With the General Assembly under Democratic control and the strong desire to provide additional voting options and protection from COVID-19, this year’s election was the first to feature “no-excuse” absentee voting and early in-person voting in Virginia. While it is too early to tell what increase in voter turn-out can be attributed to these additional options, we expect final numbers to show record, or near-record, turnout. What we do know is that Virginia election officials reported 2.75 million of Virginia’s 5.9 million registered voters had already voted prior to election day. Before election day, voter turnout had already reached 69% of 2016 levels. This report was prepared with information available as of 4:00 pm on Wednesday, November 4th, with a few precincts in many of the races not yet reporting and many absentee and early votes not yet counted. The state has until November 16th, to certify all election results.
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