecaster’s job, right, Jack Kersting, is...01:24.99Chaz NuttycombeYou know, we and and a polling team committee, their job, you know, all our job is to just look, this is let’s let’s cut through the noise and and look at the signals. Right. and And let’s try and do the best work we can to let people know where things are heading.01:41.20Chaz Nuttycombeyou know what i will say is i i you know i guess kind of gut feeling is i’m not as confident in getting this one right right whether it be the poll or you know i i do think that the yes referendum probably has uh maybe like an 80 chance of winning thereabouts And that’s just because it’s been 100 years since 1928, not 100 years, but pretty 100 years since there’s been true blue constitutional referendum around this Right? Yeah.02:11.30Chaz Nuttycombesince you know there’s been a true blue you know a constitutional referendum had held around this time So this is a whole different beast and I’m kind of going off of what worked for us in that second survey. Right. Technically, the first survey was, you know, a little bit more accurate than that second survey. However, you know, i think we kind of got lucky in that when it comes to like who when it comes to like the raw responses we got in there. and We were very aggressive in this poll with trying to get a raw response electorate, you know, that was close to the target weights we have.02:53.18Chaz NuttycombeSo, you know, like we did a great job with these raw responses. But yeah, so, you know, we there’s a whole bunch of interesting things in this poll. You know, it’s it’s maybe exciting, maybe not exciting. Right. If you saw all the GMU Sharpsville WAPO poll, maybe it’s not as exciting to you. You’re like, oh, OK, well, they’re in the same boat this time. Right. we, we were, first place last year, in Virginia, I think, uh, Sharskul Wapo was in third or at at least fourth. so they did pretty good. you know, I think they had Spanberger plus 12. We had Spanberger 13, but, you know, I think the big difference there was the attorney general race.03:31.45Chaz Nuttycombeso, you know, it, it, Like I was i was texting you know David Ramadan, you know professor at GMU, and you got to work a little bit on the pole that GMU, sharp school did.03:44.10Chaz NuttycombeAnd i said a I said something to the the tune of, you know we we win together, we lose together this time, right? i think I think nobody can ever accuse me of of hurting, right?03:57.23Chaz NuttycombeIf I were ever the one to hurt, that would have been like last year or something. You know, it’s like, I had what weights, you know, i had in mind looking at the 2025 election and 2021 and everything, you know, this electorate is a little bit different than 2025.04:21.56Chaz NuttycombeYou know, if you were to look at like, I don’t know, the, you know, like CNN exit poll or whatever, or just the exit poll.04:30.76Chaz NuttycombeIt’s not like C it’s, I think CNN is just one that pays for it. it’s, it’s similar to 2025, but little bit, a little bit little bit different. so, you know, and it, it, a big part is the partisan waiting here is, I think it was plus eight in, that survey, the late October survey, it’s plus 11 here.04:48.92Chaz NuttycombeWhy is that? Well, if you were to look at the second survey methodology stuff, I put a section of, look, this is the process is how we went with the partisan weighting, which is the most important part of your poll.05:01.19Chaz NuttycombeAnd the big part in short is the Gallup quarterly national party ID. And so,05:10.74Chaz NuttycombeYou know, the the in Q3 2025, it was plus seven Dem national. Well, it’s plus 10 now as of Q1. And I was really happy to where, you know, the that that I had this data available before we were I knew we had to go in the field.05:27.77Chaz NuttycombeI messaged the the wonderful people at Gallup like, hey, is this gonna drop? And then they responded as soon as it dropped. It was like maybe April 1st or 2nd or whatever. I was like, thank God, you know. So, you know, we’re using pretty much the same methodology that we did in that second survey.05:43.75Chaz NuttycombeAnd, you know, in, so getting to the results, let’s get to results here. Yes, it’s up five, right? That was what the likely voter model and the WAPO Schar School had, if I recall correctly.05:57.62Chaz NuttycombeAnd then it is for the governor’s approval, even. what’s What’s pretty interesting here before we get into like the the sexy parts, right, which are those two things, Trump’s approval is actually a point net approval and actually just approval rating is a point better than compared to that second survey.06:18.65Chaz Nuttycombewhich is really interesting because his national approval is five points worse. So there’s three potential things here. Either one, we’re going to be wrong and underestimate the Democrats again, maybe slightly, or maybe by a lot, who knows? Or the national polls are wrong.06:36.04Chaz NuttycombeOr, and I think three is the most likely culprit. There is a floor for Donald Trump and Republicans in Virginia, right? You know, especially with how I think Virginia is not as racially polarized as say Alabama, right? But we still have a level of racial polarization. And I, and I think that’s the thing. We are a Southern state, no matter how much people from further down the Mason Dixon line want to say we’re Yankee land, we still are a Southern state in so many cultural and demographic ways, right?07:09.72Chaz NuttycombeSo I think that is really the thing here is that there is a floor and it looks like, you know, maybe the low 40s is Donald Trump’s floor. So you’re not going to see like, well, it should be five points worse because that’s what the national point. of That’s what the national, you know, poll show. Well, it’s going to be a little bit different compared to like maybe like the Midwest where you have.07:30.26Chaz Nuttycombeyou know, a little more elasticity in the electorate, right? I mean, Corey Stewart still quote unquote only lost by 16, right? And the same thing with Winsome Sears winning by, or sorry, losing by 15, what, 15.3%, 15.4, whatever decimal was. I think the likely culprit here.07:46.67Chaz Nuttycombepoint four whatever the tenth decimal so i think that’s the likely culprit here but yeah. I just wanted to kind of talk about that cause I thought that was really interesting.07:58.15Chaz Nuttycombethe other, you know, gettin… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the Virginia Elections. This episode, we will first go over Super Saturday and the expansion of early voting that is happening today in Virginia. And then I wanted to also talk about Spanberger, Governor Spanberger’s approval rating and some commentary around that, and just wanted to share my thoughts because I’ve seen lot of hot takes about it, and I thought I would give you mine.00:24.22Sam ShiraziBut before we get to that, obviously redistricting referendums coming up. It’s not that far away. We are just around the corner in terms of election day. Election day is April 21st.00:35.64Sam ShiraziHowever, before that, there will be a lot of early voting. There has already been a lot of early voting. And there will be even more early voting in the final days. That’s typically when you see the most early voting is the last days of the early voting cycle.00:48.98Sam ShiraziAnd I really wanted to emphasize April 11th, which is today, Super Saturday. The reason I call it Super Saturday is because... It is the first day of early voting on a Saturday across Virginia. So everywhere across Virginia, there will be early voting.01:03.52Sam ShiraziBut then on top of that, it’s the first day that many satellite voting locations will be opening this cycle for early voting. I’ll kind of go through where they’re opening, where they’ve already been open, So let me break down early voting a little bit. So early voting, typically the way it works in Virginia is every city or county has to have at least one early voting location.01:23.60Sam ShiraziAnd that’s typically the registrar’s office, usually in the a government center where the the county has the rest of the government facilities. You can go there and do some early voting.01:35.18Sam ShiraziBut in some of the bigger locations across Virginia, big counties, big cities, they will have what are called satellite voting locations. These are secondary or other locations where people can go and early vote.01:46.02Sam ShiraziThere’s really no law that governs that in Virginia. You have pretty big counties in Virginia that only have one like early voting location. And then you have other relatively smaller counties that might have two.01:58.04Sam Shiraziso there’s really no law in terms of how many early voting locations a city or county has, other than obviously they have to have one. And then the other rule that governs early voting is that the last two Saturdays before the election, there needs to be Saturday early voting. Otherwise, there’s no real law. Some places have more weekend weekend early voting. Some places have less, but you have to have at least two weekends.02:21.19Sam Shirazitwo Saturdays before the election, you have to have early voting. And so typically what we see in Virginia, especially for general elections, is the satellite early voting locations tend to open up earlier in the cycle, probably a week or two before they have opened up right now.02:36.61Sam ShiraziHowever, because this is, I would say, a not a general election, it’s a special election, essentially, I think we’re seeing satellite early voting locations opening up later this cycle.02:47.56Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, I I think maybe part of that was just the fact that there was less time to get prepared for this special election. And frankly, I think the but local county election officials might not have thought we were going to get it this much early voting. We have gotten a lot of early voting. They probably thought it wouldn’t be this busy.03:05.70Sam ShiraziAnd so they scheduled it for later in the cycle. But, you know, we are seeing a lot of early voting. So, you know, right now, going into Super Saturday, we are seeing – early voting that is almost matching how much early voting we had in 2025, which is really crazy to think about. And keep in mind in 2025, there are more satellite early voting locations open at this point.03:27.73Sam ShiraziSo going into Super Saturday, we are you know well over 850,000 early votes, which is just a lot of early voting in Virginia for an election that is not a general election. It’s in the spring.03:40.96Sam ShiraziWe typically don’t have elections in spring. So lot of early voting. And that is also telling me that we are going to see a lot of early voting on Super Saturday because we’ve already seen a lot of early voting. The other reason we’re going to see a lot of early voting on Super Saturday is because typically on weekends, there is more early voting because people a lot of people don’t have to work. And it’s just more convenient for them to early vote on the weekend.04:01.98Sam ShiraziAnd then finally, the final reason we’re going to see a lot of early voting, I think, on this Super Saturday is because so many places are opening up their early voting locations. And I’ll kind of go through the list of places that are opening up their early voting locations today.04:28.90Sam ShiraziCurrently, there are three early voting locations open in Fairfax County. And on Super Saturday, there will be 13 additional early voting locations opening up for a total of 16 early voting locations in Fairfax County. And a lot of people know that the early voting locations going to be opening up. So you may live on the other side of the county. You may be waiting for your early voting location to open up. So that’s why I think Super Saturday is going to see a lot of early voting because there’s a lot of pent up demand in terms of people who know that they were going to early vote. It’s just they were waiting for the early voting location to open up. So that’s in Fairfax County, big county, a lot of early voting locations opening up. So definitely one to watch on this Super Saturday.05:09.11Sam ShiraziOkay, the next county that’s going to have early voting is Prince William County. And as you can see, early voting on the Super Saturday is going be really important in Northern Virginia, because a lot of the satellite early voting locations are opening up in Northern Virginia.05:22.82Sam ShiraziOn Super Saturday, there will be six additional locations that are going to be opening up in Fairfax County, excuse me, in in Prince William County. So you’re going have seven total early voting locations in Prince William County.05:35.68Sam ShiraziAnd these seven locations are going to be open all the way through the end of early voting on Saturday. And that includes on Sunday. So Sunday, April 12th, Prince William County will also have early voting. And so we’re seeing a lot of early voting that’s going to be happening in Prince William County.05:50.69Sam ShiraziThis always happens. There’s a lot of pent-up demand for early voting and in Prince William County because the early voting location is around Manassas area. A lot of the population in Prince William County lives along the I-95 corridor, so they’re waiting for the early voting locations. I expect a lot of early voting in Prince William County.06:07.64Sam ShiraziOkay, another location that’s going see satellite voting locations are opening up. That will be in Loudoun. Loudoun’s a big county, typically leans towards the Democrats, but is somewhat competitive sometimes in these elections. So Loudoun always gets a lot of attention, important county.06:24.99Sam ShiraziOn Super Saturday, they will open up four more early voting locations. So Loudoun’s another really important area where we’re just going to keep an eye out to see how much early voting there’s going on.06:34.55Sam ShiraziAnd I’ll round up the satellite early voting locations that will be opening up in Northern Virginia in Arlington. Arlington currently has one early voting location and there will be two additional locations opening up on Super Saturday. So Arlington will have a total of three early voting locations.06:49.88Sam ShiraziBut that’s not all on the Super Saturday. There is also going to be more early voting locations opening up in Hampt… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout, the Virginia elections. This episode we will go over a vibe shift that has seemed to have happened with the redistricting referendum here in Virginia. And then I also wanted to talk a little bit about the potential areas to look for in terms of, you know, the important swing counties in this election. So the first thing I want to talk about is really just this vibe shift that has seemed to have happened in the past week or two weeks.00:26.90Sam ShiraziI think at the beginning, there was a sense that on the no campaign, there was some momentum. The initial early vote numbers look pretty good in terms of more red parts of Virginia coming out.00:39.13Sam ShiraziAnd I think there was a sense that, you know, and I had talked about this, that this referendum was not necessarily a a slam dunk. Virginia was not California. There were a lot of independents. So I think, you know, there was a sense that this was not necessarily a done deal in Virginia.00:56.34Sam ShiraziAnd while I think that’s still true to a certain extent, I don’t think it’s a done deal. I do think the last two weeks or so, there’s been a bit of a vibe shift. I want to talk a little bit about that. You know, right now we’re in kind of this lull of the campaign period where We’re in the middle of early voting.01:13.29Sam ShiraziIt has come down a little bit, but it’s still very high numbers. I expect well over a million people kept voting early and potentially one and a half million people voting early, which is just really, really high numbers for a non-general election.01:25.93Sam ShiraziAnd then the last 10 days of this campaign are going to be really big. because that’s when all the, most of the early voting locations, satellite locations are gonna be opening up. So I think the last 10 days are gonna be a sprint. And so we’re in this kind of holding pattern right now where there’s some consistent early voting happening. And then I think at the end, there’s gonna be this huge momentum to for people to come vote early. And I think in terms of the vibe shift right now,01:51.24Sam ShiraziI think there’s a sense both in terms of the early vote. I think it’s starting to look better for the yes campaign. And I think part of the reason for that is just fact that typically the longer early voting goes on, the better it typically is for Democrats because more male votes are added. And I think oftentimes the people who vote earliest are like,02:11.09Sam Shiraziolder people. And usually as the early voting period goes on, it starts to get a little bit younger, more diverse. So I think those are starting to show through some of the early voting data. And I think it’s going to get even better once we get the early voting satellite locations opening up for the Yes campaign. So I think The early voting is not as great as it was at at the beginning for the the No campaign. And there’s a couple of different outlets that do analysis of early vote. You know, in Virginia, there’s no party registration. So we don’t know what party anyone belongs to.02:41.25Sam ShiraziLike you can do that in some other states and do that type of early voting analysis. However, you can kind of model what the model party ID is. And one organization that does that, for they’ve and they’ve done it for a long time, is called L2. They’re just kind of a a data organization.02:57.82Sam ShiraziAnd their estimate is roughly that, you know, give or take, it’s about 60-40, the Democrats coming out in this election so far. You know, caveat that, but we don’t know how these people are voting. But typically, that’s what you see in Virginia early vote about a 60-40 advantage for Democrats if you take into account the mail vote. Chaz Netticombe, who was on last week, also did analysis through State Navigate. And he found or his team basically found the same thing, roughly sixty forty Democrats, you know, in terms of the early vote.03:27.92Sam Shiraziyou know I caveat all that by saying that we don’t know how these people are voting. We don’t know how independents are voting. Even if if model ID is 60-40 Democrats, it could be 50-50 yes-no, just because the no campaign is getting some persuasion.04:14.14Sam ShiraziI think in this election, I think you can assume most R’s are going to vote no. I think most D’s are going to vote yes. You know, what is the number? Is it going to be 80%, 85%, 90%, 95%? I think that’s going to be important.04:26.94Sam ShiraziWe don’t quite know how many D’s are voting against it. You know, it seems like there’s probably going to be more than voted for Earl Sears, but is it going to be a lot more or is it more anecdotal? and I think the real question mark are the independents. How do independents go?04:41.53Sam ShiraziObviously, Spanberger did really well with independents last year. That’s part of the reason she got such a big win. This year, I think I could see the independents definitely being more skeptical of the Yes campaign, just given the nature of it, given it’s a more partisan endeavor to gerrymander Virginia.04:56.83Sam ShiraziAt the same time, a lot of independents, their number one priority is maybe sending message to President Trump. So if it’s just a straight referendum on the president, I think that’s going to be better for the yes campaign in terms of independence. So still a lot of unknowns. Like I’m not comfortable saying, you know, definitely yes is going to win or no is going to win. I just think it’s not that type of election.05:14.53Sam ShiraziBut I am comfortable talking a little bit about the vibe shift. And the the reason I mentioned that is election like this. There hasn’t been a lot of polls, and there particularly has not been a lot of polls of, you know, specifically the question that’s on the ballot. I think there are some organizations that have put out polls, but they’re not exactly a question on the ballot.05:31.71Sam ShiraziI think hopefully we’ll get some more polls in the final days of the campaign. I think Chaz Naticombe mentioned that State Navigate is going to be doing a poll. I think we’re going to probably get a few other polls, but there there isn’t a lot of polling to go off of. There isn’t kind of a lot of...05:44.89Sam Shiraziprecedent for this in Virginia, you know, like we did with the governor’s election where, you know, okay, the party out the White House typically does well in the governor’s election. We just can’t really assume that because we don’t do this type of referendum in Virginia very often or ever. So I think a lot of the analysis so far has been on vibes. And and what I mean by vibes is just people’s guts, people’s like, you know, this kind of feels like, you know, the no campaign is doing okay or the yes campaign is doing okay. There’s not really a lot of logic behind it other than maybe some very, you know,06:13.41Sam ShiraziBroad interpretation of early vote data. So all of that is to say, basically, we are not going to get really good data on on this election until but maybe the end when we get the final polls. And so a lot of the analysis has been based based on vibes. I think certainly the No campaign and certain movements, certain people within the conservative movement have been very loud and I think they’ve made their voices heard. And I think that has perhaps informed the vibes in terms of, well, the No campaign seems like they have some moment momentum, seems like they’re doing well.06:45.28Sam ShiraziSo I think that was kind of the initial vibe reading in Virginia, at least once the early voting started. I think the last two weeks, you know putting aside the early voting data, I think just given the national environment, I think things have gotten harder for the Republicans.07:22.13Sam ShiraziAnd so if you think about this referendum, you know what are people going to be doing when they go into the voting booth? Are they going to be thinking, you know, really nuanced questions about ge… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

00:00.60Sam ShiraziHi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout the Virginia Elections. This episode, we I am really excited to have Chaz Nuttikome back on. He is the Executive Director of State Navigate and Chaz, thanks so much for coming back.00:13.42Chaz NuttycombeHey, Sam, thanks for having me back on. Good to hear you Good to hear from you.00:16.90Sam ShiraziYeah, so to begin with, just wanted to see how you’re doing. How are things at State Navigate? It’s been a while since we talked last year and how how are things been going for you?00:26.22Chaz NuttycombeYeah, I know. I think it’s been maybe since like right after the election, you know, after we had a really good a year for our polling. So, you know, been been working on some projects. You know, we launched in Michigan in January.00:40.45Chaz NuttycombeWe’re looking to launch in, I think, Colorado and Texas, our next targets. Trying to get up there next month. And we have like a jam. We have jam-packed content, you know, over...00:53.02Chaz Nuttycombeyou know, the next like quarter in the states of Virginia and West Virginia and and Utah. So those are kind of our our three main states right now through the second quarter. And again, working to launch in Colorado and Texas, hopefully next month.01:12.06Chaz NuttycombeAnd, you know, we’ve got some more exciting news coming out next month as well. You know, I think, a you know, a couple days or maybe a week after this podcast, we’ll hopefully have this big announcement. But yeah, it’s going great. It’s going great.01:26.58Sam ShiraziWell, awesome. And yeah, i definitely recommend everyone check out State Navigate. And it was really amazing to see all the resources you put out last year for the Virginia governor’s election. And you have a lot of great stuff already for the redistricting referendum. We’ll get to all that, like the the early vote tracker.01:43.54Sam ShiraziBut before we kind of dive into the details of the redistricting referendum, you know, big picture, what are you seeing right now as we are less than a month until Election Day?01:54.46Chaz NuttycombeWell, yeah, I mean, just real quick, going talk about the features, you know, just in case your audience doesn’t know. So, yeah, we have like an early voting tracker that compares to the same day equivalent in 2025 from 2026, right? So 2026 divided by 2025, same day votes, whether it be early in person or male. We have scatter plots and we’re going to add correlations to those soon now that we’re you know, like two weeks in and we got a lot of votes in, pretty much everybody is reporting mail.02:24.53Chaz Nuttycombeobviously males counted at different paces, right? Sometimes they count it slower. Sometimes they count it faster each year. you know, we’re kind of the mercy of registrars, but what’s nice is that early in person is, you know, pretty consistent.02:36.31Chaz Nuttycombeand they pretty much update, update that daily and in pretty much every locality. And then, you know, what what I was really proud, I was very proud of the State Navigate team when the maps dropped because we had spent the entire day, our creative director, Jack Hirsting, myself, and our elections coordinator, Michael Foley, to where when those maps dropped, we had an interactive ready to go.03:01.30Chaz Nuttycombeand so it’s it’s really fun to see you know like a lot of people posting our interactive map of the you know proposed uh uh you know democratic gerrymander you know i think especially conservatives are using it and uh you know it’s just nice to see our work you know be be used by uh used by the public i guess my only my only complaint is that sometimes they don’t include the state navigate logo that’s in the header so it’s like Well, at least you know, it’s like that’s that’s kind of killing our potential traffic, man. So, you know, if you’re if you’re one of those people, i would appreciate, you know, just include the state navigate logo in there. You know, we want to build our audience and help people learn about state government and state legislatures to to get to your question on, you know, kind of like what we’re what we’re looking at.03:45.65Chaz NuttycombeI mean, you know, I was I was talking with, you know, the Times yesterday and, you know, it’s it’s a shame because my grandfather ran track and I should like know a little bit about this. But, you know, I kind of described, you know, like where we are in early voting as like we’re in the first quarter mile of a.04:03.22Chaz Nuttycombeyou know, mile long track. And, the you know, he was like, you know, we’re at the first quarter mile and we don’t really know where the markers are. Right. In terms of like, you know, like what we, what we got coming up.04:16.44Chaz NuttycombeSo, you know, look, I mean, right now, I think these, these first two weeks have been, have been crazy when we’re talking about the early voting. I mean, if, if you had told me two months ago that like,04:29.38Chaz Nuttycombewe would be seeing early and like overall early voting on like being even or right now, as of this recording, when we’re talking about yesterday’s early voting, yesterday being March 24th on Tuesday, you know it was there were more votes cast on you know the equivalent day 2026 2025 early voting.04:52.24Chaz Nuttycombeyou know it’s like a hundred two percent of early in person Right. And then it’s what is it for mail? Mail-in ballots versus 2025. 102%. Yeah. yeah So, I mean, we’re at like 102% thereabouts of, you know, gubernatorial same day turnout.05:09.03Chaz NuttycombeThis thing is going to be like incredibly high turnout, looks like. I mean, we’re we’re at least looking at 50% turnout. When I was like thinking about when we started to see like high turn in the first you know few days, it’s like, okay, first few days, you know first week, a lot of people come out from this thing, right? And then we we typically get to like a slump point. And right now it’s kind of like where we typically are are in a slump point, but we’re not.05:33.70Chaz NuttycombeIt’s just continually turnout, turnout, turnout. More and more people are voting in this thing. To the point where, you know, when all is said and done, we may see more votes cast in this election than there were in 2025.05:47.92Chaz NuttycombeAnd, you know, if there are more votes, I’m going to take a guess and and say that the people who are, you know, who didn’t vote in 2025, who are already voting for this thing, are probably skewing Republican.06:00.62Chaz NuttycombeSo, you know, Michael Foley, our elections coordinator, has been doing, you know, a little bit of of rough modeling, you know, down to the precinct level. And, you know, we’re looking at an electorate that is probably...06:13.90Chaz Nuttycombeyou know, probably two points, maybe up to three points, right. When we’re comparing to 2025. Now the, the main thing is pick your own path or universe whatever. When we talk about persuasion, right. You know, Abigail, Spamber did really well on persuasion.06:31.75Chaz NuttycombeAnd so she won by 15 points. the sort of generic race was the Lieutenant governor race where Gazzalajami won by 11. And then, you know, Jay Jones did terrible on persuasion, lost a lot of college educated whites around Western Richmond and parts of Nova and especially the beach.06:49.39Chaz Nuttycombeuh, and so it’s like, well, this is not a partisan election, right? There’s no RRD on the ballot. So what is your persuasion baseline?06:57.81Chaz NuttycombeIs it the AG race? Because if it’s AG race, we’re looking at a nail biter. and, You know, I, if, if I had to pick like what I think the baseline is, I would say it’s probably closer to the AG race.07:09.86Chaz Nuttycombebecause I think that Dems are having a little bit of a hard time convincing their like soft Dems and especially independence on giving them a 10 to one gerrymander this year. Right.07:22.98Chaz Nuttycombeyou know, I know like. like just off t… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com

Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout, the Virginia Elections. This episode we will go over a special election in the 98th House of Delegates District and talk about what that might mean for the redistricting referendum.00:12.92Sam ShiraziNow, I want to caveat that first by saying special elections are definitely special and you cannot read too much into them because they’re very unique circumstances, really depends on the district, depends on the night.00:24.84Sam ShiraziSo I don’t want to go too crazy with the special election analysis, However, I did want to spend a little bit of time talking about this district because I think people were a little bit surprised. Generally, since President Trump was elected in 2024, Democrats have been doing well in special elections. Most special elections Democrats overperform. And what does overperforming mean? Typically, overperformance is measured against 2024 results in the district. So, for example, if Trump won a district by 10 points in 2024, but the Democrat wins a district by five points in the special election, that would be a 15 point overperformance.01:01.86Sam ShiraziAnd across the country, we’ve seen Democrats doing really well in special elections. Most special elections, Democrats overperform. And earlier this year, there have been a bunch of special elections in deep blue seats in Virginia. And almost all of those special elections, Democrats have also overperformed.01:17.58Sam ShiraziSo there’s a sense that Democrats are doing well in these special elections. And I think people were looking at this special election in the 98th house district to see what would happen because while it is a pretty red district it is not overwhelmingly red in 2024 uh president trump won this specific district by about uh 15 points however in 2025 spamburger carried excuse me spamburger still lost the district but it was a little bit closer she only lost it by about six and a half points01:49.02Sam ShiraziHowever, this district generally is known as more of a Republican district. It is in the most Republican part of Virginia Beach, which is kind of the southern part of Virginia Beach, includes even some rural areas and as well as some suburban areas.02:03.54Sam ShiraziAnd in 2025, the delegate who won that election was Barry Knight. He won by about 13%. So he overperformed Spanberger and did better than the top of the ticket.02:15.99Sam ShiraziAnd so, you know, When you look at this district, it’s kind of a Republican-leaning district, but not overwhelmingly so. Now, Delegate Knight unfortunately passed away, and so that’s why you had a special election for this seat.02:29.18Sam ShiraziAnd again, people were looking at this seat, seeing what would happen. Would it be close? Would the Democrats be able to overperform again? And it looks like Democrats have not done that. They are not going to overperform. This will be a rare instance where the Republicans actually overperform.02:43.10Sam ShiraziAnd I want to caveat by saying we do not have all the ballots yet. So in Virginia, the mail ballots can be received up until Friday at noon if they have been postmarked by Election Day.02:54.22Sam ShiraziSo we don’t have all the ballots in. And basically, it’s impossible to know how many mail ballots are still out there. Typically in special elections, there tend to be more late ballots than usual because the early voting period is shorter.03:07.30Sam ShiraziPeople get their absentee ballots later, and so they have less time to return it. So you usually see more late mail in special elections. So I caveat all about saying the the vote totals are not final. However, i think the outcome pretty clear. Certainly the Republicans are going to win the seat.03:24.05Sam ShiraziAnd it looks like they are probably going to overperform Donald Trump’s margin in 2024. So as of the time of recording, the Republican in the 98th House of Delegates seat, Andrew Rice, got about 62.5% of the vote, the Democrat, Cheryl got 37.5% of the vote.03:40.63Sam Shirazithat’s about a 25% margin for Republicans.03:45.08Sam Shiraziso that’s about a twenty five percent or margin for the republicans you know That’s probably going to come down a little bit, but I don’t think it’s going to come down that much. And so if you think the district being a 15% Trump district in 2024, almost certainly the Republicans are going to overperform in this special election, unless there’s like a crazy amount of late mail that will be added, which seems relatively unlikely.04:08.36Sam ShiraziSo in the grand scheme of things, Republicans had a good night with the special election. They overperformed. And so the question becomes, what does all this mean? So I think a few things were at play here. One, obviously, when a delegate passes away, it’s it’s very unfortunate. And I think it was kind of a circumstance where it didn’t exactly lend itself to the Democrats having a big overperformance. It’s not like a situation where someone resigns in scandal. So I think the reason for the special election often is important.04:40.15Sam ShiraziAnd then if you look look at this district, It’s in more of a kind of white working class part of Virginia Beach. So typically Democrats have a harder time overperforming in districts with white working class voters.04:52.74Sam ShiraziThere are suburban portions of the district, so I want to pretend, you know, it’s just a classic white working class district. But it certainly has some rural areas where I think it’s just very difficult for the Democrats to overperform in a district like that.05:05.09Sam ShiraziI also think the elephant in the room is the redistricting referendum. And so I want to talk a little bit more about that, because I think one explanation of what happened is the Republicans are fired up and they’re upset about the redistricting referendum.05:18.76Sam ShiraziPotentially, they could also be generally upset at what’s been going on in Richmond since the Democrats took over in January. So perhaps they’re upset with some of the bills that have been passed.05:29.71Sam ShiraziAnd so I think generally the Virginia Republicans are more fired up than they were in 2025. Now, having said that, I mean, 2025 was a really bad year for the Virginia Republicans. So it’s basically as low as they’ve been in a long time. So the fact that the Virginia Republicans are doing better than 2025 doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re doing great, but it definitely was the lowest point they’ve been. And I think they’ve a little bit started to dig themselves out of the hole. And how have they done it? i mean, I think At the end of the day anger is a very strong motivator to vote. And obviously in 2025, Democrats were angry at what was going on in D.C.06:04.36Sam ShiraziAnd so they were very motivated to vote. They were motivated to talk to their friends, convince them to vote for the Democrats. Democrats got a big win. After that big win, Democrats came into Richmond. They did a lot of things.06:16.24Sam ShiraziAnd specifically, with redistricting that upset a lot of Republicans. And so now you see the opposite reaction where Republicans are upset and perhaps they are starting to organize, whereas last year they were a little bit at asleep. And this is kind of a common thing we see in Virginia.06:31.41Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, that all goes to show you in in politics, you know, for... every action there is an equal and opposite reaction so democrats get a big landslide in 2025 uh they start doing all these things including redistricting you would think that the real reaction on the republican side and it kind of goes back to one of the things i’ve talked about that in politics one of the hardest things is to be present you know it’s easy in politics to one that we live the last election for the rest of time republicans want it to be 2024 forever Democrats want to be 2025 forever.07:01.04Sam ShiraziThe reality is the world moves, things c… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com