Federal Fallout: The 2025 Virginia Elections

Sam Shirazi
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  • Politics
  • Updated Weekly

A podcast exploring the 2025 elections in Virginia and how the changes to the Federal government will influence them. Views expressed are those of the host personally. Contact: federalfalloutpod@gmail.com samshirazi.substack.com

  1. Grand Finale: Referendum Struck Down

    May 9

    Grand Finale: Referendum Struck Down

    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. 00:34.01 Sam Shirazi And 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. 01:01.14 Sam Shirazi And 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, 01:25.91 Sam Shirazi You 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. 01:47.80 Sam Shirazi but 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? 02:02.86 Sam Shiraz 02:07.48 Sam Shirazi And 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. 02:40.65 Sam Shirazi and 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. 02:57.18 Sam Shirazi So 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? 03:21.71 Sam Shirazi And 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. 03:48.67 Sam Shirazi so 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. 04:01.73 Sam Shirazi And 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. 04:18.98 Sam Shirazi Election 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. 04:38.80 Sam 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. 04:51.32 Sam Shirazi I 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. 05:24.90 Sam Shirazi and 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. 05:40.60 Sam Shirazi But 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. 06:10.50 Sam Shirazi and 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. 06:17.24 Sam Shirazi Not 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 were 06:50.52 Sam Shirazi were 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 pretty difficult political situation 07:21.79 Sam Shirazi The Democrats have a trifecta. In all likelihood, the Democrats are to keep their trifecta another two years after the elections next year for the State Senate and House Delegates. So they’re not in a great place. And talk about the House Representatives races this year in Virginia. And we’ll talk about the house of house of representative of races this year in Virginia. Republicans don’t have an easy time with those either. So as much as they got that kind of a temporary reprieve from all the bad news that Virginia Republicans have had, you know last year, this isn’t necessarily going to help their 07:53.42 Sam Shirazi prospects other than you know I’m sure they’re grateful they don’t have to deal with this gerrymandered map in 2026 but it’s not like things are are going great for them otherwise. Virginia democrats you know it’s easy to kind of get bitter and blame the courts and you know there’s a lot of things they that when something like this happens, there’s a lot finger pointing, there’s a lot being upset. And that’s, it makes sense. I mean, that’s a human reaction to something like this if the Democratic side. However, it’s also important not to this because the reality is it happened and got to and got to figure out, what’s plan B, because this was plan A and it didn’t out. And so to have to figure out what are to after this? And so I want to talk about what this means for Virginia and the midterms. 08:20.72 Sam Shirazi Before I do, I did want to note, I mean, we’ll see what the Virginia Democrats end up doing but it’s not impossible that this comes back again. And how can it come back again? 08:50.29 Sam Shirazi so what the Virginia democrats can do if they win next year in the general assembly for the state senate and the house delegates which at thi

    29 min
  2. Next Stop: Virginia Supreme Court

    Apr 25

    Next Stop: Virginia Supreme Court

    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. 00:13.62 Sam Shirazi So 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. 00:25.34 Sam Shirazi saga 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, 00:52.00 Sam Shirazi wondering 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. 01:09.15 Sam Shirazi And 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. 01:29.58 Sam Shirazi Before 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, 01:47.57 Sam Shirazi ruled 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. 02:07.11 Sam Shirazi And 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, 02:24.18 Sam Shirazi The 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. 02:44.83 Sam Shirazi And 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. 03:03.04 Sam Shirazi And 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, 03:25.22 Sam Shirazi The 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. 03:37.22 Sam Shirazi So 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. 03:51.24 Sam Shirazi And 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. 04:45.04 Sam Shirazi So 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. 05:28.52 Sam Shirazi And 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. 05:49.60 Sam Shirazi However, 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, 06:04.98 Sam Shirazi what 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? 06:23.06 Sam Shirazi Or 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, 06:49.60 Sam Shirazi you get kind of bogged down in something, but then you kind of reframe it and you think about the big picture and it kind of changes the way you’re looking at the legal issue. And so I will kind of do that with the redistricting refer referendum. And I’ll start kind of with the democratic case or what the Democrats are essentially trying to tell the Virginia Supreme Court. 07:07.62 Sam Shirazi And I think it’s really just big picture. Majorities of both the General Assembly and of the Virginia voters passed this thing. So if you think about what happened right before the election, the General Assembly, the Virginia House Delegates, the State Senate, majorities of those bodies passed this redistricting referendum. There was an election. 07:26.98 Sam Shirazi The Democrats won that election. And then in January, the Democrats once again passed this thing with majorities in the Virginia House of Delegates in the Virginia State Senate. So twice in two different sessions of the Virginia General Assembly, this thing was passed with majorities. And then it was put on the ballot and a majority of Virginians, over 1.5 million Virginians, passed this thing and and voted for this thing. So essentially what the Democrats are arguing is the constitutional requirements have all been met big picture. If you look at the big picture, was passed in one session of the General Assembly. it was passed in another session of the General Assembly. A majority of the voters in Virginia passed this thing. So Virginia Supreme Court, do you really want to come in? 08:05.94 Sam Shirazi And, you know, from the, from the Virginia Democrats perspective on some, you know, supposed that technicalities throw out this entire process because of, you know, these in the weeds things that the Republicans are raising, is that really what you want to do? And do you think that’s really the best use of t

    17 min
  3. Referendum Passes and Federal Fallout Continues

    Apr 22

    Referendum Passes and Federal Fallout Continues

    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. 00:15.61 Sam Shirazi And 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. 00:29.63 Sam Shirazi But 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, 00:39.74 Sam Shirazi There 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. 00:55.88 Sam Shirazi But 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. 01:07.67 Sam Shirazi And 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. 01:27.58 Sam Shirazi But 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. 01:42.68 Sam Shirazi I 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. 02:17.20 Sam Shirazi you 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. 03:05.07 Sam Shirazi with 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. 03:54.40 Sam Shirazi And, 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. 04:04.26 Sam Shirazi And, 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 race 04:41.73 Sam Shirazi in 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. 05:16.14 Sam Shirazi And, 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. 05:29.01 Sam Shirazi And 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. 05:44.38 Sam Shirazi But 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. 06:18.68 Sam Shirazi you 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. 06:32.68 Sam Shirazi And 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. 07:08.76 Sam Shirazi And 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, 07:55.21 Sam Shirazi In 2021, Glenn Youngkin was able to keep these margins closer. For example, Loudon was about 55-45 in 2021. He did not write off Northern Virginia. That’s one of the reasons he won. He kept the margins close enough. He got the rural turnout. 08:09.32 Sam Shirazi I think the problem the Virginia Republicans have right now is they basically just written off Northern Virginia and they don’t even try to compete there anymore. and you’re just not gonna win in Virginia anymore if you do that. And you you know they could say, well, that’s not fair or whatever. I mean, at the end of the day, you know politics is about winning. 08:25.85 Sam Shirazi And you know unless the Virginia Republicans are willing to just completely write off Virginia, they have to figure out a way to compete in Northern Virginia. And you know things can change. I’m not saying it’s going to be like this for the rest of time, but I think during the Trump 2.0 era for the rest of his administration, 08:44.76 Sam Shirazi I think the Virginia Republicans are just in a really bad spot. And there was a lot of noise about Spanberger disapproval and Spanberger’s unpopular and all this stuff. And, you know, I think there that is true in certain parts of Virginia. Certainly in Southwest Virginia, there was anger in Shenandoah Valley. People are upset. There’s no doubt that There are parts of Virginia that are upset with the Democrats and they’re upset with Governor Spanberger. 09:09.81 Sam Shirazi But I think the thing the Virginia Republicans don’t quite get is that there are other parts of Virginia, certainly very populated parts of Virginia, that are very upset at what’s going on in D.C. and President Trump. And they’re essentially single issue voters. Like they they will not listen to any arguments the Virginia Republicans make, similar to how maybe in southwest Virginia, the Virginia that the voters down there might not listen to the Virginia Democrats. We’ve

    17 min
  4. Election Day: Vibes and What to Expect

    Apr 21

    Election Day: Vibes and What to Expect

    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. 00:13.62 Sam Shirazi And 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. 00:40.70 Sam Shirazi Honestly, 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. 00:59.86 Sam Shirazi And 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. 01:15.45 Sam Shirazi And 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. 01:33.71 Sam Shirazi I 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. 01:58.90 Sam Shirazi But 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... 02:33.03 Sam Shirazi for 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. 02:54.82 Sam Shirazi And 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. 03:10.95 Sam Shirazi And 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. 03:26.34 Sam Shirazi And 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. 03:55.51 Sam Shirazi you 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. 04:34.73 Sam Shirazi And 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. 04:56.74 Sam Shirazi Chesapeake 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. 05:10.71 Sam Shirazi There 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. 05:24.89 Sam Shirazi That 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. 06:17.68 Sam Shirazi Those 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. 06:54.02 Sam Shirazi I 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 on the polls, based on the early vote. It is going to be closer than 15 points, which is not a super surprise. and i And I think this is where the vibes analysis comes in. 07:49.25 Sam Shirazi And, you know, why do I say that? I will say this just kind of honestly. i think the Republicans are more fired up than they were in 2025. yeah you know For most of that year in 2025, the Republicans were in pretty bad shape. I think at the end with the Jay Jones story about his text, there was a little bit more enthusiasm, something a little bit more to wake up Republicans. But even then, i think it was it was not... 08:12.45 Sam Shirazi that great. And you could just tell the the Democrats in 2025 were much more energized, much more before i fired up. I think this time, the Republicans have more energy. think There’s more grassro grassroots kind of activism to try to push the no vote. so And you see that a little bit in some of these early vote in some of these rural counties being a little bit higher than 2025. So I do think in terms of pure vibes, the Republicans are doing a little bit better I think Democrats certainly have energy as well. The question becomes, you know besides the hardcore partisans, how excited are kind of the soft Democrats for this? and I think the Democrats have had to do a lot more persuasion. They’ve had to spend a lot more money. I think in 2025, Spanberger as a governor’s candidate was a pretty easy sell. I think she appealed to soft Democrats. She appealed to independents. I think it was just easy for someone to spamberger for someone like Spanberger to get a 15 point win in Virginia in 2025. I don’t want to say easy, but I could see how it happened because of her candidacy and the energy that was on the Democratic side. I think this time it’s a little bit of a hard

    23 min
  5. Shy Yes Voters vs. Skeptical No Independents

    Apr 18

    Shy Yes Voters vs. Skeptical No Independents

    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. 00:12.44 Sam Shirazi But 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. 00:23.51 Sam Shirazi and 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. 00:34.68 Sam Shirazi My 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. 00:47.21 Sam Shirazi I’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. 01:02.68 Sam Shirazi So 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. 01:19.54 Sam Shirazi The 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. 01:34.42 Sam Shirazi I 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. 01:46.84 Sam Shirazi I 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. 02:15.58 Sam Shirazi So 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. 02:27.38 Sam Shirazi This 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. 02:45.66 Sam Shirazi And 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. 02:55.88 Sam Shirazi I 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. 03:08.36 Sam Shirazi And 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. 03:19.14 Sam Shirazi So 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. 04:04.58 Sam Shirazi A 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... 04:24.24 Sam Shirazi potentially 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. 04:40.32 Sam Shirazi However, 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. 04:50.49 Sam Shirazi And 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. 05:07.10 Sam Shirazi But 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. 05:23.96 Sam Shirazi But 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. 05:46.54 Sam Shirazi So 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. 06:02.70 Sam Shirazi And 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, 06:18.70 Sam Shirazi you 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. 06:31.49 Sam Shirazi I 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 voters who are true independents who probably don’t like this idea of gerrymandering. But unless they’re very high propensity voters to begin with, they may not really love the idea of coming out and voting for this. 06:54.95 Sam Shirazi And I think the true independents fall into kind of two categories. One is the high propensity true independents, people like older people, wealthier people. I think those people are coming out and that’s helping the no campaign. i think the problem for the no campaign is that there are another group of people who are kind of low propensity, true independent voters. Those are typically more working class people, typically younger people. And those people, I just don’t think are going to show up for an election like this because they just don’t really care. They don’t care one way or another. This isn’t like the most important thing in their lives. And so I think that’s going to be the challenge the no campaign is going to have is they’re doing well on 07:30.07 Sam Shirazi persuasion, but can they turn out those true independent voters who aren’t kind of hardcore Republicans? And I think that’s where kind of turnout and persuasion intersect, where you have this dynamic of people who are probably going vote no, but they just don’t have a reason to show up because it’s just not a top priority for them. 07:48.35 Sam Shirazi And I think that’s going to be one of the dynamics to look for. And on the other side, in terms of the yes campaign, I think you may see a dynamic which I call in the shy yes voter. So what does a shy voter mean? A shy voter means someone who doesn’t love their voting for something, doesn’t they don’t want to advertise it to the world, they don’t want to tell pollsters, but at the end of the day, when they get

    19 min
  6. Chaz Nuttycombe on New State Navigate Poll

    Apr 16

    Chaz Nuttycombe on New State Navigate Poll

    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. 00:16.60 Chaz Nuttycombe Hey, 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. 00:27.94 Sam Shirazi Yeah, 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? 00:52.51 Chaz Nuttycombe Yeah, 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. 01:01.97 Chaz Nuttycombe Right. 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... 01:24.99 Chaz Nuttycombe You 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. 01:41.20 Chaz Nuttycombe you 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. 02:11.30 Chaz Nuttycombe since 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. 02:53.18 Chaz Nuttycombe So, 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. 03:31.45 Chaz Nuttycombe so, 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. 03:44.10 Chaz Nuttycombe And 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? 03:57.23 Chaz Nuttycombe If 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. 04:21.56 Chaz Nuttycombe You 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. 04:30.76 Chaz Nuttycombe It’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. 04:48.92 Chaz Nuttycombe Why 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. 05:01.19 Chaz Nuttycombe And the big part in short is the Gallup quarterly national party ID. And so, 05:10.74 Chaz Nuttycombe You 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. 05:27.77 Chaz Nuttycombe I 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. 05:43.75 Chaz Nuttycombe And, 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. 05:57.62 Chaz Nuttycombe And 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. 06:18.65 Chaz Nuttycombe which 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. 06:36.04 Chaz Nuttycombe Or, 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? 07:09.72 Chaz Nuttycombe So 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. 07:30.26 Chaz Nuttycombe you 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. 07:46.67 Chaz Nuttycombe point 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. 07:58.15 Chaz Nuttycombe the other, you know, getting into the top lines, yes, campaign, should be favored in this look. There’s financial advantage. Donald Trump is still in the white house and he is nationally increasingly unpopular. The black vote in the early vote has been very strong. 08:13.34 Chaz Nuttycombe That is somewhat offsetting, but not entirely offsetting. Very strong Republican turnout in rural areas and exurbs that were asleep at the wheel in 2025. But, you know, look, I mean, the elect the electorate is, or the early early vote is, what, maybe two or three points better than at this point 2025. 08:36.61 Chaz Nuttycombe probably three points actually now, if not four, because as we’re recording, there’s this you know big thing on the reduction in satellite access being shown on our interactive, right? Because it updates every day. 08:49.46 Chaz Nuttycombe So I think the early vote is like at least three points redder than the overall early vote as we are recording, maybe four. 09:01.12 Chaz Nuttycombe So, and that’s sort of an interesting thing in our poll where, you know, the people who say that they are going to vote early in person and, or vote by mail, are bluer compared to what we had in our late, that that question is pretty much a bluer result compared to the October survey. 09:22.36 Chaz Nuttycombe So in the in the October survey, people who said they were going to vote early in person, they have not voted yet, but they plan to, you know, they were breaking for Jones by three points. This time. 09:36.87 Chaz Nuttycombe it is 10 points for vote early in person. And then it is five point swing when we talk about, you know, comparing like Jones and yes and all that sort of thing for for people who say they’re still going to vote by mail. 09:52.20 Chaz Nuttycombe So, you know, and I think the reason why this is

    37 min
  7. Super Saturday and Spanberger Approval

    Apr 11

    Super Saturday and Spanberger Approval

    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. 00:24.22 Sam Shirazi But 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. 00:35.64 Sam Shirazi However, 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. 00:48.98 Sam Shirazi And 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. 01:03.52 Sam Shirazi But 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. 01:23.60 Sam Shirazi And 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. 01:35.18 Sam Shirazi But 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. 01:46.02 Sam Shirazi There’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. 01:58.04 Sam Shirazi so 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. 02:21.19 Sam Shirazi two 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. 02:36.61 Sam Shirazi However, 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. 02:47.56 Sam Shirazi And, 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. 03:05.70 Sam Shirazi And 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. 03:27.73 Sam Shirazi So 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. 03:40.96 Sam Shirazi We 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. 04:01.98 Sam Shirazi And 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. 04:28.90 Sam Shirazi Currently, 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. 05:09.11 Sam Shirazi Okay, 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. 05:22.82 Sam Shirazi On 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. 05:35.68 Sam Shirazi And 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. 05:50.69 Sam Shirazi This 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. 06:07.64 Sam Shirazi Okay, 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. 06:24.99 Sam Shirazi On 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. 06:34.55 Sam Shirazi And 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. 06:49.88 Sam Shirazi But that’s not all on the Super Saturday. There is also going to be more early voting locations opening up in Hampton Roads. The first place that will be opening it up is Virginia Beach. Virginia Beach is a big area. 07:01.63 Sam Shirazi On Super Saturday, they they will open two additional locations. Now, I did want to note, this is less than they had last year for the governor’s election. Typically, they have more early voting locations. They only got to have three for Super Saturday, but still important given that you know that’s going to essentially double or triple the amount of early voting locations that are going to be available in Virginia Beach. 07:23.71 Sam Shirazi And I’ll talk about one other location in Hampton Roads, and that’s Norfolk. Norfolk has has had one early voting location open this time. 07:34.56 Sam Shirazi But on Super Saturday, it is going to be opening up additional early voting locations. There will be four more early voting locations opening up in Norfolk on Super Saturday, and those will also be open generally until the end of early voting. So that’s the thing with this first Super Saturday of early voting. It’s not that these satellite early voting early voting locations are going to be open just on Saturday. They’re going to be open on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. And in some locations, specifically Prince William County, they’ll also be open on tomorrow, Sunday, April 12th. And in other places, for example, Alexandria will have Sunday early voting. 08:14.94 Sam Shirazi Richmond will have some Sunday early voting. So we’re seeing that the early voting is not necessarily uniform in terms of the hours and the locations across Virginia. And I should also not forget to mention, there are a lot of early voting locations opening up on Super Saturday, but there have been early voting satellite locations open up opening up this past week as well in

    29 min
  8. Redistricting Vibe Shift and Places to Watch

    Apr 3

    Redistricting Vibe Shift and Places to Watch

    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. 00:26.90 Sam Shirazi I 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. 00:39.13 Sam Shirazi And 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. 00:56.34 Sam Shirazi And 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. 01:13.29 Sam Shirazi It 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. 01:25.93 Sam Shirazi And 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, 01:51.24 Sam Shirazi I 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, 02:11.09 Sam Shirazi older 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. 02:41.25 Sam Shirazi Like 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. 02:57.82 Sam Shirazi And 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. 03:27.92 Sam Shirazi you 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. 04:14.14 Sam Shirazi I 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. 04:26.94 Sam Shirazi We 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? 04:41.53 Sam Shirazi Obviously, 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. 04:56.83 Sam Shirazi At 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. 05:14.53 Sam Shirazi But 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. 05:31.71 Sam Shirazi I 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... 05:44.89 Sam Shirazi precedent 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, 06:13.41 Sam Shirazi Broad 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. 06:45.28 Sam Shirazi So 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. 07:22.13 Sam Shirazi And 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 gerrymandering and trying to think through, you know, should Virginia gerrymander to counteract Republican states? I mean, is that really the calculation or is it just going to become, you know, I want to send a message. I don’t like what’s going on in D.C., so I’m going to vote yes on this campaign. Certainly the yes campaign wants that to happen. 07:48.01 Sam Shirazi Obviously, the no campaign is trying to make it a Virginia specific campaign. The yes campaign is trying to make it a national campaign. And you may have remembered that is the same dynamic that happened in Virginia in 2025. Almost always with these state elections, the party that’s out of the White House wants to make it a national election. The party in the White House wants to make it a state election. And you’re seeing those dynamics again. 08:10.70 Sam Shirazi The Yes campaign wants to make this about President Trump and national politics. The No campaign wants to make this about state-specific election in terms of gerrymandering these seats. 08:36.36 Sam Shirazi So we’re seeing all those dynamics play out. I mean, I think part of the analysis in terms of the vibe shift fives shiftft is just, you know, national politics is more in the news, especially now with gas prices, with the war in Iran. 08:48.55 Sam Shirazi It’s just... You know, people are not thinking about the nuances of gerrymandering. They’re kind of thinking about how am i going to pay for gas and groceries and all those things. And so the more that becomes the dominant issue in the news leading up to April 21st, I think the more difficult task the no campaign is going to have. I think interesting question is going to be, you know, we’re about. a little, about two and a half weeks out from this referendum, you know, what is going to be happening on Ap

    18 min
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A podcast exploring the 2025 elections in Virginia and how the changes to the Federal government will influence them. Views expressed are those of the host personally. Contact: federalfalloutpod@gmail.com samshirazi.substack.com

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