Federal Fallout: The 2025 Virginia Elections

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 this point it looks like they’re going to do they can pass this again in January of 2028 and then in 2027 they can pass this thing you know much more before the election so that this whole issue doesn’t come up again. So in other words, we could have another referendum in April 2028, I wouldn’t necessarily put that past the Democrats given what happened so 09:22.36 Sam Shirazi we may be back here again in 2028 doing this all over again and you know we already know what the democratic map would look like perhaps they would change it but long way of saying: This may not be the end of the map. It’s the end of the map in 2026, but I don’t know if it’s going to be the end of the map forever, and we’re just have to find out if the Virginia Democrats decide to do that again. 09:41.66 Sam Shirazi Having said all that it sounds like you know the map is set 2026. We are to use the map. This is the map that was used in the elections this decade in Virginia. The Virginia Supreme Court, through its special masters, drew this map in 2021. So I really want to just spend some time thinking about, okay, what is going to happen now that the old map is be used. And I think the first thing to note just straight up from the beginning is Democrats still have an opportunity to flip seats in Virginia and particularly they have a good opportunity to flip at least two seats. So 10:14.88 Sam Shirazi as much as this was a blow to Virginia democrats I think they also need to not dwell on it forever and think about okay: We still have elections coming this November. Things are still us generally in the national environment looking good for us so don’t want to dwell on this opinion. Similarly for the Virginia Republicans, they will not want to dwell on this forever and say, oh you know everything’s great because they may still lose seats in Virginia this year and they’re gonna have to think about that so I guess what I’ll do quickly is just give you a rundown of each of the current seats based on the current map in Virginia. and just see where we are. Okay, so I will start off with the first congressional district. This is currently represented by Republican Rob Wittman, and all indications now are that he is going to run for re-election. 10:59.35 Sam Shirazi In 2024 this was a Trump seat it voted for Trump by about five points however Abigail Spanberger in 2025 did win this district. And this is going to be one of the top two races in Virginia this year. For the Democrats, it’s one of the more seats. So we’ll talk about the second district. That’s be the top priority. But I think after the second district for the Democrats, 11:21.86 Sam Shirazi the first district is going top be number two in terms of the seats they’re going to try to flip. And I’ll talk a little bit about both the general and the primary. In terms of the primary, I think realistically, there are a few people running, but I think the Democrats and and the national Democrats are supporting Henrico prosecutor Shannon Taylor. 11:39.35 Sam Shirazi She ran for a attorney general in 2025 and came up short in the primary and the Democrats recruited her to run in the first district. And I think she’s a strong candidate for the Democrats because she comes from Henrico, which is the most populous part of this district. 11:53.69 Sam Shirazi And she’s also a prosecutor which you know gives her some credentials in terms of trying to win over swing voters. However Rob Wittman he is a longtime incumbent and is known to perhaps have some crossover appeal. Like in 2024, he did better than President Trump. So Wittman but won by about points in a district that Trump only won by about five points. So you can see how Wittman has overperformed Trump in the past. 12:21.40 Sam Shirazi and I think it’s going to be a really interesting race and given some of the other redistricting developments that have happened across the country, this seat is going to become even more important because I think if the Democrats are trying to get a majority, they will need to win seats like Virginia’s first district. 12:37.44 Sam Shirazi And to me, it’s it’s a little bit like the 7th District in 2018. So 2018, Abigail Spanberger flipped the 7th District. I think at the beginning of the cycle, it didn’t seem very likely that Democrats would be able to flip that seat. 12:49.02 Sam Shirazi However by the end they were able to do it and I think similar type seat Henrico suburbs that are kind of matched up with some you know so rural areas. I think Shannon Taylor she’s go to be doing well in the Henrico suburbs which is her base and she’ll be doing well in the Chesterfield suburbs. Wittman, he’s going to do well in the northern neck part Virginia, the rural parts Virginia along the Chesapeake. That’s his base. Perhaps the battleground region be closer to Hampton Roads where the district kind ends in areas like Williamsburg. And so see if that’s here the race is ultimately decided. 13:13.21 Sam Shirazi And yeah, I mean, this is going to be a big big matchup. I think as much as the district has not really been super competitive in the past, this is the election that the Democrats are going to throw a lot at it. And I think, you know at the end of the day, 13:39.94 Sam Shirazi this will be the race along with the second district to watch in Virginia in 2026 to see if the democrats can win a majority because if the democrats are able to win the first district I think there’s a very good chance they’re going to get a majority in the house of representatives. If they can’t win the first district doesn’t mean it’s impossible for them to get a majority, but it does make their life that much more difficult. So in some ways as much as I get the Democrats wanted this referendum to happen and the new maps to happen, Virginia is to be even more important in the general election now at least these two battlegrounds. Because if the gerrymander had gone through, there be that much attention paid to Virginia in the general election because at the end the day, the point the gerrymander was to elect Democrats. 14:09.56 Sam Shirazi Now these seats are going to be very competitive. And so we’re to see a lot attention focused on Virginia like there was in 2018. So 2018, Democrats, similar situation. got Trump in the White House. Democrats were trying to flip the House. And they needed to win seats in Virginia. And they flipped three seats in Virginia. So Virginia in 2018 was one the top battleground states in terms the House. I think the same thing is to happen this time. Virginia is to be one the top battlegrounds. 14:33.35 Sam Shirazi And the first district is really a ripe pickup opportunity for the Democrats. It’s, I think, still a traditionally Republican seat. 14:52.31 Sam Shirazi I would you know say the republicans right now have an advantage But if the Democrats are able to really focus on this district, the national environment keeps getting worse for the Republicans. I think it’s definitely the type of seat that can flip So first district one to watch here in Virginia. 15:42.46 Sam Shirazi All right, now let’s go down to the Second district. This in the Hampton Roads area, primarily in Virginia Beach, going into Chesapeake and Suffolk, and then going into the Eastern Shore. The current representative is Republican Jen Kiggans. She is being challenged by someone she defeated in 2022, and that is former Congresswoman Elaine Luria. And so I think there might be a primary for Luria, I think realistically we are looking at a Jen Kiggans, Elaine Luria matchup. in 2024, President Trump very narrowly won district by you know less than a point. However, I do think this is the type of seat that sees a lot of swings and Spanberger won it by a healthy margin in 2025. And the second district is just the perennial battleground district. Every single competitive election nationally for the house the second district is going be a target. And I think you know the first, I think, is a little bit of a reach district for the for the Democrats. The second is a must win for them. I think if the Democrats can’t win the second district in they’re not going to a House majority. 16:14.47 Sam Shirazi It’s just as simple as that. So I think if the democrats want a majority in the house of representatives they have to win the second district there’s really no way around it. And the thing is, I think the Democrats currently have an advantage in the second district for a couple reasons. One, it’s just such a swingy district. Every time it swings against the party in the White House, we saw it happen in 2022 we saw it happen in 2018. We saw it happen in 2010. It just swings against the party in the White House. 16:40.50 Sam Shirazi So i think there’s a good chance just based off that the democrats have have a chance of winning the seat. And then if you think about some of the federal impacts do just cuts the federal government I think Hampton Roads has felt that. So again, one of those districts that is going to be feeling the federal fallout. So I think those two things, most people think Luria has an advantage right now not saying it’s impossible for Republicans to win it, 17:02.22 Sam Shirazi and they’re probably going to throw a lot more at it now that it’s not going to be the gerrymandered version of the second. But also have to kind of be realistic about how much this this district swings. And Luria has previously represented the district. So I think she’s a good candidate for the democrats and again the first and the second are going to be the top two battles this year in Virginia All right, so we knocked out the big battleground districts at the beginning. The next few districts over more quickly. Third district that is in Hampton Roads, current incumbent is Democrat Bobby Scott. I don’t think he’s have an issue in the primary or general election, so 17:38.26 Sam Shirazi expect a pretty easy race for Bobby Scott this year. We’ll talk about the fourth district this is in the Richmond area going down to southside current incumbent is Jennifer Mcclellan. Again, I don’t see she’s Democrat. I don’t think she is going to have a problem in the general election or the primary. 17:57.93 Sam Shirazi Okay, now let’s talk about the fifth district. This one’s a little bit more interesting. The current incumbent is Republican John McGuire. And there are a few people running here, but I think the person who may end being the democratic nominee it sounds like he’s going to stay in the race and i think he’s going to run in the fifth is former congressman Tom Perriello who used to represent the fifth. Now on paper President Trump won this district by about twelve points in 2024. Which is you know not out of the realm of possibility. I think the challenge for the Democrats here is that even Spanberber in was not able to win the fifth. 18:31.49 Sam Shirazi I think part of the the challenge here is this is a very polarized district. So The Democrats in this district tend to be concentrated in the Charlottesville area, so Charlottesville City and Albemarle County. 18:45.25 Sam Shirazi That’s where a lot of the democratic bases and the the district also has a decent African American population so the democratic base is kind of the people in Charlottesville and the suburbs and then the African-American voters. And the Republican base here is really, rural working class white voters. And there’s a amount evangelical voters in this district because it is where Lynchburg is located and Liberty University. So i think there is a lot of things going on in this district in terms things that in theory make it competitive the Democrats, but also make it difficult. And I think this is just a district that is difficult to move for the Democrats. And it’s pretty inelastic. And what I mean that is it’s pretty easy the Democrats to get 40% in this district. And I think on a good night, it’s to be pretty easy Tom Perriello to get to 45% in this district. I think the question becomes can Perriello get up to 50%. 19:23.70 Sam Shirazi It’s just one of those districts at some point you’re going hit a ceiling and Perriello in 2008, he was able to win during the blue tsunami, partly because he did okay with some of the rural white white voters. 2008, economy was doing a really badly. War in Iraq wasn’t going great. So I think was able to make some inroads with white working class voters. Can he do that again? I think much more difficult in this environment 20:06.39 Sam Shirazi with with you know polarization that’s caught up to the democrats. It’s a long way of saying, I don’t think it’s impossible to win this district, but it it would really require a good night, 20:17.32 Sam Shirazi possibly getting a type of swing that like we saw in 2008 where there was a blue tsunami, not just a blue wave. I think a blue wave democrats could probably flip the first and the second district. It would really require a blue tsunami for the Democrats to flip the fifth. And so I don’t want to say it’s outside the realm of possibility but i would not also be counting on the democrats flipping this district. However it does appear that Tom Perriello is gonna keep keep and keep trying to win this seat. 20:43.13 Sam Shirazi Okay now let’s move over to the sixth congressional district that is represented by republican ben Cline. This is a pretty deep red district. I think Ben Cline was in a lot of danger with the with the gerrymander the new 6th District. However, the old 6th District is very red and i don’t think then Cline’s going have any issues in the primary or general election. Okay, let’s over to the 7th Congressional District. The current incumbent is Democrat Eugene Vindman, and this district was a three-point Harris district in 2024. However, Spanberger did do better than that in 2025. 21:20.26 Sam Shirazi In terms of the Republican primary, I think Vindman is going to be facing most likely State Senator Tara Durant. You know I think on paper this could be competitive I think the challenge over republicans are going to have again goes back to the federal fallout this is the type of district that you know It’s not really built for the Republicans to win in a Trump midterm. If you saw both in November 2025 and during the redistricting referendum, Democrats were able to do well in Northern Virginia, do well in Prince William County. So I just think it’s be hard to beat Vindman. The Republicans might try to give it a shot. I don’t anticipate them spending a lot of money here because realistically they have a lot of incumbents they want to protect so I don’t think they’re gonna really try to go after a Vindman. But of the currently democratically held seats in Virginia, this one’s probably be the closest. So just something to keep in mind. oOkay now let’s move over to the eighth congressional district And that is represented currently Democrat Don Beyer. This is the bluest district in Virginia. And so I think any action here be in the primary. Beyer already has a couple primary challengers. The question is, do some the people are planning in the new seventh, remember the new seventh was supposed to be the lobster district. 22:26.00 Sam Shirazi I think some the in that district are just to out drop out. They’re not to anything else. But I see some those people in the eighth. For example, does JP Cooney end up running? or anyone who’s in the seventh, they end in the eighth? I think it’s to be hard to beat Bayer in a primary, if being honest, just because he’s been preparing the primary a while. I think he knew he’d probably have a more competitive primary this year. 22:52.39 Sam Shirazi So if I had to guess, I think Don Beyer is probably to be able to come back to Congress, even if he faces a serious primary challenger. 23:02.13 Sam Shirazi All right, now we’re gonna to Southwest Virginia in the ninth congressional district. The current incumbent is Republican Morgan Griffith. This is the reddest district in Virginia. 23:20.82 Sam Shirazi and this was going to going to be the only red district left in Virginia. However, that’s probably not going to happen anymore because of the redistricting. The thing is, I think Morgan Griffith is happy because there was a risk he could face a primary challenger from one of the other Republican congressmen in Virginia if the new map went into effect. That’s not going to happen. So i think he’s going to be safe both in the primary and general election. Okay now let’s go up to Northern Virginia to the 10th congressional district. This is currently represented by Suhas Subramanyam. Now in 2024, this was actually kind of a close seat. 23:57.05 Sam Shirazi And Harris only won the district by about seven and a half points. Subramanyam who’s a democrat you know he faced even a closer race he only won by less than five points. So in theory this could be a competitive seat i think again the problem the republicans are going to have Federal fallout, Northern Virginia, you know they’re just not this is not the type of environment that the Republicans are be able to flip a seat like this district. So I think both for the primary in general, the Republicans should be pretty 24:28.33 Sam Shirazi unlikely i think republicans are unlikely to give this a serious effort and so i think Subramanyam both in the primary in general should be pretty safe All right. One last district in Virginia, and that is the 11th congressional district that is currently represented by Democrat James Walkinshaw. Again, a very blue seat, I think Walkinshaw will get a serious challenger in the primary or the general either. So I think that’s kind the lay the land in Virginia. 24:44.54 Sam Shirazi Most the incumbents are to be safe. I think the incumbents that are in most danger are 24:52.44 Sam Shirazi Number one is Jen Kiggans in the second because it’s just a perennial battleground district and it tends to swing against the party in the White House. And then the Number two most endangered incumbent is Wittman. If the Democrats get a night, if there’s a blue wave, they might be able to knock him even though he’s a longtime incumbent. 25:14.90 Sam Shirazi And he’s had over-performances in the past. I do think in these wave elections, things can catch to And so I think that’s one thing Wittman has to be the especially because I think politics can swing back and forth. So we talked about the redistricting referendum. Republicans got upset. They were fired They got their voters out. They weren’t able to win the referendum, but it was much closer than I think a lot us expected. 25:36.46 Sam Shirazi Now that the Virginia Supreme Court has ruled for the Republicans, I think a lot of Democrats are very upset and they are trying to channel their anger. And you know logically, if you’re in Virginia and you’re a Democrat, what you’re going to want to do is try to flip the seats you have a chance of flipping And so I think while, yes Kiggans is going to face a serious challenge i do think after Kiggans a lot of democrats are going to look to rob Wittman. 26:09.78 Sam Shirazi as a potential incumbent that could be knocked off. And so I think in some ways, obviously, he’s happy that he doesn’t have to run in the gerrymandered district, or he doesn’t have to retire, but he’s not out of the woods. And I think And, it’s interesting the thing with elections is they can back and forth. I think in November 2025, Democrats were feeling pretty good and they got a big victory. And then we are in May 2026 and the Republicans feel pretty They won at the Supreme Court, Virginia Supreme Court. But. 26:29.61 Sam Shirazi It’s less than six months away until November, and we’ll see how they both the Democrats and Republicans feel in November after we get the results and the voters make their final say for the midterms. okay so now i’m going talk about the future of the podcast you know i had been debating this for a long time 27:02.41 Sam Shirazi And I think right now with the Virginia Supreme Court ruling it’s time for me to end the podcast. As sad as that is, I think the reality is this was really about the 2025 Virginia elections. I wanted to stick through to see the referendum. And now we have the Supreme Court decision that really is about the 2025 Virginia elections. This is kind of the book end of those elections. And This year in Virginia, the rest the year is to be interesting. Realistically, I don’t think the primaries are to be that much. There’s not going to be a lot. We basically the nominees are to be the major districts the primary. So I don’t think there’s a lot to talk there. 27:37.06 Sam Shirazi Certainly the general election is going to be interesting. I just don’t know if there’s enough material for basically two congressional seats to do an entire podcast every week about you know those races. i’m sure they’ll be interesting to follow but I don’t really know if it justifies continuing the podcast. And you know I think for me personally, like podcasting, posting on social media you know it takes a lot of time and I want to be mindful of you know my priorities and and wanting to focus on things that you know matter to me, like my family. And so as much as I love doing this and I’ve really enjoyed it and I hope people have found it very useful, there’s also a time for everything and a time to move on And so I think as much as I want to, 28:18.34 Sam Shirazi I think it’s time for me to hang it up with the Federal All Out podcast. It’s been an incredible I’ve appreciated everyone who’s come as a guest and who’s listened. And, I hope to perhaps it one day again. But I think the 2026 Virginia elections are to be as interesting as the 2025 Virginia elections. However, 28:38.34 Sam Shirazi I hope that I was able to share some of my interest and passion in Virginia elections matter what, and show everyone how interesting they can be and how there’s always so much going on in Virginia. I really love Virigina. And you know no matter Where you fall in the political spectrum, you’re Republican, or Democrat, you’re independent. I hope you were able to listen to this podcast and get something out of it. And I hope we can all kind of come together after a very long referendum process to maybe, you know focus more important things in Virginia and and try to move on after the Virginia supreme court ruling so 29:14.22 Sam Shirazi I think that’s going to be it for me with federal fallout. I’ve enjoyed it and I appreciate everyone who’s been listening and this has been federal fallout. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com [https://samshirazi.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

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 the the court’s resources? And do you think that’s makes sense in terms of separations of power? Because in the Virginia constitution, the primary power to pass, uh, 08:32.32 Sam Shirazi These referendums to change the Virginia Constitution lie with the General Assembly and lie with the people of Virginia. The executive essentially has very little, if basically no power, other than trying to put the referendum on the ballot through so to funding the ballot initiative. 08:48.20 Sam Shirazi And the judiciary does have a role in reviewing the referendum, but there is no... David Pérez, Explicit role for the judiciary in the redistricting referendum process in Virginia. So essentially it’s kind of an argument about this thing was passed you as the court should not come in and overturn the will of the people, the will of the General Assembly. the Virginia Constitution gives these powers to the General Assembly, to the people of Virginia. 09:13.77 Sam Shirazi these these The body of the Virginia General Assembly passed this thing, the people in Virginia passed this thing. So you as a court, it would essentially be anti-democratic or you’d be an activist court if you came in and essentially on some legal technicalities overturned this thing. 09:28.96 Sam Shirazi That would be kind of the democratic argument. And again, they’re kind of framing this big picture. If you look at the whole process, It worked. You know, you could quibble here and there. The Democrats should have done this. the Democrats should have done that. 09:51.73 Sam Shirazi and you will quibble with everything the Democrats did. And if you look at the lower court’s opinion, they kind of have a list of like 10 things the Democrats did wrong. It’s like, you should have done this, you should have done that, you should have done this, you should have done that. So that’s kind of what the lower court is saying. The lower court is saying you messed up a bunch of things in the process. And so, yes, in theory, General Assembly passed this, the voters approved it, but it doesn’t really matter because you didn’t do all the procedural steps you needed to do in order to get this thing passed. And again, I won’t go into the nitty gritty details because there’s a lot of them, but I’ll flag kind of the two big picture issues that I think are the most serious for the Democrats in terms of this redistricting referendum. One of them is that they were passed the the first time the redistricting referendum was passed through the General Assembly. It was right before the election. 10:38.88 Sam Shirazi I think traditionally in Virginia, these referendums are passed months before the election. And, you know, I’ve talked about in my previous podcast. There is a question about, do you have to post these notices for 90 days before the election? 10:52.38 Sam Shirazi And I think that’s one of the, essentially the argument that Republicans are making is that this was the first time this was passed, it was too close to the election and there wasn’t an an intervening election in between, or there wasn’t enough notice given give given in in terms of the election happening. And there was already a lot of early voting going on and all these things. So that’s essentially the Republican argument on that point. And I think the other thing that potentially the Republicans could make a point on is the ballot language. There was a lot of you know noise made by the Republicans about the ballot language being unfair. And specifically, it talked about restoring fairness. And I think from the Republicans’ perspective, this is the opposite of restoring fairness. It’s it’s making the maps unfair. From the Democratic perspective, obviously they’re saying it’s not fair that Virginia has to have nonpartisan redistricting while all the Republican states get to have partisan redistricting. So anyways, so essentially what the Virginia Republicans are trying to argue is the process was flawed. The voters weren’t given enough notice before the. 11:52.49 Sam Shirazi David Baird, Jr.: 2025 Virginia elections and even in the referendum itself, the voters were not given the fair language. And so while yes, this thing was passed with majorities. Baird, It was not done in a clean way. It wasn’t done in a way that was legally sound. And so you should look at the specific things that happened along the way and focus on that. And if you focus on that, you’ll see that the process and the law wasn’t followed. 12:15.52 Sam Shirazi And so don’t look at the big picture, look at the kind of nitty gritty details. And you know that’s kind of where I think this case is going to go. i expect the Virginia Supreme Court is going to be focusing on the details because they’re a pretty technical court. I think they’re pretty, you know they’re not going to just ignore some of these issues that Republicans are raising. 12:33.63 Sam Shirazi Having said that, the fact that they’re exploring them or looking at them or thinking about them doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to strike down the referendum. And I do think, you know, we just have to wait and see what, how they’re going to approach this. And I could really see them going either way. a lot of people have said, you know, there’s no way the Virginia Supreme Court is going to overturn the will of the people, they’re not going to overturn a referendum where one point over 1.5 million people voted yes. I think that’s certainly possible. And as I mentioned before, these judges are human beings. so they are thinking about how is this going to look? They’re also thinking about, do I really as a judge want to overturn the will of the people? 13:16.28 Sam Shirazi So I think there is a that is a legitimate argument that just from a practical standpoint, it is going to be very difficult for the Virginia Supreme Court to overturn this thing However, i do think the Virginia Supreme Court is the type of court where if they truly thought that there was a problem with the process and there’s legal issues with what happened, I don’t think that they would just let it go. i think they are you know a court that takes the law seriously, takes the Virginia Constitution seriously. And if they genuinely think there was a problem in the process, they are going to perhaps at at a minimum note that and 13:50.46 Sam Shirazi you know they They might find a procedural way to get out of it, but I do think they are not the type of court that’s just going to ignore something or roll over and play dead because it’s politically convenient. I do think they’re willing to make difficult decisions. They’ve done it in the past. 14:04.44 Sam Shirazi One example was in when Governor McAuliffe was governor, he started restoring voting rights to people who were convicted of felonies, and he wanted to kind of do that through a mass process where everyone would get their voting rights back at once. And the Virginia Supreme Court said, you can’t do that. It has to be an and individualized process. And I think that was an indication from the court that they’re not just gonna roll over and let the other branches of government do whatever they want. I mean, they are an, 14:33.18 Sam Shirazi Jonathan Haidt, independent branch the Virginia government and their job is to put checks and balances on the General Assembly and the executive branch. And so I think Jonathan Haidt, if they’ve truly feel that the process was violated, think they would be willing to strike down the redistricting referendum. 14:49.66 Sam Shirazi And you know there’s really no way for me to tell you what’s going to happen. I think we just have to wait and see. Unlike elections where I can look at data and I look in my you know try to look in my crystal ball, you know courts are much more unpredictable. And I think it’s really, really hard for me to give you any sort of sense of what’s going to happen. I think we’re just going to have to wait and see. And it’s kind of funny. I think the Democrats are just kind of moving ahead, saying we won, the redistricting referendum is happening, the new maps are happening. And the Virginia Republicans are kind of the opposite. They’re like, no, there’s major legal issues. We think we’re going to win the legal case. we won at the lower court. And they’re kind of operating the assumption that the old maps are going to be in going to be in operation. And, you know, it’s funny, I think they’re asking the members of Congress, what are you going to do? And members of Congress for the Republican side are still saying, essentially, they’re running in their old districts. So one way or another, someone is going to be wrong, either the Democrats 15:44.26 Sam Shirazi overestimated how strong their legal position is. And that would be a pretty dramatic result if the Virginia Supreme Court strikes down the referendum and says, actually, this whole thing is not going to happen. The other alternative is that the Virginia Supreme Court upholds the new maps, and then the Republicans are in a very difficult spot because They didn’t win at the ballot box. They didn’t win in the courts. 16:04.04 Sam Shirazi And they’re going to have to deal with these new maps. And I think it’s going to be interesting to see what the incumbent Republican members of Congress do in that situation. So I think we’re just going to have to see what ends up happening. There’s a lot to unpack, no matter what the Virginia Supreme Court ends up ruling. I think the next thing after the Virginia Supreme Court will be the actual primary on August 4th. 16:25.27 Sam Shirazi And you know we’ll have to see, is it going to be the old maps, it going to be the new maps? I think there’s some interesting dynamics in those primaries if they end up going forward under the new maps. And we’ll talk about that once we get a little bit more clarity, but there’s a lot to kind of still unpack with the redistricting referendum. We got done with the vote, but in some ways that was the most straightforward part because we knew it was either going to pass or it’s not going to pass. Now we’re in this phase where we have to wait on the Virginia Supreme Court and then we’re going to see how did the primary shape up and 16:55.80 Sam Shirazi Yeah, so lot to still cover in Virginia, even though the redistricting referendum is over and it was super interesting. And I appreciate everyone who’s been giving me some good feedback on some of the comments I made. And and I tried my best with the redistricting referendum to keep people educated. 17:11.95 Sam Shirazi That’s really my goal. I’m going to try to keep people educated as this process goes through the courts. And then as we go through the primary, still a lot to cover in Virginia. I’ll be there with you as we go through the wild ride that is the Virginia election. So i appreciate everyone who’s been listening. This has been Federal Fallout, and i’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com [https://samshirazi.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

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 just gotten very polarized. 09:35.24 Sam Shirazi And, you know you know, I don’t think it’s great for our country. I don’t think it’s great for the democracy and for Virginia, but that’s where we are. And and that’s what the results show. And I think one thing both sides really need to reflect on is how do they win in the other side’s territory? Because I think Spanberger did make some inroads in more in some rural areas, certainly in exurban areas. She made some inroads. 09:56.72 Sam Shirazi But I think some of those areas are upset right now. And I think the Democratic brand has has taken a hit. So certainly the Democrats have gotten something out of this in terms of a win. 10:08.21 Sam Shirazi from their perspective, hopefully they’ll get a 10-1 map. We’ll talk about the Virginia Supreme Court at another time, but hopefully they’ll get a 10-1 map for at least three three election cycles, 2026, 2028, and 2030. However, it it it comes with a cost. and in In politics, everything comes with a cost. And, you you know, I think at the end of the day, 10:28.04 Sam Shirazi They have hurt their brand in rural Virginia. And so they’re going to also have to reflect on that. But again, Virginia Republicans, not in a good spot right now. i think they they put up a good fight. It was closer than I expected. i think they they certainly you know did a good job getting out their voters and spreading the message they wanted to spread. But as as I mentioned, I think a good chunk of voters, especially in Northern Virginia, are just unwilling to basically listen to anything the Virginia Republicans say because they’re so upset at what’s going on in D.C. And so that’s never a good sign if if a if a chunk of voters are are not open to your message. 11:05.77 Sam Shirazi Anyway, so a lot to unpack there. And I wanted to kind of give you my thoughts and and why I thought yes had passed. You know, it’s funny because people were asking me, you know, it’s looking like no’s ahead. are you sure that yes is going to pass? And I told them, like, look, you just got to wait for Northern Virginia. You got to wait for Fairfax. 11:24.04 Sam Shirazi You know, once I saw Loudoun early in the night, you know, I knew it was over. And, you know, yes, it was closer than I expected. But I think... 11:33.20 Sam Shirazi it’s just one of those things like the numbers are the numbers and the votes are the votes. And if the Democrats in Northern Virginia are getting, you know, 70, 30 margins, and then in outer Northern Virginia are getting 60, 40 margins, combining that with the Richmond area and Hampton Roads, it’s just, there’s really no way for the Virginia Republicans to win. And, and you know, we saw that again in this election. And I had mentioned this in my podcast a a few nights ago. You know, I talked about how, 12:02.53 Sam Shirazi Virginia Republicans have the ceiling around 45, 46 percent. I think they they got higher than their ceiling. They may hit 48 percent this time. So in some ways, that’s an accomplishment. But, you know, they’re just the geography and politics of Virginia is such that it is so hard for the Virginia Republicans to get to 50 percent. 12:20.18 Sam Shirazi I think it’s going to continue to be hard for them. And it’s pretty amazing if you go back. really all the way to 2009. So, you know, over 15 years, the Virginia Republicans have only been able to win one stateide statewide election since 2010. 12:47.16 Sam Shirazi Interesting election for sure. I don’t want to kind of talk about next steps or what happens next in this podcast because, you know, I wanted to kind of just mainly talk about the election results. There’s a lot to unpack. 13:00.89 Sam Shirazi A major, major caveat to this election result is the Virginia Supreme Court. Perhaps after the Republicans, some of the most unhappy people in Virginia are on the Virginia Supreme Court because they are gonna be forced to rule on this issue. 13:14.95 Sam Shirazi They clearly wanted it, not from a political standpoint, but but they were hoping, I think, from a legal standpoint that they wouldn’t have to reach the merits because if if no had won, they would just dismiss the case and say, there’s nothing for us to rule on. Now there will be something for them to rule on. They do have to reach the merits. 13:33.19 Sam Shirazi You know, we’ll see how that plays out. I think there’s going to be oral arguments. We’ll have to see what the Virginia Supreme Court does. I think they’re truly nonpartisan, so I don’t think they’re going to be putting on their partisan hat, but they’re also human beings. And I think it is going to be a tough sell to the Virginia Supreme Court to tell right now there’s over one and a half million people who voted yes in this referendum to tell the you know Virginia Supreme Court to ignore those one and a half million people. 14:00.89 Sam Shirazi on on very kind of technical legal grounds. i mean I do think there are some valid technical legal arguments that Republicans can make, but conceptually in 2025, the Virginia General Assembly, both the Virginia House of Delegates and the Virginia State Senate passed this thing with majorities. 14:17.94 Sam Shirazi The Democrats won in 2025. The Virginia House of Delegates and the Virginia State Senate again passed this thing with with majorities. It got put on the ballot, a majority of Virginians voted for it. I mean, is the Virginia Supreme Court really going to say, actually, you know, we brushed off the Virginia constitution and this, you know, something in in there actually prevents this from going into effect? Maybe. 14:40.50 Sam Shirazi i don’t i don’t want to discount that possibility, but I do think these people are human beings and we just have to see what they’re they’re willing to do. And I think the oral argument is going to be really interesting. I’ll follow the legal stuff because I find it super interesting and I’ll keep you updated, but not a whole lot I can say now other than we’re just kind have to wait and see how that shakes out. August 4th will be a primary in Virginia. 15:41.94 Sam Shirazi really just a polarized election where, you know, the hardcore ne D’s voted yes, the hardcore no’s, hardcore Republicans voted no. You know, the independents probably slightly voted no, if I had to guess, but not overwhelmingly. And that’s why yes was able to get the win. You know, I’ll continue to unpack all this stuff up in my next episode and i will continue the podcast focusing on Virginia. As I mentioned, it’s going to be one election after another in Virginia. 16:09.19 Sam Shirazi I think, frankly, the primaries, if the new maps go into effect, I think the primary is going to be more interesting than general election. So that’ll be something to keep an eye on. But anyways, always fun times in Virginia elections. I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. I get good feedback on the podcast, get good feedback on my social media posts. I really appreciate everyone. 16:30.71 Sam Shirazi You know, my goal is to try to inform people. I try to be as objective as possible. Sometimes I give you my hot takes, but, you know, I’m not... My main goal really is education and to give people a sense of what’s going on without too much spin. And I hope people you know feel that’s what I’m doing because I don’t really want to you know increase the partisanship because there’s so much partisanship as as there already is in in this country and and in Virginia. My goal is everyone can listen and get get something out of these podcasts. 16:56.98 Sam Shirazi So again, thanks everyone who’s been listening. i will continue doing it. And this has been Federal Fallout and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com [https://samshirazi.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

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 harder sell to say we’re going to gerrymander Virginia. 09:18.66 Sam Shirazi i think it was an easier sell for the Republicans to say don’t gerrymander Virginia. So I want to say that in terms of the vibes. I think that’s why we’re seeing a closer election than 2025. 09:29.49 Sam Shirazi And the question really becomes, how close is it going to be? Is this going to be five-point race? Is it going to be a one-point race? It seems like this is kind of a default election in Virginia. And what I mean by that is 2025 was a little bit of the anomaly where It was a blowout. And, you know, if you look at most Virginia elections, they tend to be relatively close. 09:52.80 Sam Shirazi The last time it was not super close was in 2020 when President Biden got about a 10 point win in Virginia. And so even on a good night for the Virginia Democrats in 2020, it was a 10 point win. So if you think this is kind of a competitive election, maybe not, you the most competitive election ever in Virginia, but certainly a competitive election, it’s going to be less than 10 points just by default. Like Virginia is just not the type of state where you’re going to see these huge blowouts very frequently. I think that’s why 2025 was such a big deal because we did see a blowout and it’s pretty rare. Like if you think about 2021, 10:29.02 Sam Shirazi twenty twenty one Glenn Youngkin won in Virginia. He only won by two points. 2017, there was a bit of a blue wave, but even at that blue wave, it was a nine-point win for Ralph Northam. 2023, it was a close win for McAuliffe. 10:43.97 Sam Shirazi And really the last time the Republicans got a landslide in Virginia was in 2009. So you see that in in Virginia... It tends to be a middle of a road type state. And I think something like partisan gerrymandering is not going to have the landslide type of victory you saw in California. And the other thing I should say is Virginia is a pretty polarized state. There are a lot of rural areas, a lot of white working class voters. i think Chaz and Natico mentioned this. Parts of Virginia have voting patterns like the South that is very racialized voting. And so all that’s to say is like, it’s just hard for the Democrats to get these big wins in Virginia. And, you know, 2025 was a little bit of a perfect storm. 11:37.75 Sam Shirazi And so all that’s to say is I think the vibes most people’s gut is telling them it’s going to be a single digit victory for yes. You know, I think that is probably the most likely outcome based on the polls, based off the early vote, based off the vibes. So, you know, if I was betting, I would say that it’s going to be a single digit victory for yes. However, I think there is a universe where no could win. 12:01.04 Sam Shirazi I think what would have to happen would be really good election day turnout in rural areas and really bad election day turnout in more blue Democratic areas. 12:11.79 Sam Shirazi And then we would, on top of that, need to see a lot of persuasion, a lot of independence, and even some soft Democrats moving over to no. And essentially, it would be kind of a redo of what Glenn Youngkin was able to do in 2021, where he juiced up turnout in rural areas, and he kept the margin in suburban areas close, and he was able to get a two-point win. 12:31.22 Sam Shirazi I think it’s not out of the question we see that. I don’t think it’s the most probable outcome, but I do think there’s a path for no. Conversely, I do think there’s a path for yes, maybe not to get to 15 points, but maybe to get to 10 point win where we do break double digits. I think what you’d see is a lot of turnout on election day in more democratic areas, perhaps just kind of okay turnout in rural areas. 12:54.76 Sam Shirazi And then the final late deciders who are kind of the soft Democrats, they go towards yes. And so we see kind of a bigger than expected win for yes. I think that is also on the table. So so we’re seeing that range. And, you know, I don’t, there’s really no way of me telling you what’s going to happen. I think we’re just going to have to wait for the results. So I think, well, it’s interesting to look at the polls, look at look at look at at the early vote, look at at at the vibes. 13:19.65 Sam Shirazi I think at this point, you know, we’re going find out soon enough. So, you know, just wait and we’ll see what the results are on election night. Okay, so on that note, let’s turn over to what to expect on election night. You know, essentially... 13:32.72 Sam Shirazi In my opinion, the nice thing about Virginia is that they report results relatively quickly. So I think we’re not going to be waiting around for weeks trying to figure out what happened unless it’s super, super close. I think we should have a good sense fairly early on what is going to happen. So polls will close at 7 o’clock. 13:50.67 Sam Shirazi That first hour, we will start seeing results. Typically in Virginia, more rural counties, rural areas report first. So you may see some... David Buhlman- Lead initially for the no campaign and then later on, the more urban and suburban county counties start reporting. David Buhlman- want to give a shout out to Chaz Netticombe State Navigate and his team for their what’s called nav casts, so I would recommend looking at that i’m going to be looking at that on election night and what nav cast is essentially a program where. 14:20.05 Sam Shirazi they are inputting the data as it’s coming in, in terms of the results. And then based on their model, going to see which side is more likely to win. So, you know, even if, if, if no is winning a rural County, let’s say 60, 40, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good thing because perhaps the model had expected the rural County to be 60, 40. And so it’ll show, okay, yes, still has a 75% chance of winning or or whatever. So I’m just kind of making up numbers, but you see what I’m saying? It’s, It’s less anecdotal based on you know random reports and more based on a systematic analysis of all the reports coming into Virginia. So definitely give a shout out to NAVCAST. 14:57.80 Sam Shirazi im getting I typically like to look at the official results through the Virginia Department of Elections website because you can see where are the votes coming in, which counties are they coming in. 15:08.70 Sam Shirazi And then within the counties, you can see, okay, the votes are – early votes versus election day votes versus mail votes. and And all those are slightly different. And so it’s important in a county to realize where the votes are coming from. 15:22.79 Sam Shirazi So you may have, and even within a county, there are some parts of the county that are red, some part county that are blue. So even if you see, for example, a county where no is up or yes is up, you have to kind of figure out where are the votes coming from. Is it election day? Is it early vote? 15:39.36 Sam Shirazi I will say, here are my expectations. I expect the in-person early vote to be slightly for the yes campaign. I expect the mail votes to be for the yes campaign very strongly. 15:51.81 Sam Shirazi And then I expect the election day to be slightly for the no campaign. and then So those are the things we will get on election night. And unless it’s super, super close, we should get a sense of who’s who’s won on election night. I expect we’ll get a good a batch of votes by eight o’clock. And then usually by 9, 10, I don’t know if officially it’ll be called by the AP, but it’ll be basically we all kind of sense of what’s going to be going on. 16:15.51 Sam Shirazi And then in terms of when are the final, final votes going to be counted, there are two batches of votes that get counted after the election, after election night. Those are the provisional ballots, which are typically same day registrations. 16:39.41 Sam Shirazi at the local election offices until Friday at noon, if they’ve been postmarked by election date. So you have those final batches of votes. Typically, they’re not massive amounts of votes, maybe in the tens of thousands, which obviously in a close election are going be really important. 16:53.77 Sam Shirazi But if it’s not super close, we don’t necessarily have to wait for those votes to make the final call. And typically, those last batches of votes tend to be Democratic. So if it is super close, then we’ll have to keep a close eye on it. But my guess is that on election night, we should know And I’m guessing we should know hopefully by between 10 and 11, unless it’s super close. And if it’s super close, you know, it’ll really come down to some of those final votes. 17:19.33 Sam Shirazi I don’t anticipate it being that close of an election. And even in... 2021, which is an election that was within 2%, we were able to call that on election night. And even before the formal call, I think most people get a sense of, okay, we we kind of know where this thing is going. and And, you know, the nice thing about Virginia reporting so quickly is pretty quickly you have a sense of the night. And and I’ll talk about the infamous Loudoun moment in 2024, which was a bad news for the Democrats. And then in 2025, Loudoun’s results were good news for the Democrats. So in 2024, Virginia is one of the first states in the country to close its polls. 17:58.00 Sam Shirazi And there were some results that came in from Loudoun County that showed it, which showed President Trump doing better than expected. And I think Loudoun is usually pretty good for a big county and and somewhat of a swing county or at least a a somewhat competitive county. It usually reports pretty quickly. 18:14.24 Sam Shirazi And so I think once we get the Loudoun results, we’ll have a good sense. In 2024, we got the Loudoun results in. It showed that Harris was gonna win Virginia, but it was closer than I think a lot of people expected. 18:26.09 Sam Shirazi And I think that was an indication of how the night was going to go for the Democrats. Conversely, in 2025, we got Loudoun in relatively quickly and it was looked very good for the Democrats. Spanberger got a huge win and Jay Jones was getting a bigger margin than Harris got in 2024. And I think once Loudoun came in in 2025 for Jay Jones, I think we had a sense of he was going to win. And I could see something similar this time with Loudon, depending on how the number comes in for Loudon. And my benchmark for Loudon is about 60-40. I think if Loudon comes in sixty forty for the Yes campaign, that’s a good sign for them. 19:02.44 Sam Shirazi Probably that means they’re going a single-digit win. So if it’s 60-40, once the mail is in, once the early vote is in, once the election day vote is in in Loudoun County, I think I would be pretty confident in saying that yes is going to win. 19:16.79 Sam Shirazi If it’s even bigger than 60-40, if we’re seeing 65-35 in Loudoun, that means it’s a very good night for yes and that it could be a double digit win for the yes campaign. Conversely, if it’s very relatively close in Loudoun, if we’re seeing fifty five forty five for the Yes campaign in Loudoun, I think that’s going to be a good night for the No campaign. And obviously, if if No even gets close to winning Loudoun, I think that’s a very good night for No and a very bad night for Yes. So keep an eye out on Loudoun. I think it’s an important county. 19:45.95 Sam Shirazi Everyone always looks for it. It reports pretty quickly. So keep an eye out for Loudoun. The other thing I’ll say is some of these big Democratic counties, Fairfax, Prince William, they take a while to report because they got a lot of precincts. They have a lot of voters. 20:01.02 Sam Shirazi It’s different than a rural county that has, you know, a few thousand votes. Fairfax County is going to have tens of thousands of votes. And so it’s just going to take a while to process and and they’ll post later. And so I wouldn’t necessarily, you know, go crazy if the early votes are showing no up because, 20:20.18 Sam Shirazi That is traditionally the trend in Virginia is the Republicans tend to do well at the beginning of the night and then slowly as the night progresses, the Democrats do better. And then by the end of the night, usually the Democrats end up winning Virginia. So I think as much as we all like looking at the results coming in, it is a little bit of a scattered results and they’re not really uniform. And so I wouldn’t go too crazy as the results coming in. Look at the Navcast, i kind of have some common sense. Okay, there’s no votes from Fairfax or, you know, just just kind of understand how votes are coming in. And I think one thing to keep in mind, like the New York Times, I often look at their elections webpage, and I think they do a good job for the most part, but they don’t always tell you, is it early vote that’s coming in? is it 21:06.56 Sam Shirazi election day. So for example, in a county, yes or no might be up, but that’s because, you know, maybe it’s only the mail vote or maybe it’s only election day. So I think you just really have to be careful. 21:18.08 Sam Shirazi Again, I’m not going to dwell on it. I think pretty quickly we’re going to get a sense of how things are going. And, you know, every you see all sorts of stuff being posted and anecdotal stuff. And some of it drives me crazy and I can’t comment on everything on election night. So that’s why I’m kind of giving you this preview and and just you know I’ll give you some accounts to follow on election night to maybe not drive yourself crazy. i Definitely recommend my account. So I’m on the you know social media. So look look me up. Chaz Netticombe and his team at State Navigate have put a lot of thought and effort and work into the election. So definitely would would follow Chaz and his team at State Navigate. And there’s definitely other people who do really good job. 22:02.97 Sam Shirazi Don’t want to list them all because I’m going to leave someone out and I’ll feel bad about it. But definitely, you know, keep keep in mind when you’re seeing things online. some Some of it might be good. Some of it might be bad. 22:13.65 Sam Shirazi And yeah, I’ll i’ll do some bad podcasts to unpack the results. I think no matter what happens, it’s going to be a really interesting night. This has been a unique election. All eyes are going to be on Virginia. 22:25.29 Sam Shirazi i think we haven’t had a competitive election in a while. yeah And so everyone’s excited about this one, even if you know No matter which which side you are on, I think if you’re truly just a interested in elections and people going to the polls and democracy in action, this is a really great election to watch. And yeah, so I’ve appreciated everyone who’s... Rouxet- Gone on this ride with me, which is a redistricting referendum. 23:03.49 Sam Shirazi you know It never ends in Virginia. The elections go on and on. and yeah i mean it’s It’s always interesting following Virginia elections. I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. I will catch you on the other side of the redistricting refer referendum. and This has been Federal Fallout. and I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com [https://samshirazi.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

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 in the voting booth, they’re going to vote yes. And I think we talked about this last year with the shy Jay Jones voter. 08:12.93 Sam Shirazi Someone who doesn’t want to admit they’re voting for Jay Jones for whatever reason, but they end up voting for him. And I do think there was some of that going on in the attorney general race. And that’s why Jay Jones got a bigger win than almost all the polls were showing was because people ended up going to vote and they voted for Jay Jones, even though they weren’t telling the pollsters or they may have been an undecided, but they got into the booth and they just voted straight ticket D and I think that some of that could be happening because I think there are a group of people who 08:42.39 Sam Shirazi Again, they’re kind of high propensity voters. They’re going to vote no matter what. They don’t like Trump. They don’t like Republicans. And when they get in the booth, they’re just going to say, you know, I don’t love either option. I don’t like gerrymandering, but I really think it’s important to perhaps send a message or perhaps to even the playing field nationally. So I’m going to vote yes. They may not you know be putting a sign out on their lawn. They may not be screaming it from the top of their lungs. They may not be telling pollsters, but when they get into voting, both they’re going vote yes. 09:09.56 Sam Shirazi But again, there’s that turnout dynamic. So you’re going to see those shy yes voters, the high propensity ones, older, wealthier, those people are going to show up. But then you may, and I think this is the problem the yes campaign may have is you have the The low propensity shy yes voters. So these are people like I would say probably young people, people in college don’t really care too much about this either way. They’re just kind of out of it and they’re not going to vote because this isn’t the top priority in their lives. And again, they’re not you know living and breathing politics. So I think on both sides, you have the persuasion and turnout dynamics intersecting. 09:43.55 Sam Shirazi I think the question becomes, you know, who does a better job? Do the shy yes voters turn up? Do the skeptical, independent, no voters show up? Does all that happen all at once? 09:55.04 Sam Shirazi And, you know, Chaz Natico mentioned this. I mean, I think there is a possibility where Democrats just kind of plow through, they get the turnout they need, and they get to like 51 or 52%. 10:06.33 Sam Shirazi And it’s just, it’s not pretty, but at the end of the day, they get it to pass. I think that’s one dynamic. And most people seem to think that’s where things are leaning towards at this point. think the other dynamic is If things break one way or another, if there’s a lot more shy yes voters than we think, I mean, I think this could be close, not not that close at the end of the day and could be maybe a fifty five forty five result where you you even hit double digits. 10:29.95 Sam Shirazi I think if there are more us kind of skeptical no independents who turn up, this could be close. And I think in an ideal universe for the Republicans, I think there is a a way they they have a path to get to know. The path would be that Democratic turnout is down among low propensity voters, young voters. 10:47.83 Sam Shirazi Republican turnout is high among the you know hardcore base, including their low propensity like rural voters. And then they’re getting a lot of persuasion on the no independence. And they’re also getting a lot of no independence to go vote because they you know, are able to to motivate those people to go vote because, you know, those people may not like gerrymandering. So I think a lot of things have to go right for the Republicans. Basically, all the Democrats need to do to go right for them is they just need to get out their base. And that probably gets them to 50%. I think a lot needs to go right for the Republicans to get to 50%. And I think there’s a common problem that we see in Virginia where 11:25.39 Sam Shirazi the Virginia Republicans, like it’s pretty easy for them to get into the 40s. It’s pretty easy for them to get up to 45%. We saw that with Miárez, but they just can’t overcome that hump of 45% for whatever reason, probably because, you know, the combination of suburban votes and African American votes, it’s it’s easy for the Democrats to get 50%. 11:44.38 Sam Shirazi Just the Republicans, they have that ceiling around 45, 46% in Virginia. And i think you know We’ll see if they’re able to cross it. The the one you know time they did cross it was in 2021 when Glenn Youngkin won, and he was able to get up to pretty much 51%. I don’t think that’s impossible here, but I also think it is a different environment than 2021. It’s a different environment than 2025. So 2021, we obviously had a Democratic president. It was right after the withdrawal from Afghanistan. 12:16.72 Sam Shirazi President Biden’s approval rating was going down. So I think it was just a good national environment for the Republicans and Glenn Youngkin and the Republicans in 2021 kind of seized the opportunity and won. Same thing 2025, Democrats, good national environment for them. They had a strong Democratic candidate with now Governor Spanberger. You had a relatively less strong candidate with Lieutenant Governor Winston-Marcel Sears. So Democrats were able to seize the moment, get a big win, a landslide. I think I mentioned this before, politics is about being president and 2026 is different than 2025. It’s different than 2021. 12:52.55 Sam Shirazi How are things even between 2025 and 2026 different? i mean I would say the natural environment is actually worse for the Republicans right now than 2025 because you know oil prices have gone up, gas prices are up. you know There may be some news in the next few days about potential deal with Iran. But, you know, regardless, the prices are elevated and people are not feeling that great about the economy. The cost of living crisis has continued. So I think the national environment is certainly not great for the Democrats. But you have to kind of look at some space state specific dynamics here in Virginia. Specifically, Democrats now have a trifecta. They are in complete control of Virginia state government. You know, we’ve talked about Spanberger’s approval. There’s a lot of, you know, 13:35.87 Sam Shirazi talking points about Spanberger going left and the Democrats are you know passing all these taxes, which you know almost none of them actually passed, but that’s what’s getting into the media ecosystem. So I think At the end of the day, the democratic environment is not as great in Virginia compared to 2025, the state environment. 13:53.92 Sam Shirazi And I also think we’ve talked about this. I mean, the idea of gerrymandering is not as popular as Spanberger. So like in 2025, the person who was on the ticket for the Democrats was Spanberger. In 2026, what is essentially a proxy for the Democrats is let’s gerrymander Virginia. 14:09.53 Sam Shirazi Certainly some hardcore Democrats, they’re very happy with that and they want to gerrymander Virginia. A lot of other people, including a lot of the true independents we talked about, they don’t want to gerrymander Virginia. So I think 2026 is going to be its own thing. It’s not this kind of, you know, we do have 2025, have 2021. 14:27.20 Sam Shirazi lot of people have mentioned that the closest election this is probably similar to is 2025 attorney general race. A lot of the same dynamics we talked about shy Jay Jones voters, skeptical independents. 14:51.22 Sam Shirazi Yes campaign is able to do that this year, or if the no campaign is able to keep those skeptical independence as skeptical independence and they don’t go over into becoming shy yes voters. I think there’s a lot going on. This election, I think, is a lot harder to read than 2025. The vibes are different. There’s a lot fewer polls. 15:08.74 Sam Shirazi so i could i could see like a huge range of possibilities everything from a close night where no just pulls it out to a 10 point yes win and that really depends on how the turnout is looking even more so than turnout dynamics i think it’s really going to depend on the final persuasion you know people getting to the booth sides are making a push i’ll say that the democrats are you know doing their best to convince people that this is really a way to send a message on President Trump. And they brought in former President Obama, who’s done videos, and he’s trying to kind of persuade Democrats. On the Republican side, you have people trying to make this all about, you know, the unfairness of the maps, and then also similarly kind of attacking Spanberger and kind of using this election as a way to attack Spanberger. 15:57.35 Sam Shirazi And I think the one thing i’ll I’ll kind of end on is I don’t know if the Republicans’ strategy of making this a referendum on Spanberger necessarily is going to work because I think while there are people who are kind of upset at Spanberger, if you look at approval ratings, there are more people upset at President Trump than Governor Spanberger. And so the question becomes, does this become a referendum on Trump? Does become a referendum? 16:18.81 Sam Shirazi On Spanberger, you know, we’ll see. It could be a referendum on both. I think if it if it’s referendum on Trump, I think the Democrats clearly they’re going are going to win that. 16:29.66 Sam Shirazi I think it’s a referendum on Spanberger. It’s going to be close. And so I think if we we see a close result at the end of the day, I think that’s an indication this became a referendum on Spanberger. I think if we don’t see a close election and the Democrats and yes, win by a fair margin, I think we can say that this has become a referendum on Trump. And it’s really kind of a crazy experiment. We don’t know what’s going to happen. There haven’t been a lot of polls. you know Everyone’s gut is like, yes, has a single digit lead. 16:56.86 Sam Shirazi But, you know, we don’t know until the votes start coming in. So I think it’s going to be really interesting. I will probably do one last podcast before the election once we get the final early voting numbers, once we get any final polls. 17:08.86 Sam Shirazi But really, this is the dynamic that’s going on. And I think, you know, just keep an eye out on the fact that people are not as vocal, I’d say, 17:19.30 Sam Shirazi about this when you’re in the middle or you’re kind of an undecided voter. I mean, you you hear the people, on the Republican side, who are very loud and they are upset by this. And then you see people on the Democratic side who are excited about this. They want to send a message. They want to view this as a way to, you know, push back on D.C. and what President Trump’s doing. And you know those people are both loud. I think the people in the middle who don’t really talk about this, they don’t really want to, you know, 17:45.95 Sam Shirazi advertise what their views are, I think those people going to really important. And it’s it’s hard to get a read on that because unlike a presidential election where you know a lot of those people may have opinions, something like this, that they’re going to be convinced probably in the last few days. And that’s why you’re seeing a lot of advertisements. I know there’s kind of jokes about all the TV ads and all the mailers. I’ve i’ve gotten a lot of mailers. I’ve seen a lot of TV ads. 18:08.23 Sam Shirazi Certainly a lot of money being is being spent on both sides, even though I’d say the Yes campaign had a slight advantage. Not a slight advantage. They they had more money. But the the no campaign got a kind of a late injection of money as well. So end of the day, we’ll have to wait and see. I think that’s what’s exciting about this election. We don’t know. I will certainly be here to cover it all. Obviously, once we get the results, I’ll kind of do the post analysis of all that. And then once the referendum is done, we’re going to have to think about legal challenges at the Virginia Supreme Court that still exist. We have to think about the primary that’s going to be coming up for the congressional seat. So a lot to still cover in the 18:42.97 Sam Shirazi Virginia elections, never a dull moment. And I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. And this has been Federal Fall Out. And I’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. 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