Turnout anecdotes that are good news for Republican Ed Gillespie: Mecklenbug County reports heavy turnout; Petersburg, heavily African-American, is looking soft compared to 2013; northern Virginia is down considerably since the morning as the weather turns worse.
Turnout anecdotes that are good news for Democrat Ralph Northam: turnout is considered relatively high for a gubernatorial year and above 30 percent in Fairfax County; Arlington almost reached its 2013 vote totals with three and a half hours to go; and in Alexandria, turnout by noon was 8 percentage points higher than in 2013.
If you subscribe to the theory that rain can change the turnout in an election, and rain is Republican weather, it’s been cold and rainy across much of Virginia today. I tend to believe that if your supporters can be deterred by rain, they were never really your supporters.
Milli Vanilli sang a song – er, didn’t sing a song — appropriate for the moment if indeed the rain costs a candidate an expected victory.