Glenn Youngkin leads Virginia sweep

With the bulk of votes in, and with very little doubt remaining, Mr. Glenn Youngkin, Republican, has made himself Governor-elect of Virginia. He has (so far) defeated former Governor Terence “Terry” McAuliffe with nearly 51 percent of the vote. Not only that, but his two running mates, Winsome Sears and Jason Miyares, shatter the Democratic “racist Republican” narrative. Of course, one expects running mates to stand or fall with the ticket leader, as they did this week. But Democratic woes don’t stop there. In fact they lost seven Delegate districts, and with them their control of the House of Delegates.

Where to find election results

All election results for Virginia’s 2021 elections are visible and searchable at this link. At the time of this writing, the Department of Elections lists one “precinct” in every unit as not yet reporting. That “precinct” is the “Central Absentee Ballot Precinct” and reflects the decision by the Department of Elections, and every Unit Board of Elections, to count absentee and early votes separately and apart from the votes of those who show up at the polls on Election Day itself to vote.

(Definition: in Virginia the word unit refers to a county or an independent city. Virginia has never set great store by “seating” counties in large cities. Instead, large cities govern themselves apart from any county.)

Breakdown of absentee and early voting

And what is holding up reporting in the Central Absentee Ballot Precinct in every unit? Simple. In Virginia, thanks to Governor Ralph Northam and the General Assembly, now under full Democratic Party control, mailed-in absentee ballots may take until noon Friday to come in for counting. So all units are waiting for more mail-in ballots to come in, and to adjudicate provisional ballots. In Virginia, as likely everywhere, a voter casts a provisional ballot if any doubt remains about his right to vote. This doubt could come from his having:

• Requested that the registrar mail him an absentee ballot,
• Been convicted of a felony and trying to get a restoration of his voting rights (a McAuliffe invention), or
• Moved and not wanting to drive all the way back to his former precinct of residence to vote.

In every locality CNAV spot checked, mail-in absentee ballots that have already arrived, typically broke 2-1 for McAuliffe and his Democratic co-candidates. But early in-person voting broke for Youngkin by slightly more than three to two. Not only that, but early-voting turnout was about ten times as high as the mail-in volume.

Glenn Youngkin wins with nearly 51 percent of the vote, but still decisive

The State-wide vote totals for Glenn Youngkin, Terry McAuliffe and (yes, this is her true name) Princess L. Blanding of the “Liberation Party” fall out thus at the time of this writing:

As one can readily see, Terry McAuliffe would need to add 79,116 votes to his total to win. And that assumes the Glenn Youngkin would receive no more mail-in votes. If the current trend for mail-in votes holds, that will not happen. But even if McAuliffe’s “Deep State” allies try to resort to ballot-box stuffing, they still would need to “find” nearly 80,000 absentee ballots to change this result. And they have until noon tomorrow (5 November) to do it.

Can they account for that many absentee ballots? Not quite. VDE keeps this page for absentee ballot statistics. According to it, various unit election boards received 1,256,895 absentee ballot applications. Thus far voters have returned 1,186,946 of those ballots as of 9:29 a.m. EDT this morning (4 November). Which leaves 69,949 absentee ballots outstanding. This falls short of the 79,116 votes McAuliffe would need to close the gap.

Ah – ahem – about those outstanding absentee ballots

The Democratic Party of Virginia actually sued the United States Postal Service on October 22. They claimed that the service had held up 300,000 absentee ballots and failed to mail them on time.

But CNAV simply cannot account for that many absentee ballots.

Your editor took part as an Officer of Election in the Berkley precinct in the town of Ashland, in Hanover County. The OOEs counted a handful of voters who showed up to vote, only to learn that they—or someone in their name—had requested an absentee ballot, and the election board had mailed one out to them. (One “curbside voter” surrendered an absentee ballot that day.) In the end, voters, for various reason, cast a grand total of four Provisional Ballots. If this is typical, then that figure of 300,000 outstanding ballots seems absurd on its face. It would in fact amount to 110 absentee ballots outstanding per precinct. Where, then, were the 110 voters with showings that the election board had sent them an absentee ballot? Nowhere! The Electronic Poll Book did not show that many mailed but not returned absentee ballots in the entire precinct.

But where could those 300,000 lost-in-the-mail absentee ballots possibly be?

And for the record: Glenn Youngkin carried the Ashland and Berkley Precincts, which between them cover all of Ashland. In fact he and his running mates carried Ashland with 52 percent of the vote. A poll watcher called Ashland a “solid blue” town. (After all, it has Randolph-Macon College within its corporate limits!) That poll watcher (whose name CNAV must withhold) expected McAuliffe to carry Ashland with 66 percent of the vote. To see Glenn Youngkin carry Ashland with 52 percent, amazed that poll watcher.

CNAV concludes that the 300,000 absentee ballot figure has no foundation whatsoever. Tellingly, that figure is identical to that which the Democrats “dropped” in Virginia in 2020. The Democrats would appear to have tried to lay a foundation for overturning a Glenn Youngkin victory, only to have their plans go strikingly and irreparably awry.

The live feed: Glenn Youngkin has staying power, and coattails

The Republican Standard carried a “live feed” here. This page includes some telling tweets by one Dave Wasserman. Who observed that Youngkin consistently outperformed expectation, and McAuliffe underperformed expectation, in every unit Wasserman checked.

McAuliffe’s worst underperformance was in the City of Radford in southwestern Virginia. McAuliffe needed to win there by 0.3 percent. Instead, Glenn Youngkin carried the county by nine percent.

Another incident in Radford told the tale of Democratic Party arrogance. Delegate Chris Hurst (D-Radford) and his girlfriend Emily Fentress drove out to the Radford Recreation Center, where the city had set up a precinct. There, Fentress pulled up all the campaign signs for Glenn Youngkin and other Republican candidates.

A police officer, responding to a trouble call, caught up with Hurst and Fentress. The officer’s dashcam caught the exchange between them, which ran for 21 minutes. During that time, Hurst curtly refused to answer any questions, then said that other candidates did the same. That did not impress the officer, as the video will show.

Hurst lost his seat in the House of Delegates. Challenger Jason Ballard took it with 55 percent of the vote. Furthermore, Ballard was one of seven Republican challengers to unseat Democratic incumbent. As a result, the House of Delegates will be in Republican hands with the General Assembly convenes next January.

A political earthquake

The victory of Glenn Youngkin has struck official Washington – and Hollywood – like a magnitude 10 earthquake. Nancy Pelosi at first snapped at someone that her agenda would not change. But Jack Prosobiec of One America News cited rumors that the Speaker of the House will not seek reelection.

The election obviously turned on parental outrage at Democratic sponsored excesses in their children’s schools. Critical Race Theory did raise a concern, but not the main concern. (The main concern was a “transgender” policy that let a “boy in a skirt” get away with rape.) That prompted Juan Williams to write in The Hill even before the election that such concerns evidenced racism. Michelle Perez Exner sarcastically observed that Williams was following “the Democratic playbook.” Which has, as one of its rules, “If people disagree with our policies, let’s just call them racists.”

A former host at ESPN, Jemele Hill, said on Twitter:

It’s not the messaging, folks. This country simply loves white supremacy.

To which Lieutenant Governor-elect Winsome Sears, black, former active-duty Marine, replied thus:

We beg to differ.

Priceless. And yes, that is her personal AR-15 she’s carrying. More to the point, she said, at Glenn Youngkin’s victory party, she was “living proof” that America is not a racist country.

But people still speak of racism

But that didn’t stop Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) from also accusing Glenn Youngkin of racism:

And from Hollywood came expressions of shock, outrage, and despair. Hollywood took alarm, not at Glenn Youngkin himself, but at the man they say stood behind him. That man is, of course, Donald J. Trump. For instance, we have this, officially, from MSNBC:

But by far, Cher turned in the most entertaining pair of tweets. In all-caps, with plenty of emoticons and other graphics, she said:

Held my tongue, long enough, but [Foxtrot] it!! Do Dems need a house to fall on their sisters before they see what’s coming!? Guess “domestic terrorists” yelling hang Pence, kill Pelosi, isn’t enough. If [the] GOP take power, it’ll be BLM, LGBT, Jews, Asians, minorities, are in German-style peril.

For the record: not one reliable witness heard anyone call for hanging former Vice President Mike Pence, even in effigy. Also for the record: although Trump endorsed Glenn Youngkin, Youngkin did not trumpet that endorsement. Indeed his campaign said little – until McAuliffe blew the gaffe big-time when he said that parents ought not have an opinion on school curriculum.

Glenn Youngkin wins in Virginia – and beyond

Cher’s second tweet, which she issued an hour later, did not improve her stature or her reliability:

In the first place, Joe Biden wasn’t on the ballot. In the second, “tireless” scarcely describes a man who falls to sleep at international conferences. And in the third, his policies hurt everyday Americans. But Cher wouldn’t know that. Why not? Because she lives in a bubble even worse than that of Actress Gloria Swanson, as Norma Desmond, in Sunset Blvd.

Finally, Cal Thomas summed up the Democrats’ problem nicely. The spectacle of Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin implies that the Democrats have made a key mistake. They have awakened the electorate to their follies. This might explain why “Foxtrot Juliet Bravo” has become a frequent stadium chant even in college football! (Not so much in the Ivy League, but definitely in the NCAA.) Virginia is the first decisive result.

It also indicates that Republicans must never write off any locality. Your editor can certainly vouch that Ashland, Virginia displayed many “woke” symptoms before this election. Why, then, did fifty-two percent of voters showing up to vote in person, vote for Glenn Youngkin and his fellow Republicans? For one simple reason. “Woke” is one thing; “awake” is another.

About the image

This headshot of Glenn Youngkin appears under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-alike 2.0 Generic License from the Youngkin for Governor campaign.