Virginians are voting this week on a proposed congressional map that could eliminate all but one Republican-leaning district, the latest checkpoint in the national race by both parties to redraw districts ahead of the midterms.
Early voting on the referendum was conducted between March 6 and April 18 ahead of the April 21 election.
Nearly as many voters cast early in-person and mail-in ballots as in the 2025 governor’s race, which saw the highest nonpresidential voter turnout in state history. The number of early ballots in the current election, while high, was possibly affected by a reduced number of early vote locations and more limited schedules for voting than there had been in the 2025 election.
Overanalyzing the early vote can be perilous because of how much remains unknown. In Virginia, it is even harder to analyze than in some other states, because voters do not declare a political party when they register to vote, and geographic analysis of where ballots have been cast does not offer information about who actually voted in those districts.
Voter data does, however, indicate whether voters have participated in party primaries. And that information can give us a rough sense of the partisan breakdown of those who cast ballots.
There is no way to know vote choice from early vote data, and there is never any guarantee that people will follow predictable partisan patterns. This election has the potential to be even less predictable, given that it’s not a strictly partisan race. But the overall partisan breakdown is similar to the one seen during the early vote in the 2025 governor’s race, which Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic candidate, won by more than 15 percentage points.
It is typical to see a Democratic advantage in early voting, while Election Day voters tend to be significantly more conservative.
The New York Times classified voters as Democratic or Republican based on data compiled by L2, a nonpartisan data firm, that shows which voters who have cast early or mail ballots ahead of the election and indicates whether they have participated in Democratic primaries or Republican primaries in the past. (It does not show for whom they voted.)
Voters who have not participated in a Democratic or Republican primary in recent years made up a smaller share of the early electorate in this election than they did in 2025. The split between voters with previous Democratic and Republican participation stayed relatively stable.
Jonah Smith is a data journalist at The Times, specializing in computational reporting and analyzing large data sets.
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