Federal Fallout: The 2025 Virginia Elections

Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode we will go over the transition of power that will happen today in Virginia as the inauguration of the new governor and lieutenant governor and attorney general happened today in Virginia.00:17.36Sam ShiraziAnd then we will go over some news in terms of what’s been going on with the redistricting referendum, which aside from the transition of power, the big news in Richmond is a lot of speculation about how things are going to be going with the redistricting referendum. And we got a little bit more clarity this week, so I’ll go over that. But first, I did want to talk about the inauguration, obviously historic inauguration for governor as we will the Virginia will have its first woman governor.00:46.26Sam Shirazifor Lieutenant Governor, another historic inauguration for her because Ghazal Hashmi will become the first Muslim person and the first South Asian person elected statewide in Virginia.00:57.15Sam ShiraziAnd Jay Jones will become the first Black Attorney General in Virginia history. Now, every time there’s an inauguration like this, either at the presidential level or at the state level, I often think about the beginning of John F. Kennedy’s inauguration speech, in my opinion, one of the best inauguration speech speeches in American history. and There’s kind of the a quote that i always remember.01:22.24Sam ShiraziIt doesn’t matter if the Republican or Democrats being inaugurated. I remember this quote from John F. Kennedy. He said, quote, we observe today not a victory of party, but a celebration of freedom, symbolizing in an end as well as a beginning, signifying renewal as well as change. And I think that captures...01:40.82Sam ShiraziYou know, the fact that, you know, these inaugurations, while obviously they’re celebrating one person winning the election, it really is a celebration of the fact that there is democracy in this country, for elections, freedom. And I think that’s ultimately what we’re celebrating because a lot of parts of the world don’t have don’t get the opportunity to do that. Obviously, there’s been. a lot of unrest going on in Iran, for example, and you see that people there are really struggling for their freedom.02:09.82Sam ShiraziAnd it’s nice to see here in Virginia that we will see a transition of power from a Republican to a Democrat. And, you know, there had been some tension between outgoing Governor Glanionkin and an incoming Governor Spanberger over the search for the UVA president. And there were some letters that went back and forth. But at the end of the day,02:31.22Sam ShiraziThis week in Richmond, they have seemed to patch things up and we’re all friendly with each other. And that’s nice to see in the sense of, you know, it’s important that there’ll be orderly transition of power.02:44.07Sam ShiraziAnd anyways, so... We will see the inauguration today, and then obviously Governor Spanberger and the other elected officials will be hi the hitting the ground running with their new administration trying to implement the agenda that people elected them to do, primarily focusing on the cost of living issue. I think Governor Spanberger, that will be her first priority because she knows that was what a lot of people voted for her to do is to try to make things more affordable. And so I’m sure that will be one of her top focuses as governor.03:17.97Sam ShiraziAnd I think, you know, we’ll just have to wait and see how things go in terms of the General Assembly, what kind of bills they send her. And yeah, anyways, I mean, in some ways, the inauguration is kind of the culmination of the election that happened last year in Virginia. It’s kind of the final Final moment that officially marks the transition of power as we saw the blue wave that came into Virginia last year come into office as the Democrats will have a trifecta for the first time since Governor Northam left office.03:49.42Sam ShiraziAnd it’s the first time, I think I mentioned this fact before, it’s the first time an incoming governor will have a trifecta in Virginia since Doug Wilder all the way way back after the 1989 election. So definitely historic election here in Virginia, historic inauguration. And, you know, I’m sure it’ll be interesting to see what Governor Spanberger says in her inauguration speech. So i don’t want to dwell on it too much. i think we’ll just have to wait and see how everything plays out. I did want to shift focus to a slightly different topic.04:19.06Sam Shiraziwhich is the redistricting referendum. Because as much as there is a lot of focus on affordability and things that, you know, more bread and butter issues, I think in terms of the pure politics of it, the redistricting referendum in the short term is going to take up a lot of oxygen for the General Assembly as they work to pass that through.04:39.62Sam ShiraziAnd then the other big thing that will have to happen is the campaign for the redistricting referendum will happen in the winter and spring. And that’s already starting to take shape. And just this week, we got more clarity about what the redistricting referendum is going to look like.04:56.62Sam ShiraziSo just for some context, the General Assembly actually so met on Wednesday before the inauguration of the new governor and lieutenant governor. and Attorney General. And so you had this you know three-day period where the executive branch was still controlled by the Republicans, yet the legislative branch was controlled by the Democrats. It was interesting to see Lieutenant Governor Earl Sears, she, in her final days in office, still presided over the Virginia Senate because she is still the Lieutenant Governor.05:24.10Sam ShiraziAnd I think you know she did that job. I’m sure it’s not easy after a tough campaign and and having a loss like that, but she came in and did her job and you know, at the end of the day, the Democrats are were in control of the state Senate and the House Delegates. And so typically what happens is they are trying to get the redistricting referendum going as soon as possible because they know that the clock is ticking in terms of trying to get that done this year. So really, the first thing the Virginia Democrats have done is try to move forward these constitutional amendments with redistricting getting the most attention. However, it’s important to remember redistricting is not the only referendum. There are three other referendums that the Democrats are trying to pass this year in Virginia.06:06.86Sam ShiraziThose are on reproductive rights. trying to enshrine that in the Virginia Constitution, trying to rep repeal the ban on same-sex marriage and enshrine the right to same-sex marriage in the Virginia Constitution, and then also restore voting rights to people convicted of felonies once they leave prison. So those are all also happening, but obviously the big national attention is on the redistricting referendum.06:29.33Sam Shirazithat is going to happen in the spring. And I wanted to update kind of a couple of things on the legal side of things and then on the political side. So on the legal side, there is a court case that is working its way through the system.06:41.08Sam ShiraziThe Republicans challenging the redistricting referendum, basically on kind of procedural grounds that they Virginia Democrats didn’t properly follow the Virginia constitution. The lower court didn’t stop the Democrats this week from moving forward with the redistricting referendum. And that’s not super surprising. Typically courts don’t want to get involved in the middle of a legislative process. Once everything is finalized, then the court might come in. And that’s basically what the lower court said. They basically said it was too early for us to get involved and we’re not going to tell the legislature what to do. Once they pass whatever they want to pass, then we can take a look at it. So the case is not settled.07:21.10Sam ShiraziI think once the final votes are in and and the referendum is going to be placed on the ballot, I think the Republicans will then go to the courts and try to block it. We’ll see what the lower court says. We’ll see if it eventually gets to the Virginia Supreme Court. So just keep in mind, there is that legal process in the background going on.07:38.86Sam Shiraziyou know As I mentioned, I think courts are often hesitant to get too involved in these political questions, particularly in Virginia, where you have a less political court system. So we’ll see if the you know legal challenges will go anywhere. But you know for now, let’s assume that redistricting will move forward. I think we got some clarity from the Virginia Democrats this week about what the redistricting referendum is going to look like.08:02.12Sam ShiraziSo the big question that we’re still waiting on is whether the map that will finally be passed if the redistricting referendum is successful, will there be a 10-1 map or a nine two map? Will there be a map with 10 Democrats and one Republican, or will it be nine Democrats and two Republicans? We still don’t know the answer to that, but we got a little bit of a clue about when we might get an answer because the Virginia Democrats basically said they will release the maps before the redistricting referendum and they said they would do it by January 30th. And so we’ll see what happens. I mean, i assume it’s going to be one map and they’re going to say, you know, vote for the referendum and you’ll get this map. It’s possible they release a few maps and say, well, one of these will be the maps.08:49.01Sam ShiraziWe’ll just have to wait and see. And I think that’ll answer the big question 10192.08:54.81Sam ShiraziI think there’s a lot of speculation about which one it’s going to be. Obviously, we’ll just have to wait and see. And once the maps come out, I’m sure I’ll do a podcast and do a whole episode on you know what the maps look like,

Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This episode we will look at the shadow of 2025 in 2026 and just what all the election fallout will be after we saw the Democratic blue wave in Virginia that happened in 2025.00:19.89Sam ShiraziSo to begin, I hope everyone had a good holiday, New Year. Obviously, I took a little bit of a break and there was still things going on, but there wasn’t as much to cover over the holidays. I did want to get back and just kind of give a preview of what this year would look like and also just talk about how 2025 fits into 2026.00:40.97Sam ShiraziObviously, the name of this podcast, it really was focused on the 2025 Virginia elections. But I do think that there is a justification to continue it into 2026, because really Virginia in 2026 is going to be defined by 2025. I think 2025, the story in Virginia was the federal fallout, everything going on in DC. That defined both what was going on in Virginia and also the election ultimately. And I think 2026, a lot of the story in Virginia will be the shadow of 2025, the fallout from 2025.01:13.23Sam ShiraziI think while there’s obviously a lot going on in D.C., it’s unlikely Republicans are going to be able to pass any sort of major bill like they did in 2025. I think while there’s still major changes going on to the federal government, I think the initial kind of shock and awe of both Doge and the changes that Trump administration have made have kind of settled in, for lack of a better word, and things have stabilized to a certain extent in the federal government. And I think the people who left, for the most part, had kind of departed. I’m sure there will be more departures, but most of the departures happened last year from the federal government.01:47.59Sam ShiraziSo I think in that sense, things have somewhat stabilized. Obviously, the hit to the Virginia economy is still going to be a major story in 2026. But I do think a lot of the story of this year in Virginia is going to be the Democratic trifecta, the amount of power that they have now, given the scale of the wind that they got in 2025, and really, you know from their perspective, the mandate that they got in 2025. So I kind of wanted to talk about a few things that are going to be happening this year in Virginia.02:13.83Sam Shiraziwith the caveat that a lot of it is shaped by what’s going on in 2025. And, you know, 2026, it’s a midterm. Those elections are kind of independent of the state elections. Those are federal elections. But I do think, particularly because of redistricting, they’re going to be shaped a lot by what happened in 2025.02:29.40Sam ShiraziSo we can go ahead and get started with that. I guess at the beginning, I don’t want to go into all the ins and outs of it because there’s a lot of special elections coming up. You know, just an immediate fallout of what happened 2025. There are a lot of special elections at the beginning of 2026. A lot of people are leaving to join the Spanberger administration.02:47.66Sam ShiraziJust this week, there was an announcement that State Senator Adam Ebbin, he will be resigning in February to join the Spanberger administration. so there’s going to be a special election for his state Senate seat in Arlington and Alexandria.03:01.13Sam ShiraziAnd then current delegate Elizabeth Bennett Parker has announced that she’s running for Eben’s state Senate seat. I think there’s a decent chance she will end up winning that. And so she will do resign in her House of Delegates seat. So there’s probably going to be another special election in the House of Delegates. And that doesn’t even count the other three House of Delegates special elections that are coming up.03:20.62Sam ShiraziThere were two special elections on January 6th that the Democrats easily won in Richmond, in the Richmond area for the state Senate and House of Delegates. So long story short, there are going to be a lot of special elections in Virginia.03:33.09Sam ShiraziNone of them are super interesting just because they are very deep blue seats. There’s not really any risk the Democrats are going to lose any of these seats. Some of the Democratic nomination fights for those seats might be interesting, but there’s You know, they’ve most of them have passed and there’s only going to be two more nominees going to be determined for those Northern Virginia seats that I just mentioned. So long story short, lot of special elections. I’m not going to go with the ins and outs of them just because they’re not super interesting from the standpoint of being competitive, but just shows you that a lot of what’s going on in Virginia in 2026, like these special elections are because Spanberger won in 2025. They’re kind of the fallout from that. And we’re going to continue to see that throughout the year in Virginia.04:16.00Sam ShiraziAnd I wanted to start with perhaps the biggest unknown in Virginia this year, and that’s redistricting. So next week, the Democrats will come back and the Republicans will come back to Richmond, but the Democrats will have a big majority in the House of Delegates. They will have 64 seats.04:30.81Sam Shiraziout of 100. In the state Senate, they still have a relatively narrow majority of 19 to 21, sorry, 21 to 19 majority in the state Senate. However, they now control the lieutenant governor’s gavel. And so that means they have extra power because the lieutenant governor presides over the state Senate. So both in the House of Delegates and the state Senate, the Democrats are going to have more power and they’re going to be starting to flex their muscles next week in Richmond.05:16.16Sam ShiraziSo, So what happens now? So the first step is in the House of Delegates and the state Senate, the Democrats need to vote on the redistricting amendment again. Presumably that will pass.05:25.99Sam ShiraziAnd then there will be a there the’ll need to be a process to set up a referendum. That will face a legal challenge. And so in theory, the Republicans will try to block it in the courts and we’ll see if that goes anywhere. These are mainly state legal challenges based on kind of procedural things and just kind of specific language of the state constitution, did the Democrats you know follow all the procedures that are required to get a referendum on the ballot? you know We’ll see how it plays out. My gut is telling me that the courts don’t want to get super involved in this and that they would prefer the voters to make the decision. So they’ll let the voters do the referendum and whatever that happens, happens.06:21.24Sam ShiraziIf the referendum passes, then the Democrats will then have to do some legislation to potentially change the date of the primary because you know realistically the June primary date is coming up. The filing deadlines are coming up. and if you’re going to have completely new maps, you’re going to need to give people time to run. you’re goingnna have to change some of those timelines. So There’s a lot of legislation that will still have to happen even once the redistricting amendment passes in terms of getting the the lines going in Virginia.06:53.42Sam Shiraziyou know i think if the redistricting referendum happens in the April timeframe, that will dominate you know the first half of the year in Virginia because there will be there’ll be a referendum campaign. There’s going to be a yes side, a no side. i assume the National Party is going to come in, fund both of those efforts.07:11.54Sam ShiraziThere’s going to be money and ads. And so going to have this whole election basically in the spring revolving around the referendum. I think, you know, Democrats feel pretty good about it. They want to...07:24.51Sam ShiraziThey want to make this essentially a referendum on Trump. If you like Trump, then you’re going to vote no. If you want to send a message and vote against Trump, you will vote yes on the redistricting referendum. That’s kind of the clean way to just, you like Trump, no. You you you don’t like Trump, yes. you know The reality, it’s going to be a little bit nuant more nuanced than that. But these things tend to just become referendums on the incumbent president. We saw that in California.07:50.22Sam ShiraziAnd so that’s kind of the redistricting fight and the referendum that’s going to happen. Assuming the redistricting passes, which you know is not 100 percent. And I will you know i will do a another podcast at some point on the redistricting referendum itself. But assuming it passes, then you know you’re going to have brand new lines. The question becomes, do the Democrats go maximum and try to get 10 Democratic seats out of 11 in Virginia or they go nine two They try to get nine Democratic seats out of Virginia.08:18.71Sam ShiraziA lot of unknowns. We’ve heard kind of some mixed messaging about that from Governor Spanberger versus the House of Delegates and the State Senate. So a lot of unknowns. you know we’ll We’ll just have to wait and see what ends up happening with redistricting. But I think it’s going to be a really important discussion.08:34.91Sam Shiraziconversation that’s going take up a lot of the political space in Virginia in the first half of the year. And I do think it’s it’s going to be interesting to have that referendum because typically in Virginia, every once in a while we’ll have kind of a partisan contested referendum, but Virginia is not like California where like every year there’s 20 referendums. Referendums are relatively rare.08:57.56Sam ShiraziThere are nonpartisan or bipartisan referendums that happened. The last referendum, I believe, was 2024, was basically was basically on the a tax credit or tax deduction for veterans who were, or widows of veterans who who died in action. And so it was very nonpartisan.09:17.13Sam ShiraziAnd so this is really going to be one of the first really hot button events Jr.: referendums we’ve had in a while in Virginia that is very cl

00:00.44Sam ShiraziHi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This episode we will first go over just some updates about special elections that will happen early next year in Virginia. And then I wanted to kind of wrap up the year with some of my final thoughts on 2025 and give you a little bit of a sense of what I might be doing in the new year with the podcast.Sam ShiraziSo before we get to that, the first thing I wanted to go over was the special elections. In the beginning of the new year in Virginia, I wanted to just give you an update about the nominations for the three House of Delegates special elections. The first special election will be on January 6th. That will be House District 77. The current incumbent, Mike Jones. He is resigning to run for the state Senate in the seat that Ghazala Hashmi has resigned. So in that House of Delegates district, there was actually kind of a surprise in the firehouse primary where the expected front runner Michelle Mosby was not able to win. Instead, former ACLU attorney Charlie Schmidt won the nomination. And I think that was a pretty big surprise because Michelle Mosby had a lot of endorsements, including from Mike Jones, the delegate who was about to resign. And I think it just goes to show you, you never really know what’s going happen in these firehouse primaries. These tend to be very low turnout elections because they’re party run primaries and it’s just less well known than the regular primaries and regular elections. And this one, you know, I think it just goes to show you if so if a candidate runs a good campaign and is able to get out their supporters,01:36.60Sam Shirazithey’re going be able to pull out the upset. So that’s what happened in this House of Delegates district. The other two House Delegates districts, they were not surprises. I think the front runners, the people we expected to win, did end up winning. So in House District 23, this is where current incumbent Candi King is resigning to take a place in the Spanberger administration. Margaret Angela Franklin won the nomination as expected. And then in House District 11,02:15.28Sam ShiraziSo a lot of just kind of quick updates on the special elections next year. The House District 77 special election will be on January 6th. The two other House Delegates special elections will be on January 13th. I haven’t yet heard of any more special elections, although in Virginia there will always be elections coming up. Obviously, New Year, I talked about redistricting, there’ll be midterms, so a lot to cover in the New Year.02:41.29Sam ShiraziBefore I kind of shift to what 2026 might look like, I did want to just kind of have some reflections on 2025 and look back on the year and some of the lessons.02:51.52Sam ShiraziAnd they aren’t necessarily like as the exact thoughts that I’ve expressed the entire podcast. I kind of wanted to do a little bit bigger picture stuff and a little bit more, you know, looking forward to what 2025 in Virginia teaches us about elections and politics.03:06.96Sam ShiraziOne thing I wanted to note, so the name of the podcast, Federal Fallout, I think at the beginning when I started this, I had a feeling that there was going to be a big impact on to what was going on in D.C. and Virginia, and that ended up happening.03:18.88Sam ShiraziI want to give a shout out to Blue Virginia Lowell Feld, who runs that site, put together a list of what he considered to be the top political stories in Virginia in 2025.03:30.29Sam ShiraziAnd he listed number one, not the election itself, but he listed federal fallout as the number one Virginia political story. Now, I wish I could say that the number one political story was the podcast, Federal Fallout. He didn’t necessarily mean the podcast, although he did mention it. He really meant the concept of Federal Fallout, the idea that what happened in D.C. with the federal cuts and everything else going on DC was going to impact the Virginia elections. I think that really was the big picture story of the year in Virginia. The elections were kind of a consequence of that. I mean, obviously there was kind of candidate specific dynamics that we saw in the governor’s race and the attorney general race, but kind of the overarching theme of the election was really what was going on in DC. You could also argue, I think in hindsight, the issue of affordability and economic issues and cost of living04:22.94Sam ShiraziI think that was also important. You know, obviously they’re kind of intertwined to what’s going on in D.C. And and so I think that’s all kind of what happened this year in Virginia. And kind of in hindsight, I mean, none of it was really super surprising that that’s what was going to happen given what was going on in D.C. And I think specifically with DOGE,04:41.74Sam ShiraziI mean, I think when DOGE happened, it was pretty clear what was going to happen this year in Virginia because of just the scale of it and the impact that it had in Virginia. And so that’s kind of what gave me the idea for Federal Fallout. That’s why i did the podcast.04:56.90Sam ShiraziAs you can tell, It was a bit of a labor of love for me. I just did this because I thought it was interesting. I thought it’d be interesting to talk about the Virginia election, have some guests on.05:07.33Sam ShiraziI didn’t make any money off of the podcast as much as I you know, enjoy doing it. It wasn’t something that was I was doing for money. No one was telling me what to do on the podcast. No one was, you know, feeding me lines or anything like that. I really did it because I felt partly it was kind of a something I thought I could give back to people and and give them context to what’s going on in Virginia. I know I’ve gotten good feedback from a lot of people and I appreciate that.05:33.38Sam ShiraziPart of it was also just my personal interest in the election. It allowed me to really dive deep, allowed me to really think about the election, think about what was going on. And I think one of the challenges when you are a political analyst, when you’re doing these podcasts, especially when you’re trying to be objective, is to try to figure out what is going on.05:52.84Sam ShiraziAnd I think particularly in this election, I think it was important to really just kind of not overthink things and just look at the reality of what was going on in Virginia with the Federal Fallout, with the economic situation, with a lot of what was going on in D.C. And it kind of reminded me of a quote from George Orwell. It’s kind of a famous quote, but it says, he said that to see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle. And I think that’s kind of a good summary of and of what the challenge in politics is to kind of figure out what is right in front of it your face. And I think so sometimes it’s so easy to get tied up into what’s going on in social media or tied up on, you know, the latest story that you kind of lose sight of the bigger picture.06:38.56Sam Shiraziand you know, in this election, i think it was... kind of clear when you had so many stories about the impacts on Virginia that that was going to be a big part of the election this year. And I think part of the challenge when you are the political analyst trying to figure out what’s going on is to really focus on the present. And I think the present is really hard to get your mind around. And you know I think the past is pretty easy. You can kind of go back and figure out what happened in past elections.07:07.26Sam ShiraziThe future is kind of hard to know. It’s hard to predict what’s going to happen. you know. The present is really the challenge. it’s you know It’s knowable, but it’s also difficult to know. And you know the reason I say all this is I think the Republicans, and and this is this happens every party that wins a presidential election, they’re stuck in the presidential year. They are stuck in 2024.07:27.24Sam ShiraziThey want it to be 2024 forever. But obviously things change. And I think the Democrats have to be careful not to fall into a similar trap about 2025. Like, you know, the Virginia Democrats, they’re going to want it to be 2025 forever. You know, this was a great year.07:42.08Sam ShiraziThey did really well at the top of the ticket. They flipped so many House of Delegates seats. They want to make it 2025 for the rest of time. We saw this with the Virginia Republicans after 2021. I think this was one of the problems Glenn Youngkin fundamentally had during his time as governor. He just kind of always felt like it was 2021. He never really shifted from 2021. And I think...08:01.42Sam Shiraziand you know I think Spanberger, it’ll be interesting to see what she does. My sense is she’s pretty good at gauging public opinion. And I don’t think she’s the type of politician that’ll be stuck in one moment for the rest of her time in office.08:15.56Sam ShiraziAnd so all that’s to say is just because 2025 ended up one way, just because 2024 ended up one way, it doesn’t mean future elections are going up like that. 2026 is going to be different than 2025.08:27.69Sam ShiraziAnd that’s why I’m saying like being... connected to the present in politics is very difficult to get the kind of current pulse on the electorate, on what’s going on, the issues that are important.08:39.12Sam ShiraziIt’s just, it’s a challenge. And I think what this election kind of showed is that, you know, the issues that were hot in 2024, some of them are still hot, some of them are not hot. And the issues that are going to be hot in 2025, some of them going to relevant in 2026, some of them are not going to relevant.08:55.32Sam ShiraziAnd so I think it’s just really important for all politicians and all of us to kind of not get sucked into kind of one time frame for the rest of time. And it’s a challenge. And I think it requires a lot of work. I mean, this podcast, and it I tend to not have a lot of notes, so

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This episode, we will look at some upcoming special elections in Virginia that will be happening in the new year. And then i also wanted to preview the midterms that will be happening next year in Virginia and what is going on with the really competitive races and potentially with redistricting.00:37.74Sam ShiraziSo there will already be one special election for her state Senate seat, and the Democratic nominee has already been chosen. That will be Delegate Mike Jones, and in all likelihood, he will be the next state senator because it’s a very blue seat.00:51.12Sam ShiraziAnd so that special election will be taking place January 6th. So that’s one special election already for the state Senate seat, the Ghazal Hashmi. is resigning from. Now, Mike Jones has already indicated that he is going to resign from the House of Delegates next year because in all likelihood, i think he’s pretty confident that he’s going to win that race. And so that means his House of Delegates seat is also going to be up for election because there’s going to be a special election and the firehouse primary to pick the nominee in that district will be this Sunday. So this Sunday, the nominee for the district that Mike Jones currently represents, which is the 77th house district will be this Sunday, a firehouse primary.01:31.21Sam ShiraziI would say the front runner is Michelle Mosby. She ran for Richmond mayor last year, and she has also been on the Richmond city council. Okay.01:41.84Sam Shirazithere is There is also another candidate, a community activist and former ACLU attorney, Charlie Schmidt. So I think we’ll see who the nominee is in that district. And the special election for that House of Delegates seat will be on January 6th as well.01:57.36Sam ShiraziSo we’re going to have two so two special elections on January 6th, both in the basically the same area of... South Richmond, Chesterfield County, and that’s because there’s the special election for the state senate seat that Ghazal HaShmi currently holds, and there’s a special election for the state for the house of delegates seat that Mike Jones currently holds.02:17.93Sam ShiraziSo those are the January 6th special elections. But we’re not done yet with the special elections in Virginia because there will be two more, at least two more special elections, and those will be on January 13th. January 13th, the week after the January sixth special elections, there will be special elections in two House of Delegates seats. And the reason they’re to be those special elections is because Governor Alex Manberger has made a couple of appointments to her cabinet from the Virginia House of Delegates. So first...02:49.13Sam ShiraziShe appointed Delegate Candy King to be the Secretary of the Commonwealth. So that means she will have to resign from the Virginia House Delegates. And obviously there will be another special election to replace her.03:01.54Sam ShiraziThere’s going to be a firehouse primary to pick the nominee in that district. I think the frontrunner is Margaret Angela frankl Franklin. She has been endorsed by Delegate King. And so I think she’s probably the frontrunner in that district. This is in Prince William County area, another deep blue seat. All these seats are very blue, and so I don’t expect any of them to flip.03:22.52Sam ShiraziSo that’s one special election on January 13 for the seat currently held by Delegate Candy King. And there will be one more, at least one more special election on January 13. And that will be for House District 11 in Fairfax County. Not the Congressional District 11, but the House of Delegates District 11, and that is currently represented by Delegate David Bolova.03:44.21Sam ShiraziAnd Governor-elect Spamberger has nominated him to be the Secretary of Natural Resources, so he will be resigning from the House of Delegates. Again, there will be another firehouse primary to determine who the nominee will be for the Democrats in this deep blue district, and that firehouse primary will be this Tuesday.04:02.22Sam ShiraziAnd the frontrunner for that firehouse primary is... Delegate Bolivar’s wife, who is Sharon Bolivar, and she got a bunch of endorsements. And so we’ll we’ll see if if anyone else is able to take her on. I think there’s a few other candidates announced. So long story short, there are a lot of special elections early next year in Virginia.04:22.56Sam ShiraziNone of them are that exciting because I think they’re very blue seats and very unlikely that any of them are going to flip. I’ll be curious to see if we get any other special elections because conceivably, Governor-elect Spanberger could announce more members of her cabinet being drawn from the General Assembly. And you see this from time to time when There are changes in administration. The new administration will pick members of the House of Delegates or state Senate to serve in their cabinet.04:51.30Sam ShiraziI think in this situation, particularly on the House side, I think Spanberger feels pretty confident just plucking people because they have such a big majority. And it doesn’t really matter if if you know there’s all these special elections going on. We’ll see on the state Senate side. you know Obviously, Ghazal Hashmi is already going to have to resign. And so we’ll see if Governor Alex Bamberger wants to pick anyone else from the state Senate. But long story short, there’s a lot of things going on in Virginia state politics that as a result of the administration transition transition, and especially when you go from one party to another, there’s going to be more drastic changes. So anyways, kind of interesting things to be on the lookout for. It’s going to be a little bit of a shakeup in the new House of Delegates because05:33.97Sam ShiraziThe people who are leaving are generally more senior. They’ve been around. And so we already have a large class of new members in the House of Delegates. And it’s going to get even bigger because there will be at least three more delegates in the House of Delegates who are coming in because of these special elections.05:49.84Sam ShiraziAll right. and But Virginia is not done with elections in the new year. That is because obviously 2026 is a midterm year. And so all 11 congressional districts in Virginia will be up for election. The big question is,06:04.12Sam ShiraziWhat are the lines going to be? Because the Democrats have proposed these referendum in order to see if the voters want to change the maps in Virginia for the congressional districts.06:15.40Sam ShiraziThat still has to be voted again in January. In all likelihood, given the Democratic majorities, that is going to pass. So that’s not really a big deal. I think there’s two possibilities about... things that could stop the new maps from happening. One is the referendum itself. So the voters have to vote on this. It’s not just automatic that the maps will change.06:34.50Sam ShiraziIt will need to get approved by the voters. I think most people think that Democrats have a good shot of passing this but because the voters, they’re going to make this into a referendum into Trump because if you like Trump, you’re going to vote against this referendum. If you don’t like Trump, you’re going to vote for the referendum. You’re Essentially, you’re going want the maps to change. We saw this in California.06:55.74Sam ShiraziAnd so, you know, as we saw in the election this year, President Trump has generally a negative approval in Virginia. And so you would think that that would mean the maps would be able to be changed. However, you know, you never know with referendums and you don’t want to assume anything. Virginia is not necessarily as blue as California. So I don’t think it’s necessarily 100% guaranteed that the referendum will get passed. But I do think the Democrats have a good shot.07:20.28Sam ShiraziKeep in mind, there are legal challenges. So it’s possible that the Virginia Supreme Court or some of the lower courts are going to try to stop the referendum if the Republicans are successful in some of their state lawsuits.07:32.82Sam ShiraziYou know, to be perfectly honest, I think In Virginia, the courts tend to be pretty nonpolitical, unlike some other states where you see really activist kind of political judges on either side. In Virginia, the judges really try to be nonpartisan. And so for that reason, my sense is that the court is going to just kind of defer and let the referendum happen. If the voters pass it, the voters pass it. They’re not going to necessarily try to inject themselves too much into the process.07:58.54Sam Shiraziyou know That’s my personal opinion. Obviously, judges, you know they they will have to interpret the law and make the decision, but that’s kind of the backdrop to all of this in Virginia. so I think essentially there’s two scenarios. One scenario is the map changes and the Democrats draw a map that they want.08:14.88Sam ShiraziThe other scenario is the maps don’t change and we use the existing maps. I think regardless, we’re getting some clarity about how things are going to look next year in some of the most competitive districts. So I’ll go kind of the most competitive to the least competitive on the current map, although the caveat that all of this could change.08:31.62Sam ShiraziSo the first district I’ll talk about is the second congressional district. This is based in Hampton Roads, particularly the city of Virginia Beach. The current representative is Jen Kiggins. She was elected in 2022 by defeating the then representative Elaine Luria. However, Elaine Luria is now back for a comeback. So she has announced and she pretty much cleared the field that had already been announced for this year.08:58.72Sam Shiraziseat. She, in all likelihood, will be the Democratic nominee. All the other major contenders dropped out as soon as she entered the race. And so

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fall Out the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode, we will have an interview with State Senator Danica Roam. She also is the Executive Director of Emerge Virginia. So thank you so much, Senator, for joining me.00:15.29Danica RoemHey, it’s great to be back, Sam. Thanks so much.00:17.82Sam ShiraziYeah, so I wanted to have you back because obviously i had you on before the election and you had some really good insights. And i think you had a sense that maybe the Democrats would have a good night. But were you surprised by the scale of the Democratic win?00:29.79Danica RoemBluntly, yeah. and I think not that they all won with the statewide. not that we expanded the House majority. My number was about 60 that I thought we were going to get. you know I was really telling people, hey, you know dream big. This is really good.00:45.90Danica RoemI think I’m not the first person to say this. It’s really just that of those 13 originally targeted seats by the house, there was of course the 14th that was added on later for all 13 of them to go.00:59.59Danica RoemDemocratic that was in like, And even the closest one was like by 1.8 points. you know it’s just like it was It was a surprise that every single one was just falling right into place on the targeted list other than that 14th seat that is anchored over in Harrisonburg. And at the same time, even with that one,01:23.80Danica Roemover at James Madison University, coming down to 257 votes. That’s the sort of race that we saw a couple of Merch two years ago lose by, you know, like Lily Franklin, who just won, who’s now delegated out of Blacksburg. Then you had Kimberly Pope Adams, you know, who was another one of my alums who nearly lost in 2023. Both of them lost by recount margins. And this is a recount margin. The difference is...01:50.43Danica RoemThis is outside of the 0.5% in which the state picks it up if it’s within that. If it’s between 0.5% and 1%, then the candidate has to pay for it. And that’s typically why you don’t see too many candidates you know opt for a recount, even if they do technically qualify at that level. But 257 votes, that’s the sort of thing where if you’re in the House Democratic Caucus, granted, I’m in the Senate, but you know I served in the House for six years, you’re looking at the 2027 map and you’re going, okay, we’re going to have some seats we have to play defense on. Where are our expansion opportunities? If you want to get to that super majority, all eyes in the Commonwealth in 2027 are going to be firmly locked on Harrisonburg in Rockingham County.02:39.44Sam ShiraziYeah, and I do want to get to 2027 in a moment, but I did want to just finish up on 2025. I mean, why do you think the Democrats got a big win? And, you know, you came in during the wave in 2017 into the House of Delegates.02:49.75Danica RoemMm-hmm.02:51.29Sam ShiraziArguably, this was a bigger wave, it’ certainly at the top of the ticket. And in terms of the seats that were flipped, you know, why do you think the Democrats got such a big win?02:59.01Danica RoemOkay, so it’s interesting because in 2017, we flipped 15 seats red to blue for the House of Delegates. And, you know, and then keep mind, you know Shelley Simon’s seat came down to it. That was a tied race, you know, with the, you know, with the ball drawing in Newport News and all. And we had another couple that were very, very close at the time. One and based in Chesterfield, another that was based in Stafford, Fredericksburg area at the time. and even won Western Prince William County.03:27.50Danica RoemDemocrats in 2017, because we didn’t dream big enough, we left about four or five seats on the table where we could have probably won up to 20 to 21 red and blue flips that election. But the idea was, hey, Hillary Clinton had won 17 of these seats that Republicans were holding. Let’s go win all 17, like even you know Ralph Northman talked about at the time. And we won, you know, 15 and then, you know obviously came down to a drawing and for now delegate Shelley Simon seat. But in this election, I think...04:04.30Danica RoemThe difference is number one larger margin of victory at the top of the ticket you know from Governor-elect Spanberger compared to 2017 where Governor Northam won. you know A really good margin, too, to be clear.04:17.32Danica RoemBut at the same time, when you’re in double-digit territory like she is and you’re surpassing what Gerald Belial was able to do in 1985, that style, this is the sort of election that goes on the... annals of blowout territory like you saw of for the 2009 gubernatorial race, for example, right? But what was interesting in 2009 is all three of the Republicans who won statewide that year won by double digits. This time, two of the three Democrats won by double digits with Abigail Spanberger, and Lieutenant Governor-elect Ghazal Hashmi, but even Jay Jones with all the things that happened with him, for him to pull out an almost seven-point victory in this, I think it says a lot, not only about the strength of the top of the of the ticket for the Democrats, but also one of the underspoken things is it also just that05:12.91Danica RoemJason Mears never really a just appealed to Democrats or even to a lot of you know kind of left of center, independent voters to lose an election you know to that margin.05:26.23Danica RoemHe you know really went in all in on some of the MAGA stuff. you know He was campaigning with Donald Trump you know in 2024, being on stage with him and everything. And i think if there’s message that comes out of this election in particular, just like the first one, it’s that, hey, look, Virginia is not a Trump state. There are a few congressional districts, the ninth, the sixth, and the fifth, that certainly fall into that category. And you could argue the first district currently, even though even that it’s kind of getting a lot tighter now. But really, really do think that people got to understand that06:02.82Danica RoemIf you are firing our workers, the aka federal fallout, if you are going after our economy, there will be you know a you know response to that. And our people showed up. At the same time, Abigail’s margin was so significant. I don’t even think she needed Northern Virginia to win at the end of the day. Northern Virginia just patted the margins.06:24.71Sam ShiraziYeah, well, the one thing that was not up for election was the Virginia State Senate, and that will be up for election in 2027. And I know that seems like a long ways off, but when you are planning campaigns, you have to get started now.06:37.48Sam ShiraziAnd the Democrats currently have a 21-19 majority. If they pick up six seats, they will have a super majority of 27 out of 40 seats. Do you think that’s realistic? And how ambitious should the Virginia State Senate Democrats be?06:50.54Danica RoemNumber one, yes, that is realistic because you’re talking about these are, you know, Abigail seats, right? You know, so Governor-elect Spanberger, think she carried either five of the six or all six of those that are in play. At the same time, we also know from the last election in 2023, given that the two closest seats that were won by Democrats, number one was mine, where I won by 3.83 points,07:17.05Danica RoemIn a district where you know Governor-elect Spanberger just broke 60% of the vote. And the other one was in Loudoun County and Fauquier County where Russet Perry, you know where she won by like just under more of a point than I did. After that, when you start looking at, you know, Skyler and Valkenberg seat, Aaron Rouse’s seat, it’s kind of like our three and four on the democratic depth chart for vulnerability. Those seats are now, you know, those, they won by almost 10 point margins themselves back in 2023. And has swung so heavily democratic07:53.44Danica RoemAnd keep mind, this is not even like Navarre’s seat. you know She’s delegate-elect for Western Henrico and Goochland County now. Schuyler’s seat does not have Goochland. It’s just running up the score and in Henrico. And so you know I’m really kind of looking at this and thinking like,08:11.34Danica RoemYeah, Democrats will have to play some defense for sure. you know you You don’t write off districts. And for example, two of the seats that flipped red to blue, John McAuliffe, who’s now a delegate-elect for Western Latin and Falkier, that seat largely overlaps with Russell Perry’s seat for the state Senate.08:30.51Danica RoemAnd then in my district... I have a little bit of overlap with a delegate like Guzman who’s coming back to the House of Delegates after having served three terms there. like My district overlaps in the Gainesville and the Bristow area. And so you know because you know you’re going to have you know delegates who just flipped seats red to blue, you’re going to have two of the most competitive Democratic-held Senate districts there.08:53.99Danica RoemI do expect that the Republicans will play offense there at the same time. They are going to be having to play defense from Fredericksburg on down South.09:04.56Danica RoemAnd what that means is that they have to really look at where do we want to put money into when we’re dealing with different media markets, because that district that Tara Durant currently represents, that state Senate district, that’s in the DC media market. And Loudoun County, Falk Air County, Prince William, Manassas, Manassas Park, all of this is, you know, DC media market. So then the Republicans have to ask themselves the question, would you rather get more bang for your buck playing defense in Roanoke? And in that area, it’s right between Southside and Hampton Roads, or in Danny Diggs’ case, you know along the peninsula, or in Chesterfield, in Glenn Sturtevant’s case, Democrats just have a lot of targets. And as this election showed, a significant financial advantage to be able to do that in the first place. And so you know if

Hey everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode, I wanted to go over some lessons from Governor Youngkin’s time in office and just talk about what the incoming governor, a governor-elect Abigail Spanberger, might learn from that.00:17.24Sam ShiraziBut before I get to that, I did want to talk about two pieces of things that are in the news. One is redistricting and some redistricting news, both nationally and in Virginia.00:27.83Sam ShiraziAnd then it is another special election. So Virginia, there’s always an election going on and there is going to be a special election.00:35.35Sam ShiraziThis is for the state Senate seat that Lieutenant Governor-elect Ghazala Hashmi will be resigning from. And so that’s going to be the special election that will coming up. So we’ll talk about that. So first, i want to talk about redistricting, both nationally and in Virginia. Nationally, there was some news specifically from Texas. So Texas, a lower court had found that The attempts to redistrict in Texas was a racial gerrymander and had put the maps on hold. That was appealed to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court issued its ruling in that case and basically, long story short, allowed the Texas maps to go forward, which means Texas will be using the new maps that were drawn this year in the elections next year for the midterms.01:19.83Sam ShiraziSo that most people expect the Texas Republicans are going to be picking up seats because of that. So overall, in a way, it’s good news for the Republican Party. But... I think it does have important implications here in Virginia because in Virginia, we obviously are going through our own redistricting process.01:38.07Sam ShiraziThe Democrats have said that they will, again, in January, vote to put a referendum on the ballot in the spring to do redistricting. Given that the Democrats have majority in the General Assembly, it’s almost certainly going to pass.01:49.33Sam ShiraziSo increasingly, it’s looking like there will be a referendum in the spring on redistricting in Virginia. That’s assuming none of the legal challenges the Virginia Republicans are bringing are going to work. But let’s just assume the referendum is going to happen. I think this this Texas ruling increases the likelihood that there will be a redistricting referendum passing in Virginia.02:10.90Sam ShiraziBecause in theory, like let’s say the old maps were used in Texas, then there was an argument, you know, we don’t need redistricting in Virginia. It’s not necessary. Now I think the Democrats are going to come back and say, look, We did the redistricting for a reason here in Virginia because we’re trying to counter what the Republicans did in Texas and other states.02:28.60Sam ShiraziSo I think this increases the likelihood that Virginia is going to redistrict. And I think it also increases the likelihood that assuming the redistricting referendum passes in Virginia,02:38.75Sam Shirazithe Virginia Democrats are going to start really pushing perhaps a 10-1 map. Now, there was some news. The Speaker of the Virginia House Delegates, Don Scott, had floated during an interview with Larry Sabato that he may want to push for a 10-1 map. Certainly, the President pro temp of the Virginia Senate, State Senator Louise Lucas, has been very vocal about her belief that there should be a 10-1 map.03:03.68Sam ShiraziSo 10-1 means that instead of the current map, it will be drawn in a way that will elect 10 Democrats and one Republican. I think, you know, there’s a lot of things you have to look at. you have to look at the incumbent Democratic congresspeople and whether they would be okay with their districts being changed that much in order to get to a 10-1 map.03:23.68Sam ShiraziIt’s also possible Virginia could go for a 9-2 map. i think I think given the rhetoric, I think it’s likely that at a minimum it’s going to be a 9-2 map. The question becomes, do the Democrats really push for a 10-1 map?03:35.74Sam ShiraziAnd i think the other question is just, let’s assume the Democrats you know are able to get the referendum on the ballot. there’s The legal challenges don’t work. Do the Virginia Democrats unveil their map and before the referendum? Or do they kind of keep it a surprise and tell the voters, you know,03:51.97Sam Shirazijust vote for the referendum because we need to do redistricting and we’ll figure out the maps later. i mean, obviously the Virginia Republicans are going to use that against the Democrats and just tell the voters, you should just assume this is going to be a 10, one map because the Democrats aren’t even willing to show you the map that they’re going implement should this pass. So a lot of interesting stuff with Virginia redistricting, a lot of unknowns in terms of potential legal challenges, potential what the map’s going to look like. But I think, think, um,04:19.10Sam ShiraziLong story short, I think the Texas ruling increases the likelihood that Virginia is going to redistrict. And so that’s something that we’re going to be looking for in 2026. And you know the way that this ties back to the Virginia elections this year is obviously Democrats had to win the Virginia elections in order for redistricting to happen. I also think at the end, because the Democrats looked like they were going to do so well, they had the confidence essentially to go for redistricting and they didn’t feel like doing it last minute was going to upend the elections because Frankly, they probably had a feeling that it was going to be a landslide anyways, and obviously it did turn out to be a landslide. So that’s enough on redistricting. I just want to give people quick update on that.05:11.39Sam Shirazishe will have to resign in order to become lieutenant governor so she will be resigning from the state senate next year at the beginning of the year so that means someone has to replace her and there will be a special election the and the date of the special election was announced for january 6th so that’s when the democrat versus republican special election will happen in state senate seat that gizal hashmu is vacating however Before that that, the parties have to pick their nominees. And this is a very blue seat. And so unless something really crazy happens, in all likelihood, the Democratic nominee is going to be the next state senator from this district. And there will be a firehouse primary this Sunday. So Sunday, December 7th here in Virginia, there will be the firehouse primary in that part of Virginia. There are, we’ll see who all the candidates are, but there are essentially two candidates.06:05.20Sam Shirazifrontrunners for this state Senate nomination. There are two delegates in neighboring districts. There is Delegate Mike Jones, and then there is Delegate Deborah Gardner. Mike Jones comes more from the Richmond side of the district. Deborah Gardner comes more from the Chesterfield side of the district. So I think there’s going to be some of that dynamic.06:23.09Sam ShiraziOf note, Ghazal Hashmi has endorsed Mike Jones. So I think that’s a big endorsement for Jones. And we’ll see how far that takes him. The thing is, there’s not a lot of time to really organize. i mean, obviously, we all knew that this special election was going happen. But I think the date of the Firehouse primary was pretty quick in terms of when it was announced. And yeah, so just keep an eye out for that. We’ll have to see who wins the nomination.06:47.67Sam ShiraziAnd then once the nominee is determined, obviously, we’ll have to wait for the January 6th special election here for the state Senate seat because all Hashmi is vacating. Okay, now let’s turn to the main topic of the podcast, which is...07:01.72Sam Shirazifour lessons from Governor Yunkin’s time in office. And I did four lessons and that’s one lesson per year of when he’s been in office. And frankly, these are more lessons. I don’t want to say they’re lessons of what not to do, but more lessons learned from Governor Yunkin. I think, you know, I’m not going to go into all of the accomplishments Governor Yunkin had. i think probably the place that i think he made the most progress was in education, particularly kind of non- controversial things that you don’t often hear about. I talked about it a little bit with Todd Truitt about some of the standards and things that are a little bit more technical. I think there was some bipartisan agreement and Governor Youngkin was able to get a little bit done. i mean, obviously there was a lot of culture war stuff with the schools as well that kind of, you know was more of what the media covered and what both sides wanted to talk about. But I think there was some progress made on the education front. that frankly, I think Governor-Elect Spanberger is probably going to follow and there’s not going to be too much change on some of these technical standards.08:03.77Sam ShiraziHowever, you know i think I think there’s a lot that Governor Youngkin wasn’t able to do. and And a lot of that was because he never had a trifecta. The advantage Abigail Spanberger has is she’s going to come in with a trifecta on day one. So on day one,08:15.27Sam ShiraziThe Democrats in the General Assembly are going to start passing bills and they’re going to send them over to Governor Alex Manberger. And I imagine, you know, there might be some changes made to some bills, but for the most part, these bills are going to get signed. And I don’t anticipate Governor Alex Manberger having to veto as many bills as Governor Youngkin because she’s going have a trifecta. And we’ll get to that in the second year of the Youngkin administration. But I wanted to start with the first year of the Youngkin administration.08:39.96Sam ShiraziSo obviously 2022, Governor Yunkin has just been elected in 2021. It was a big, don’t i don’t know if it was an upset because i think at the end it was kind of clear that Yunkin had the advantage, but c

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This is a special bonus interview with Kevin Holst. He is the executive director of the Democratic Lieutenant Governor Association, and I wanted to get have him back on to talk about what happened in Virginia and then look forward to the midterms in 2026. So, Kevin, thanks for joining me.00:20.66Kevin HolstThanks for having me back on.00:22.34Sam ShiraziYeah, so i wanted to start kind of big picture, your takeaway from the elections in 2025, Virginia, New Jersey, because obviously Democrats had a good night. you know Why do you think Democrats had a good night and what can they learn from that election for 2026?00:36.62Kevin HolstWell, I think it’s twofold. One, the environment was incredibly favorable to us in both Virginia and New Jersey. Virginia uniquely you know, I, if I wasn’t a professional Democrat and true believer in all these things, I, you know, would almost, I couldn’t paint a better environment than having Donald Trump just come at Virginia’s core economy. When you have one third of Northern Virginia that is a federal government employee or contractor, and the first thing you do in office is to lay them off or to come directly for their livelihoods that obviously sets up an environment that is very unfavorable to republicans donald trump continued to crater in popularity throughout the year and the republican party seemed to just go belly up and not put up a fight the01:25.30Kevin Holstamount of investment that national Republicans had in the gubernatorial LG and then state legislative races was really close to nothing until very late in the election. And for those of us who do elections for a living, and we know that early money is like East. It helps make the dough rise. And it also helps with planning and budgeting. So by the time Republicans had some fantasy that they had a shot in Virginia, it was far too late. The other thing is we had incredible candidates that stepped up who were laser focused on a few key issues, affordability being one of them. You know, it’s not a helpful campaign message for Republicans to say, we laid you off from your job.02:43.05Kevin Holstcompletely in outer space in terms of how people were trying to sample the electorate. There was a coalition of people that were not likely to turn out by historical comparison that were so motivated to show their disapproval of Republicans, of Donald Trump, and to show how they believe that Abigail Spanberger, Ghazala Hashmi, Mikey Sherrill, and Dale Caldwell were the leaders that they wanted in this moment.03:13.15Sam ShiraziYeah, and that’s a good kind of big picture overview. I wanted to kind of talk specifically about Virginia and specifically about the lieutenant governor’s race, because obviously that was the race that you were focused on. And, you know, just as a summary, Ghazal Hashmi ended up winning by about a little over 11 and a half percent.03:23.39Kevin HolstYes.03:29.29Sam ShiraziShe won by almost 400,000 votes. So certainly a healthy win, not necessarily as big as Abigail Spanberger, but obviously bigger than Jay Jones for attorney general.03:40.28Sam ShiraziAnd I think there’s been kind of this discourse that, you know, Spanberger was, you know, a strong Democrat and she won by 15 percent. And Jay Jones was kind of a weaker Democrat and he won by less. And so Ghazal Hashmi was like the generic Democrat and John Reed was a generic Republican.03:55.45Sam ShiraziDo you think that’s accurate or do you think it’s more complicated?03:58.81Kevin HolstI think it’s a lot more complicated than that because Ghazal Hashmi is a history making candidate and we see that history making candidates tend to underperform. She is the first Muslim woman ever elected to a statewide position in the country.04:14.56Kevin HolstThere, she, we, as I’ve said to her, you’re the first, not the last, but she was enduring daily, just vicious racist attacks, not just by John Reed, but by governor Youngkin and other Republicans, you know John Reed called her Mondami and heels pro Hamas and Islamist. He, if I’m remembering correctly, he might even say she has some jihadist ideology. And said that she wants to impose Sharia law on Virginia. And when he was hit hit for that, he was like, oh, I’m just asking questions. So there were some really vicious attacks on someone that the state did not really know.05:44.07Kevin HolstRoy Cooper won twice as governor and a Republican lieutenant governor was elected. So when you have voters who had traditionally voted Republican in the past that say to themselves, I will vote for the Democrat for governor, but I want to check on them. There is no office that invites that permission for them more than lieutenant governor, which is what we’ve seen in a couple states throughout the country. You know,06:09.25Kevin HolstIn Vermont, there was a Republican governor and Democratic lieutenant governor up until the 24 elections in North Carolina. Opposite situation, Democratic governor, Republican lie lieutenant governor again until we flipped that seat for the first time since 2008 and 2024 with Rachel Hunt. So Ghazala was an undefined candidate just because there hadn’t been resources spent on her behalf. So I wouldn’t say this was a generic Dem race where they said, oh she has a Dean extra name. John Reed is a generic Republican because he also isn’t. He’s also a history making candidate. He was the first openly gay Republican nominated to statewide office in Virginia He was incredibly telegenic from his radio career. He got into a fight with Glenn Youngkin, which depressed more moderate Republicans to turn out for him. So this was a very complicated race. And at the end of the day, when both candidates communicated, we saw a strong win for Gazala. If this was a generic Dem race, she would have07:14.68Kevin Holstperformed basically at the same margin as Spanberger because there was no negative hits against Gazala other than just the vile racist attacks that Reed and his allies were hitting her with on a daily basis.07:28.92Sam ShiraziYeah, I wanted to follow up specifically about the kind of attacks that John Reed and others made about Ghazal Hashmi and trying to link her to Ma’am Dhani.07:40.04Sam ShiraziAnd I wanted to just get your thoughts about whether you think that actually may have helped Hashmi in the sense of I heard anecdotal reports about South Asian Muslim voters, places like Loudoun that saw a big swing.07:54.39Sam Shiraziyou know they don’t They didn’t necessarily like that type of attack on Hashmi and would have been would it have been smarter for the Republicans to maybe just stick to the issues.08:05.04Kevin HolstYeah, I mean, Reid couldn’t defend his positions on issues. He sided with Donald Trump on doge cuts. I mean, the one person I said I felt worse for this entire campaign was Reid’s partner because, you know, Reid was...08:20.30Kevin Holstagainst protecting marriage equality in the Constitution. So it’s sort of like, he won’t marry you, my dude. And then his partner also had a federal job that was impacted in round one of layoffs in Doge. So not only did he side with Virginia, it didn’t even side with his own multi-year partner. So I don’t think voters...08:38.96Kevin Holstcould really place their trust in him when he was running a campaign that was completely contrary to what Virginians wanted was to you know have someone that put Virginians ahead of Donald Trump.08:51.21Kevin HolstAnd John Reed had built his career off of just being a zealot for Trump and pushing Trump talking points on the radio. So he ran a campaign that was just Trump based issues, which was very unpopular voters. Ghazala Hashmi had an insane margin in Loudoun County. i remember seeing that and being in disbelief where she won 62 percent to 37 percent for John Reed. And obviously there’s a very large growing South Asian community where we spent a lot of time yeah it was another fancy world that john reid was living in calling her hide and hash me because gazala was on the road every single day meeting with voters and loud and specifically our lieutenant governor for maryland aruna miller did south asian outreach with gazala to turn out the vote and in a really great only in america story09:41.60Kevin HolstSo Aruna Miller, our Democratic the lieutenant governor for Maryland, and Ghazala Hashmi, our incoming Democratic lieutenant governor of Virginia, were born in the same city in India, six months apart.10:03.59Kevin HolstBut the racist attacks, we did see it backfire and it reminded voters of what they hated most about Donald Trump. And it showed that the Trump style of politics does not define Virginia in the modern era.10:16.32Sam ShiraziWell, that’s certainly an interesting fact about Ghazal Hashmi and the Lieutenant Governor of Maryland. I did not know that, so always learning something new. That’s a certainly interesting fact there. I did want to ask about John Reed, one last thing about him specifically. So there was a story about his Tumblr that came out, and he denied it, and it didn’t seem to pick up a lot of traction. Maybe that was because the Jay Jones stuff came out, and you know the media wanted to focus on that.10:42.87Sam ShiraziBut were you surprised that you know John Reed... you know That story, specific especially because Governor Yunkin had asked him to drop out because of it, that it never really took off.10:53.37Kevin HolstYeah. So John Reed denied it was his Tumblr, which, you know we hear a lot of some some crazy made up things in politics, but if you were to go to court and say, prove this isn’t your Tumblr more likely than not, the court would find it is because Who in 2012, 2014 was like, you know, I’m going to create an account with the same location, ip addresses, and username that John Reed has for every other account and just post things that are of interest to him. And why would the account be deleted

Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode, Ben Tribbett will be joining me again. he is a Democratic consultant at his firm Pocket Aces and I wanted to bring him back because we had him earlier in the year and I think he had some really good insights. So Ben, thanks for joining me.BenHey, thanks for having me, Sam.Sam ShiraziYeah, so as I mentioned, you were here in April, one of the first guests on the podcast. And I still remember you were saying some things that I think ended up happening. So I wanted to do one quote from you in April when you joined our podcast. You said, quote, so far it feels bigger than 2017. The wave we are likely to catch this year’s this year feels like it will be absolutely massive. So Ben, what did you see coming in April and why did it end up happening?BenYeah, I think that the for the for the Democrats, the big question of the year was, is this going to be an election that is fought on Virginia issues, or is this going to be an election that is fought on what’s happening at the federal level?01:10.70BenAnd the one thing that has been consistent in the Trump era, since he first started running and 2015 and then 2016, 2016, is a huge spike in civic engagement. I joking jokingly call him the greatest president in history for civic engagement because voter turnout has gone through the roof in every election that he’s been involved in because he brings out both supporters and opponents to his agenda.01:41.46BenAnd when you’re looking at a state that is a narrowly blue state to begin with, that could be the focus of some of his attacks, particularly on the federal workforce.01:53.97BenThe way the election was shaping up was this was going to be something that was fought on the federal issues and the environment that you would get from that versus just fighting it out on on state issues. Let’s say like the example of that being like the 1997 race for where Jim Gilmore ran on no car tax, right, was something that was fought on Virginia issues.02:17.29BenAnd every time the Republicans tried to shift the focus from federal to state, they failed spectacularly because Donald Trump just won’t allow for anyone anything else to get oxygen besides what he’s talking about.02:33.87BenHe’s going to take actions and do things that just suck the life out of anything else happening in the world to where he’s the only thing being discussed on the news.02:45.69BenAnd that was really just a disaster for both Winsome Sears, but the entire Republican ticket throughout the year, because every time Trump was on the news, he was doing something that was vastly unpopular, not only nationwide, but even more so unpopular in Virginia.03:01.94BenAnd so at that point, You know, the question is, do you have a candidate that can run an error-free campaign that can pick up voters as that’s as there’s availability and possibility, but but otherwise can get across the finish line with as broad of a coalition as possible?03:21.33BenAnd i don’t think you could build a better candidate for an environment like this than Abigail Spanberger because she was disciplined. She stayed focused on her message.03:31.42BenAnd she never allowed herself to get knocked off of that message while voters just flocked to her for the stability and sanity that she was offering.03:41.84Sam ShiraziYeah, I mean, I think that that’s a helpful explanation about what happened. And, you know, obviously, there was a reason the podcast was called Federal Fallout. I wanted to kind of unpack some of that. So on Election Day, you were doing a lot and posting a lot about how turnout was looking really great for the Democrats and Republicans were a lot of trouble.03:59.88Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, I think some people were like, oh, he’s just saying that. But then obviously, when the results came in, it was pretty obvious what was happening. Were you surprised by the scale of what happened? Or was this kind of what you were thinking was goingnna end up happening even even before Election Day?04:14.14BenYeah, you know, I was i was thinking at ballpark 400,000. So she beat my number by a little more than 100,000. So it was a little bit bigger than what I was expecting. But I think when I when i said 400,000 online at one point, people thought that was hilarious.04:29.79BenSo I think 400 was probably a much higher number than than most people kind of had in mind. You know, there’s a few factors that, you know, go into that of,04:41.01Benof how does she get such a big margin. and you can see them on election day because there are precincts that over represent certain voters or types of voters, that tell you a lot in how they’re behaving on election day, in the turnout numbers, but also if you have people standing there that, giving you feedback of,05:06.30Benwhat people are saying at those polls, right? And so, you know, firstly, i thought one of the things that jumped out at me on election day was there was kind of an Asian revolution going on where you could tell early on on election day and and some of the early vote numbers had had hinted to watch for this, but you never know until election it’s happening.05:29.73Benthat some of the exodus of the that came from the Democratic Party in 2024 of Asian voters was coming back really, really strong, both in turnout and in the percentage of voters coming home.05:43.05BenAnd some of that you know is in 2024. Obviously, the Democrats had some numbers lost amongst the Muslim community because of what was going on with foreign policy.05:55.55BenI think Kamala Harris, despite being Indian, did not necessarily inspire a record Indian turnout in support of her candidacy. I think there’s a bunch of things that could be explored as to why that is. But so, you know, there’s precincts like, for example, in Loudoun County, where there’s one that jumps my mind, I can’t remember the name of it, where in the when we had a lieutenant governor’s primary,06:21.71Benand it was Anish Chopra against Ralph Northam, Anish got 98% of the vote because the precinct is so overwhelmingly Indian. And so the neighborhoods around there are telling you a lot about what the South Asian community is doing. Obviously, they’ve elected now both Suhas to Congress and Cannon to the state Senate. So they’re successfully electing people from the community that You can look at those elections to see what precincts are kind of spiking in support of of those candidates.06:51.48BenAnd so when I start hearing early on in the morning that there’s lines out the door of minority voters in those precincts, it’s telling me a lot of information about what’s to come on election day, right? And the same way that if I want to know what’s going on with senior citizens,07:13.29BenI’m gonna take a look at a precinct like Greenspring in South Fairfax County because it votes in a senior a senior center that 100% of the voters live on campus and and they vote in the cafeteria at lunch, right?07:27.72BenAnd so in primaries, I’m always looking at Greenspring for, sometimes the candidates will get 95, 96% of the vote there that are the older establishment candidates because it really runs like a a machine and it tells you a lot into what’s going to happen there. i It’s probably a longer answer than what you wanted, but like you know i think of like you know the 2017 primary when we had a governor and a lieutenant governor’s race.07:56.64BenWhen Greenspring reported in you could tell a lot about how the election was going to go because Ralph Northam was north of 90% over Tom Perriello at Greenspring. What that tells you is is that, well, that’s all senior citizens.08:12.52BenEvery other precinct in Fairfax County has 20%, 30%, 40% of the electorate, depending on which one it is, that are senior citizens. And if they’re breaking 9 to 1 for Ralph, that’s going to tell you that it’s going to be virtually impossible for Perry Eller to win almost any precincts in Fairfax County, And if he does, it’s going to have to be a place like in Centerville with extremely low turnout that he just nips by, right?08:38.53BenAnd so that told you right then and there, Northam was going to be your nominee for governor. Susan Platt carried Greenspring by five votes or something over Justin Fairfax. I’m trying to remember the exact results. But that came in, and it’s very clear that Susan’s from Northern Virginia, Justin’s getting a huge vote downstate in the African-American community.08:58.80BenSo if if the best that Susan is accumulating is a five-vote margin at a senior center, she ain’t going to make up Richmond, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Newport News, downstate, right?09:11.18BenAnd so a lot of times these precincts really give you different clues. If you’re looking for what’s happening in the, you know, we’ll call it the kind of Karen community Democrats, look at what the turnout is in in North Arlington.09:23.63BenIf you’re looking for what’s happening with young people, you look to what’s happening on the metro line in Arlington, or you look to the silver line running out to Fairfax. And so what I was seeing in the in the early returns as the you know numbers were coming in from where there was turnout was you were seeing huge spikes in all the places where different types of Democratic voters were overrepresented. And that’s why I kind of kept live tweeting it throughout the day of adding on new pieces of, I started with, well, it looks like there’s a huge Asian turnout. Then it was like, no, the young voters are really coming out. Well, we were hearing from college campuses that at 1, 2 p.m., they were coming at the number in which they had in the last gubernatorial and were on pace to hit the same number they had in the presidential. okay like10:12.78BenThat tells you a lot about what’s going to happen at that precinct that day, unless you want to you know, sit there and just say like, well, it’s possible that there’s a huge conservative

Hi, everyone. i’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This episode, we will be interviewing Ashley Lanz. She is the Brady Packs Executive Director. So thank you so much for joining me.Ashley LantzThanks, Sam, for having me.00:14.90Sam ShiraziYeah, and I appreciate you coming on because I wanted to talk about a little bit more policy issues now that the election in Virginia is over. Obviously, next year, at the beginning of the year, the Democrats will have a trifecta and they will start to be passing bills. And there’s going to be a lot of different policies that they will be considering. And one of them obviously will be gun safety.00:35.62Sam ShiraziSo I wanted to kind of ask you some specific questions about that in Virginia and then maybe some general questions about gun safety in the political context. But before I do that, I wanted to just get a sense of you know what your organization does, both on the policy side and on the political side.01:04.26Ashley LantzWe identify, support, and elect bold leaders who will champion gun violence prevention policies in every corner of this nation.01:14.35Ashley LantzOn November 4th, Brady-Pack supported candidates in New Jersey and Virginia. We won 100% of those races and elected a new majority of gun violence prevention champions to those legislatures. Those are among the champions who will now lead a new era of public safety in Richmond.01:31.09Ashley LantzOn our policy side at Brady, we work with Congress and in states to promote common sense gun safety measures. And in Virginia, those are numerous. Virginia has fortunately passed a number of common sense gun safety laws already, including enhanced background checks and extreme risk protection orders. But there’s still work to be done.01:53.09Ashley Lantzin the next session the Legislature will be considering a number of bills, including those to ban ghost guns, a gun industry accountability measure that’s being led by Senator Adam Eben and Delegate Dan Helmer, measures on secure storage, and hopefully law to ban assault weapons as well. So we’re very excited. The sky is the limit going into this next session. And we believe that02:19.04Ashley Lantzthese candidates who were just elected on November 4th will meet the mandate that they were given to keep Virginia’s communities safe.02:26.16Sam ShiraziThanks. So, I mean, that’s a helpful background and and I appreciate all that. so I kind of want to unpack that a little bit, you know, in terms of the election and kind of lessons from the election, i mean, to be perfectly honest, you know gun safety didn’t really come up a whole lot. I don’t know if it was, you know, the main issue on voters’ minds. Obviously, the economy was important. And and so, you know, what do you think, what role do you think gun safety played and, you know, what lessons are there from the election in terms of this specific issue?03:15.95Ashley LantzWe heard from youth across the state through our efforts. We mobilized in the field with young voters. And we heard that they believe that gun violence isn’t inevitable and more must be done, including through stronger gun laws.03:29.80Ashley LantzYouth are not afraid to turn out the polls, and particularly when they’re frustrated and discontent with how elected officials are handling issues, including gun safety. And we really saw that in this election. We had our youth grassroots on the ground. And we also had paid organizers working across the state focusing on engaging voters around the and issue of gun violence prevention. And that really paid off well.03:55.72Ashley LantzSo we have heard about this in the field. I think you know there were a lot of issues that were going on in this election and being talked about. This was certainly one of them. And we heard a lot of voters talk about this being a repudiation of Glenn Youngkin’s actions, including the deadly vetoes of more than 30 gun violence prevention bills in the last two years alone.04:16.100Ashley LantzAnd Abigail Spanberger made gun violence prevention a top issue, a real central issue from the very beginning of her campaign. She wasn’t afraid to talk about it. She met with people about it. And that all had a very powerful result. And I think, you you know, when gun violence prevention is the number one killer of our kids in America, Virginians care quite deeply about this issue.04:39.26Ashley LantzPublic and opinion in Virginia for a long time has shown that gun owners and non-gun owners alike support common sense measures. And I think, you know, there are other takeaways from this election that I would point out as well. One of them being that there’s really immense value in forcing gun extremists to defend themselves in every single race, on every single turf. And for decades, gun extremist candidates who have been bought and paid for by the gun industry have been able to cherry pick their battles and in Virginia and in other states as well. And they’ve been able to dominate the electoral map.05:15.09Ashley LantzThis cycle, Speaker Don Scott and campaign chair Dan Helmer ran a bold and brilliant strategy of putting up candidates in every House district. And now we have this powerful majority of 64 seats, and they are going to work to pass meaning meaningful reforms that save lives.05:32.30Ashley LantzAnd this election clearly also showed the dissatisfactions of Virginians with the current direction of our country. It was really a repudiation of the extremist policies that make us all poorer and certainly less safe.05:44.84Ashley LantzAnd candidates with pragmatic solutions like Abigail Spanberger won the day.05:49.74Sam ShiraziYeah, and you know i think it’s a good point, but oftentimes it might not be in the news, but I think for a lot of people, it’s an important issue. And could you talk about your organization or or other grassroots organizations that are focusing on this issue? Because you know you don’t really see it necessarily every day in the news, but I just know personally people who really do care about this issue, and it’s something that might not grab all the headlines, but is something that a lot of voters are thinking about.06:16.70Ashley LantzAbsolutely. Gun violence prevention organizations are certainly active and certainly active in elections. I can talk about what we did in this last election in particular. As I mentioned, we really focused heavily on turning out the youth vote.06:29.90Ashley LantzWe have a program at Brady that we partner with called Team Enough, which are youth leaders. They are led by survivors of the Parkland shooting. And we turned out those youth volunteers to knock doors, hold phone banks, hold text banks, and train individuals who were in the field on talking about gun violence prevention. And we really heard from voters of all backgrounds, all ages about this issue. And it was just phenomenal.07:00.89Ashley LantzWe were certainly engaged in this election and making sure that we could have leaders in Richmond who would take decisive action. Some of that was protecting leaders like Michael Fegans and Nadarius Clark and electing new individuals like a longtime gun violence prevention activist, Lindsay Dougherty and Jessica Anderson.07:32.04Sam ShiraziYeah. and And so kind of moving on to the General Assembly session in January, where obviously there will be a number of bills introduced. Could you kind of walk through what you think are the most likely bills to pass and you know why they’re important?07:46.29Ashley LantzAbsolutely. Lawmakers must use this mandate to protect safety. That is certainly clear. Every Virginian deserves to feel safe in their community. And that means we also have to keep illegal guns from flooding our streets. We should be doing everything we can to help law enforcement keep guns out of the hands of dangerous individuals and not pad the gun industry’s profits. So the sky is really the limit, but we think that there will be a number of bills considered, particularly because Glenn Youngkin vetoed every gun violence prevention bill that was put before him. including almost 20 in and the last session. So we are hoping that there will be a secure storage a measure, the measure to ban ghost guns, and one of our top priorities, which is holding the gun industry accountable.08:47.78Ashley LantzAnd we also will be working on a permit to purchase bill in addition. So we have a long list of priorities. We think that this assembly is ready to take up all of them and ready to act on this issue.08:59.94Sam ShiraziYeah, and i wanted to follow up specifically about the assault weapon ban, because I think that one often gets a lot of attention. There’s often rhetoric about, you know you’re going to come and take people’s guns. Do you have a sense of if it’s just going to be a ban of future purchases of these weapons? And do you think a a Governor Spanberger would sign such a legislation if it came to her desk?09:22.72Ashley LantzGovernor-elect Spanberger has been a longtime champion on this issue. she will sign gun violence prevention legislation. i think that, you know, you have to keep in mind that this this assault weapons ban has to be on the table, but so do other priorities. An assault weapons ban is not a standalone solution. There are many solutions that must be addressed, including those that I mentioned, the ghost guns ban, secure firearm storage, gun industry accountability. So it’s one piece of the puzzle.10:05.02Ashley LantzAddressing the proliferation of these weapons is the most direct way to mitigate the risk of high fatality shootings in public venues and in our schools. And legislators know that. They know that when assault weapons are large capacity magazines, are used in a shooting, there are 155% more victims compared to incidents using other types of firearms. So this this ban must be considered, but also in the context of the many other solutions as part of a comprehensiv

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode, we will have Chaz Nuttycombe back on the podcast to talk about State Navigate and what they got right this election, and then talk a little bit about what he learned and what the parties can learn from the Virginia election. So Chaz, thanks for coming back on.00:24.06Charles NuttycombeHey, Sam, thanks for having me back on.00:26.10Sam ShiraziYeah, so I guess before we get into the substance of it, how has it been post-election? Were you able to relax a little bit and and enjoy some time off?00:33.82Charles NuttycombeYeah, it took a few days off, played a new Pokemon game. I feel like that’s kind of a tradition I have. is like it like Election time when I was in college would sit like Like right after midterms, if I recall correctly. So like election would be wrapped up, midterms are wrapped up, and I would just kind of sit and and play whatever new Pokemon game is out.00:56.66Charles NuttycombeThe new one’s okay. it’s I feel like it wasn’t worth the 60 bucks, but c’est la vie. And yes, it took like we the team had five days off and now we’re getting back into the group of things and we’re about to launch in Alaska, North Carolina, Michigan. Just working on those. Alaska, hopefully out in a couple of days from now.01:23.06Charles NuttycombeBut we’re working out some bugs and making sure that we got all our ducks in row first.01:27.59Sam ShiraziNice. Well, it’s it’s a good tradition to have after you Pokemon go to the polls to go play Pokemon.01:33.44Charles Nuttycombedamn it i shouldn’t know you’re going to say that01:37.21Sam ShiraziYeah, yeah. I’m old enough to remember when that actually happened.01:38.87Charles NuttycombeThat was good.01:40.89Sam ShiraziSo anyways, so so let’s talk a little bit about State Navigate. your your You had State Navigate, obviously had a good election. i think a lot of people doubted you. There were skeptics, but you proved everyone wrong. So I guess we’ll start with the polling side of things.01:57.98Sam ShiraziObviously, you had a couple of polls that showed the Democrats were going to do well. And frankly, it was pretty close to almost exactly right. I think you were pretty much the best pollster out there, particularly of the pollsters that polled every single race. So what do you think you got right in this election and and polling that maybe some of the other organizations didn’t?02:20.70Charles NuttycombeYeah, absolutely. So, yeah. So the state navigate forecast would have been very, very accurate if polling was as good as state navigates. What’s funny is that our fundamentals model and the fundamentals only looks at presidential approval.02:38.81Charles Nuttycombeand most recent election results uh and uh you know the economy like unemployment inflation uh that sort of thing right and it had span burger 15 but That doesn’t, that’s not all of the model, right? We still take it to other people’s polls when we’re doing our forecast. So we had Spanberger 11, so she did about four points better.03:18.67Charles Nuttycombewhich was not the goal. The goal was 97, but I decided to open the scotch anyway, given how good our poll was.03:31.12Charles NuttycombeAnd, you know, we were we were so close. and you know, there are plenty of other people who probably had poor nights in the house of delegates. So mac matter of fact is, uh, state navigate is, is still, uh, on top for forecasting, uh, Virginia elections. elections. Um,03:48.32Charles NuttycombeSo in our poll, I think what like worked the best for us was honestly it just like a very simple understanding of Virginia history. Like, you know, I had talked about this before on the polls were probably gonna get bit in the butt for weighing their polls to 2021 and 2024, which would be a good year for Republicans. I also noted that you know If there is a larger democratic wave than what our poll and what our forecast was expecting,04:24.21Charles Nuttycombethat it would be with high election day turnout that would benefit Democrats with low and mid propensity Democrats coming out, particularly more minority Democrats. And they came out. So that’s how Spanberger, you know, in the final forecast, I had noted in the article that her floor was nine and her ceiling was 15. And she got past that ceiling by what? 0.3, 0.4%, something like that.04:46.18Charles NuttycombeSo it’s kind of similar to 21 because Youngkin was 0.06% away from that two-point ceiling I gave him. so But that’s what floors and ceilings are for.04:57.18Charles NuttycombeAnd you know i think at the end of the day, i mean, all you had to do was just know the fact of life that Virginia governor elections are always...05:10.05Charles Nuttycombebeneficial to the party out of power from the White House. And but that those benefits include a turnout advantage point blank period. And so you had pollsters that were weighing only to of maybe maybe a electorate as blue 24 or and and thus a couple points bluer than 21 or maybe only a hair bluer than 24.05:36.26Charles NuttycombeAnd I think if they were doing that, it would be largely based on the early vote or something. But you know, we use like AP vote cast data and Gallup and vote hub and catalyst and all this sort of stuff to just look at that. The party ID was probably go to be like D plus eight D plus nine, something like that.05:58.54Charles Nuttycombeis what happened. so, you know, spam murder just did like 2% better because think the unders undecideds broke her way. And, I think we just barely weighed Republicans too much and should have weighed independents a little bit more. We’re talking like 41 versus 40 versus versus or something in that final so yeah I think, and you can go to our site and you can see like a great breakdown from, our data manager, Mary Radcliffe, i for, you know, how pollsters did amongst, uh, various categories, uh, to see, you know, who did well, who didn’t. And yes, as for any poll that asked for governor, Lieutenant governor, and attorney general, had the smallest error.06:47.80Charles Nuttycombeand, You know, there were some polls that I think had suffered from the Jay Jones, shy Jay Jones stuff. I think ours did too, right? In our our second poll, we had Jones up by three and a half.07:01.32Charles NuttycombeI think typically there’s usually like a two or 3% bias, I guess, where where candidates with scandals overperform their polling. And that’s, you know, that’s what happened this year in the attorney general race. But even without that, I mean, Jones, if if polling was still right and the end,07:22.16Charles Nuttycombelike ours was for you know that turnout advantage. I mean, that was what was going to get Jones across the finish line. It’s just a matter of the margin. So, you know I mean, I had texted with people who...07:34.71Charles Nuttycombeuh, you know, kept asking me privately, like, you know, do you, do you really think Jay is going to win, Republicans and Democrats? Just a lot of them asked me that.07:44.54Charles NuttycombeAnd I just kept saying, yeah. you know, I didn’t really have, and didn’t waver in Jack and I’s Jack Hirsing, our development director and co-forecaster and I’s ability to forecast.07:58.04Charles NuttycombeAnd felt good about what we had in front of us and felt good about of our understanding of Virginia history and that there was going to be a polling miss of some sort of caliber.08:08.79Charles NuttycombeAnd that Jones was, you know, I mean, there was always a path for Mieras. You know, we had given him a one in three chance of winning pretty high.08:20.25Charles NuttycombeAnd he underperformed because of a polling miss. So, yeah.08:25.72Sam ShiraziYeah, i mean, all super fascinating stuff. I mean, I had one specific polling question, and I also want to get to the forecast. But in terms of the polling, you know, I think there’s this kind of old school understanding of polls, like you call a thousand people and then you see who they’re voting for. And, you know, nowadays, the weighing is so important. And obviously, like Republican pollsters will like weigh it to be more Republican friendly. And so I guess what I’m getting at is, you know, are polls almost like quasi models where you’re getting some input from,08:54.52Sam ShiraziYou know, the the poll takers in terms of like where independence, but essentially much of polling is just modeling who’s going to show up. And it’s less about like the answers that the people are giving you, because obviously like the Democrats and Republicans are usually pretty behind their their team. And you’re just kind of trying to figure out maybe where the independents are.09:14.07Charles NuttycombeI think there’s there’s some truth to that. you know You have to be able to weight your poll appropriately to make sure that you give each side its fair share of the electorate, and you determine that by looking at what the current environment is.09:31.42Charles NuttycombeAnd you have to use previous data to try and figure out what the current environment is. I think Republican pollsters in in my understanding, kind of let their party ID float, meaning that they didn’t really change much compared to what they had in the raw data.09:50.04Charles NuttycombeThat’s not what we we did. we waited, we tried to get a sample, especially in our second poll that was as close to our targets as possible and not in like the, the democratic kind of thing, right? Like, oh, let’s, let’s say like our first day is like two Republican or something, but more so like in the demographics, demographics, um,10:09.01Charles Nuttycombei mean there are definitely tricks you can do like i think trafalgar and their polls right had uh you know uh harris plus six electric which is yes how virginia voted but you can get a poll to say anything if you know how to toy around with the numbers in in my experience when you know we were trying to figure out uh our our weight

Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fall Out the 2025 Virginia elections.This episode we will have Joe Szymanski.He is going to help walk us through perhaps the Republican reaction to what happened in Virginia, maybe lessons they can learn and things that could potentially change for them ahead of the midterms, because obviously both parties are going to be trying to figure out what they can do differently or the same to to do as best as possible or during during the midterms. Joe, I follow you on social media. I always appreciate your takes. I think you’re pretty objective and you’re pretty realistic in your assessment. So it’s good to have you on.00:38.35JoeI appreciate it, Sam. Thank you very much for having me back.00:40.63Sam ShiraziYeah. So, I mean, to begin, i think, you know, whenever there’s an election like this, the party that loses, there’s kind of soul searching and kind of questioning of what happened. You know, how much of this do you think was just the environment, given what happened in New Jersey? So how much do you think what happened in Virginia was the environment versus kind of the specific campaign dynamics?01:01.24JoeWell, i think I think it depends on what race you’re talking about. you know I think, obviously, when you look at the fact that Abigail Spanberger won by 15 points, you know significantly higher than there are other statewide compatriots. Ghazala Hashimi only won by about 11.5. You had Jay Jones, obviously, only winning by about 6.5 points.01:26.20JoeSo, you know, Abigail Spanberger winning by around 15.3%. That, you know, that’s a big difference. Obviously, that’s a, I think that’s a Spanberger-like thing, the fact that she was able to get that high.01:38.51JoeBut if you, I think the Hashmi-Reed race, I talked, I put out a post about this a couple of days ago. That seemed to basically be kind of the the set generic R, generic D race. That was the race had the least attention.01:50.67JoeThat was the race that just kind of seemed to be, I think, where if we’re just talking about baseline where R’s and D’s were in Virginia this year, that seemed to be the place right there. And I think when you look at the races in the House of Delegates, I think that kind of tracks pretty well with the seats that we saw flip or get close. You know, I think in general, I think that sits pretty well with what we are looking at statewide. But certainly, I think in the case of, you know, how relative in terms of compared to the other two statewide races, how relatively close to the AG race was. and how you know far apart the governor’s race was, I think those were candidate-based. But I think when you get down to, I think, some of these has of deal a lot of these House of Delegate races, and I think the lieutenant governor’s race as well, it just showed just general blue wave that I think fell over the parts of the country that held elections two weeks ago.02:40.43Sam ShiraziYeah, I mean, I think that’s a good point. Like if you look at the lieutenant governor’s race as kind of the generic ballot, D.R. and the Democrats win by 11.02:48.38JoeUh.02:48.71Sam ShiraziI mean, if you compare to that to 2017, that’s a bigger win than the governor’s race or the lieutenant governor’s race in 2017 in Virginia. So how much do you think, you know, Virginia, New Jersey,02:59.18Sam Shiraziwas kind of a flashing signal to the Republicans because some Republicans have said, well, those are bluer states, so there’d probably be more of a backlash in those types of states. you know how How big of a deal do you think the elections were?03:12.30JoeI think certainly certainly they’re a big deal. And certainly when you, I think, underperform expectations like Republicans did, you know, not just in Virginia, but across the country.03:22.89Joetwo weeks ago, that’s going to be a huge problem. That can send red red flashing lights, I think, for everyone. You know, Republicans didn’t do well in New Jersey, like you said. They didn’t do well. There were some very key races in Pennsylvania that brought forth a lot of money. The Republicans didn’t do well there.03:37.91JoeThere was a lot of local stuff in many states that did not go Republicans’ way. That was a lot of problems. Obviously, the big red, flashing light, I think you look at the legislative elections in both New Jersey and Virginia, where Republicans you know failed to failed to make, you know either limit their losses, like I think the hope was Virginia, or potentially to make some gains, like I think they were quite honestly hoping to do in New Jersey. you know and Republicans basically had their worst night possible, losing 13 seats, basically all the seats that were04:09.88Joerated toss-up or even the few that were lean Republican by the end of the night were in the Democratic column. You know, you had upsets, you know, you had Chad Green losing, Paul Mild, Bobby Oroch, you know, those are kind of the three seats that I think people going into the night were, you know, kind of thinking that Republicans probably had a slightly better than 50% chance in. And then, you know, Democrats win all three of those seats with, honestly, with some relative ease. None of them were within a point in the closest seat.04:39.60Joethat Democrats won was actually Gary Higgins’ seat, which some people thought may be not as close as it was. But there there should be a lot of red flashing lights here. I think obviously with Virginia, you know you have to take the government shutdown into effect.04:54.13JoeCertainly that’s what happened in 2013. But you know now you have a government shutdown happening that really ticked off a lot of Virginia voters. Well, you’ve got a Republican president you know who is not popular right now. If you go by the polling data, he’s not a particularly popular person right now.05:10.28JoeAnd it’s certainly not surprising that he’s not he was not popular in a lot of these deep blue pockets that Virginia has around Richmond, you know, the D.C. suburbs, of course, and then around, you know, Hampton Roads area, Norfolk, Hampton, Newport News, Portsmouth, even the inner parts of Chesapeake and Virginia Beach, you know.05:29.80JoeIt’s a very clear sign that the people who are turning out to elections right now are upset and Republicans need to take notice and maybe I think recalibrate some of the messaging that we hope to have 2026.05:40.13Sam ShiraziYeah, and and I’ll get to the midterms and kind of what the Republicans can maybe change. I did want to just spend a moment just on the House of Delegates because you know you you obviously know know knew those races really well. And I think you know pretty much no one expected Democrats to pick up the 13 seats.05:55.71Sam ShiraziAnd I think the question I have kind of... about the Virginia elections in this context is more, do individual candidates matter at this point at the kind lower parts of the ticket? Because I feel like most people don’t even think too much about the House of Delegates candidates anymore. In 2013, Terry McAuliffe won the governor’s race and the Republicans won like 66 House of Delegates seats. It just seems like people don’t do that anymore. And I mean, do you think there’s gonna be any ticket splitting in the future or is just we’re kind of done with that?06:30.22JoeWell, mean, we still did see some evidence of ticket splitting. You know, you go to via eighty six district. AC Cordoza did, I think, significantly worse than most of the top of the ticket.06:42.20JoeWe had Carrie Coyner in 75, even though she still lost, do significantly better than Republicans at the top of ticket did in that seat, even though she still ended up losing by just about six points there. So I think i think when you look at some of these races, there is still some signs of ticket splitting for some favors to to incumbents, but you know,07:01.80JoeYou look at, I think, people like Mark Early Jr., who was, you know, knocked out by over three points. You look at David Owen, who who had a very moderate voting record and in Henrico County in what became a very blue seat. He got trounced. I think Ian Lovejoy, I think, in HD22 and Prince William, I think that’s the biggest one. Ian Lovejoy.07:42.60JoeI think that showed the partisanship more than maybe any race throughout the cycle, the fact that people did not care that Ian Lovejoy was a relatively moderate Republican delegate. He just where he had an R next to his name, and the people in Northern Virginia were not going to elect any Republican this year.07:59.01JoeThat’s the fact they weren’t going to do it. and you know, that’s what happened now. I mean, Northern Virginia is completely blue the house level now. Jerry Higgins is gone. Ian Lovejoy is gone. If you want him to count Paul Mildon there in that middle Stafford seat, he’s gone. And even if you want to go as far as Bobby Oreck, you know, he’s gone now, too.08:17.81JoeSo, you know, I think certainly there is a good chunk of it that was anger. There’s certainly still, I think there’s still some ticket splitting you can see here, but certainly it’s becoming less and less, you know, it’s becoming less and less common, becoming less and less a decider. You know, we might be seeing it a point or two, but we’re not seeing it by the 10, 15-point splits that we would see a decade ago.08:36.62Sam ShiraziYeah, and and that makes sense. And, you know, it it is, I think sometimes when there’s these waves, whether it’s a blue wave or red wave, it kind of takes people with them and there’s not a lot you can do. And so looking towards the midterms, I guess, before we get to what Republicans can do or learn, Do you think you’ll see a similar dynamic where some of these incumbents, you know, maybe in the past they’ve been safe? i mean, obviously, the biggest name is Susan Collins. After 2020, there’s this assumption she’s very hard to beat. But do you think maybe if there’s this wave that some of these incumbents

Hi everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This episode, we will go over some of the really granular data in the election results in Virginia to see what it might tell us about the midterms and potentially what lessons each party can learn.00:18.08Sam ShiraziSo obviously, big picture, Democrats had a good night. And so if we want to look at some of the data really close up, we can try to figure out why they had a good night. And conversely, for the Republicans, we can try to figure out what went wrong, why do they potentially have some issues going into the midterms next year.00:35.08Sam ShiraziNow, to begin, i think the the first interesting way to look at the election data is through the five basic different types of election results that are displayed on the Virginia Department of Elections website.00:47.53Sam ShiraziSo if you go into the governor’s race and you go to any county or city, it’s basically broken up into five different types of vote. There is early voting, which is implicitly it’s saying in-person early voting. So it’s people who go vote in person.01:01.17Sam ShiraziThere is election day, which is obviously people who go vote on election day. There is mailed app absentee, which are people who send their ballots back. There is provisional, and we’ll I’ll talk more about that. And then finally, there is post-election, which is basically post-election mail. So that’s mail that’s received by noon on Friday after the election if it’s been postmarked by Election Day.01:24.57Sam ShiraziI did want to note after all the votes were added, including the provisionals and the the final mail ballots, Spanberger is going to eventually win by more than 15%.01:35.97Sam ShiraziSo this was you know a huge landslide at the top of the ticket. And and with these final votes, Spanberger is going to be able to cross that 15% threshold and just really more than what anyone ever thought was possible.01:48.95Sam ShiraziAnd I wanted to spend a little bit of time on the provisional ballots because I think they’re super interesting in this election. Now, what are provisional ballots? I’ve explained this before. Provisional ballots are essentially votes that are cast that are not counted on election night. They are set aside.02:03.18Sam ShiraziTypically, the reason for that in Virginia are same-day registrations because the registrations have to be checked. And essentially, these are votes that are cast because people are not in the system registered to vote.02:15.65Sam ShiraziAnd this is a way for someone to vote, and then their eligibility will be determined later And then if they’re allowed to vote, the vote will be cast counted. And it usually takes a few days to do this because it’s a rigorous progress process. They have to review all the election information to make sure the person’s able to vote.02:35.19Sam ShiraziAnd the thing with provisionals, as I said, the vast majority in Virginia are same-day registrations. And if you think about someone who same-day registers, it typically skews younger. So you think about college students, you use same-day registration a lot.02:48.60Sam ShiraziAnd it’s also people who are just less engaged in politics. They forget about the voter registration deadline. They wake up, there’s an election. They go down to their local polling place. They want to vote. kind of If you think about basically the lowest propensity voters, people who...03:03.98Sam Shiraziyeah for lack of better word, are not with it enough to register ahead of time, don’t necessarily you know live and breathe politics. These are typically the least engaged voters who vote same-day registration.03:15.17Sam ShiraziI mean, obviously, there’s some exceptions and people reasons why people would same-day register, but most of the time, it’s just younger people who are less engaged and who vote at the very end. So in terms of the provisionals, Spanberger won those 73.5%.03:29.76Sam ShiraziAnd that is not, it wasn’t super shocking in the sense of Democrats tend to do well with provisional ballots. So if you look at most elections in Virginia, Democrats typically win the provisional ballots.03:42.21Sam ShiraziHowever, I was really looking for the paris provisional ballots this election because of what happened in 2024. And one of the things that really surprised 2024 in Virginia was...03:55.14Sam Shirazithe margin by which Harris only barely won provisional ballots. So in 2024, Harris only won Virginia provisional ballots by 52.6% of the vote.04:06.97Sam Shiraziso and And Trump got a decent amount of the provisional ballots in Virginia. What what what that was telling me in 2024 was that the Republicans... were doing relatively much better than they usually do with younger voters, with less engaged voters, and the Democrats were not doing well.04:23.57Sam ShiraziAnd so I think that was a big warning sign for the Democrats in 2024, that they were struggling with younger and less engaged voters. Fast forward to this year, and the Democrats are doing much better with the provisional ballots. And that is an indication to me that Democrats are doing much better with younger and less engaged voters.04:42.56Sam ShiraziAnd so you you look at some of these critical counties like Loudoun in 2024. Harris, again, barely won the provisional vote in Loudoun in 2024. 2025, Spanberger gets a big win in the provisionals in Loudoun.04:55.77Sam ShiraziPrince William, same thing. All these critical counties in Virginia... the Democrats this year are doing much better with the provisional ballots. And so I think that’s a big warning sign to the Republicans because in 2024, part of the thing that they were happy happened, the Republicans were happy about was that younger voters, less engaged voters, they skewed towards the Republicans.05:16.59Sam ShiraziAnd then this year, that was not the case. I think very clearly from the provisional data, younger and less engaged voters were skewing very heavily towards the Democrats. And I think there’s a lot of reasons you can think about that. I think the most the easiest explanation just the economy.05:33.42Sam ShiraziThose people are feeling perhaps the sting of high prices and other issues in the economy. So They’re willing to go with the Democrats this year. And then the other thing I should mention, so this is kind of moving away from the provisionals, but related to provisionals are young voters. And and you know the provisional data is telling us they that Democrats did well with younger voters.05:53.65Sam ShiraziAnd then the precinct data at some of these universities is telling us that Democrats did well with younger voters. I already talked about House District 41. Democrats got a big win in that race because Lily Franklin was able to bring out students in Virginia Tech.06:07.24Sam ShiraziAnd it’s not just the fact that you brought out the students. The students at Virginia Tech overwhelmingly voted for the Democrats. So if you look at some of these precincts that are specifically the Virginia Tech precincts in Montgomery County, where Virginia Tech is located, some of these precincts, Spanberger is winning them 80%, 86.75%, 80% again,06:27.81Sam Shirazijust really high margins in these campus precincts at Virginia Tech. Same things, similar story at UVA, JMU, William & Mary, just a lot of these college campuses.06:39.71Sam ShiraziI mean, it’s not a huge surprise. Yes, Democrats do well on college campuses. I think the thing that was surprising was in 2024, these margins were a lot smaller for Democrats. So I think if you compare a lot of these precincts from 2024 to 2025, Democrats have made a lot of yeah gains in specific precincts where there a lot of younger voters, college voters.07:00.62Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, there was a lot of talk in 2024 about young men and how, for whatever reason, because of podcasts or whatever, young men had moved towards the Republicans. I think with these results, you cannot be getting these margins if it’s just women.07:14.92Sam ShiraziIt’s clearly that young men have also moved towards the Democrats, perhaps not as much as young women, but certainly Democrats won young men this year in Virginia. Okay, now, that’s kind of the young person side of things. I wanted to move on to another really critical demographic for 2026, and that is Hispanics.07:36.14Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, to be perfectly honest, New Jersey has more interesting data about Hispanics because there are more Hispanic people in New Jersey, and some of the precinct data is much clearer. But... And so just quickly talk talk about New Jersey for a second, it’s very clear that Democrats made substantial gains with Hispanic voters in New Jersey.07:54.57Sam Shiraziand And I think one of the shocks in 2024 was Trump gotten what got really close in New Jersey within six points, which is much closer than any Republican has gotten in New Jersey in a long time, partly because of his gains with Hispanic voters.08:07.72Sam ShiraziI think at least in this election, it’s very clear that Hispanic voters pretty much reverted to their pre 2024 voting patterns.08:15.85Sam ShiraziAnd so I can talk about one city city in Virginia. Again, Virginia doesn’t have a huge Hispanic population, but there are certain areas with more of Hispanic voters. One of them is Manassas Park City. So this is a city right next to Manassas City, which so it’s kind of funny. There’s Manassas City and then Manassas Park City, both relatively smaller cities, uh,08:36.14Sam ShiraziKind of an exurban part, suburban exurban part of Northern Virginia outside D.C. good Good amount of Hispanic voters here. Why? Because relatively lower cost of living. So you have more working class people here. But obviously, Northern Virginia still expensive. These people are feeling the economic squeeze as well.08:55.51Sam ShiraziSo in Prince, sorry, in Manassas Park City, Spanberger got 71% of the vote. You compare th

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

Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout 2025 Virginia Elections. This is a special bonus episode where we will go over some things that have happened in the Senate regarding the shutdown and a possible end to the shutdown and see how the Virginia Elections may or may not have played a role in all00:17.87Sam ShiraziSo to begin, just to give you kind of a rundown of what’s been going on, obviously the government shutdown has been going on for a while. The elections on Tuesday, Democrats did well. So a lot of Democrats felt like their approach to the shutdown had been vindicated.00:31.39Sam ShiraziBut then Sunday evening... News came out of the Senate that there was a compromise among some of the senators to come up with a deal to perhaps end the government shutdown. Now, there’s still a lot of procedural stuff that happens in Congress before the Senate can finally pass it and the House passes it.00:48.23Sam ShiraziBut long story short, it looks like the shutdown should be over sometime this week, depending on exactly when Congress votes on the bill. And I think there’s a lot of Virginia connections to what’s been going on, because one Obviously, the Virginia elections went well for the Democrats. I think some Democrats viewed that as, well, we were right to shut down the government. We were correct to stand up.01:11.77Sam ShiraziAnd we did the right thing. And we were rewarded at the polls by the voters. And so we got to stick to it and not give in on the government shutdown. But then Sunday evening, one of the key senators who came out in favor of this bill to reopen the government,01:27.24Sam Shiraziwas Senator Tim Kaine from Virginia. And honestly, as soon as I saw that Tim Kaine had come out in favor of this, the bill was going to pass the Senate. And I think a lot of people were questioning, well, why did Kaine do this? Why have some of the Democrats decided to vote with the Republicans?01:44.62Sam ShiraziI think most Democrats in the Senate and in the House are probably going to vote against this. So it’s really just kind of this so group of senators on the Democratic side that voted for it. So there’s a lot of kind of confusion about exactly what happened. and And I wanted to share some of my thoughts and my initial reaction. So first, i think a lot of people were confused about what ended up happening and why the Democrats ended up, or at least some of the Democrats ended up voting for this proposal.02:12.41Sam ShiraziI think one thing this has made clear is the Democrats really need to work on communicating to their base about decisions they’re making, deals that are happening. I think a lot of people were surprised by this. They were not expecting this.02:23.28Sam Shiraziand think that was part of the reason for the... you know, shock that the Democrats ended up doing this. Now, they had kind of been signaling for a few days that they were going to probably try to compromise. But I think kind of the speedway which had happened was surprising.02:36.93Sam ShiraziAnd I think, frankly, the other thing, too, is the scale of the Democratic victories for the first time really since President Trump won in November 2024. think Democrats felt good.02:47.57Sam ShiraziThey felt good about what happened in Virginia. They felt good about what happened in New Jersey, California, New York. So Democrats felt like finally, We are making some progress. We are starting to get things in order.02:58.77Sam ShiraziAnd that only lasted a few days because by Sunday night, a lot of Democrats were upset. And there’s this phrase that is kind of a meme about Dems in disarray. So for a few days, Dems were united and felt good.03:10.12Sam ShiraziBut now, again, they are back to fighting each other, pointing the finger, some people blaming Senator Schumer, some people blaming Senator Kaine, just a lot of you know upset people. And and I think in in Virginia specifically, I saw a lot of Democratic activists really upset at Senator Kaine and other senators who voted for this compromise because they felt like they didn’t really get anything out of it. Why are they doing this?03:32.53Sam ShiraziThey gave up on the Obamacare subsidies issue. And I kind of wanted to go through and explain it from different perspectives, maybe you know why some of these Democratic senators decided to do what they did, and then why the base is so upset.03:45.41Sam ShiraziNow, first from the Democratic senators who voted for this proposal’s perspective. I think from their perspective, the government shutdown, there was no end in sight. I mean, i think some people have floated, well, the Republicans can just get rid of the filibuster. It didn’t seem like the Republicans were willing to do that.04:01.84Sam ShiraziAnd I think the government shutdown had gotten to the point where The federal employees had missed two paychecks. They obviously holidays are coming up. There’s going to be a lot of expenses. People want to buy gifts to their families, et cetera. And federal employees were definitely getting to the point where they might not be running. They might be running out of their savings.04:20.98Sam ShiraziSo think that was one issue. Obviously, FAA, air traffic, flights, there were a lot of issues. Thanksgiving’s coming up. There was a pressure building that this needs to get resolved before Thanksgiving. So I think from that perspective, there was a sense of we need something to be done.04:35.80Sam ShiraziAnd realistically, the Republicans are never going to compromise or give us anything on the Obamacare subsidies. So we have to see where we can get compromise or get something from the Republicans elsewhere. So there are a couple of things that the Democrats pointed to in this compromise, so to speak.04:51.34Sam ShiraziOne was SNAP benefits. so this committed to pay spen SNAP benefits or for the rest of the fiscal year. So I think that’s going to not necessarily be as big of an issue. Obviously, it doesn’t address the health care issue, but SNAP is important in order to get people food.05:06.60Sam ShiraziSo I think that was part of the formula of what the Democrats chose to do. I think the other thing, and this was specifically with Senator King, because I know that he was essentially the big the key swing vote. And that if he had voted for it, then it’s going to pass. And I think he was pushing back on the rifts, the reductions in force that happened since the shutdown.05:24.42Sam ShiraziSo what he was able to do is in this bill, there cannot be any more reductions in force for as long as this bill lasts, which is until January. The reductions in force that happened since October 1st are going to be reversed.05:36.82Sam ShiraziAnd also the federal employees who have not been receiving a paycheck, they will get back pay. I mean, that was already kind of the law, but this just kind of emphasizes that again. And, you know, from I think Senator King’s perspective is this was a way to protect some of these federal employees.05:52.83Sam ShiraziTo be perfectly honest, this is the first time really the Congress has placed any sort of limits on the Trump administration since he came into office on January 20th. So Congress is essentially telling the president you can’t do more riffs for at least a limited amount of time.06:06.97Sam ShiraziMight not seem like the biggest deal in the world, but I think symbolically it’s important that Congress is pushing back a little bit. And also practically, this is like a few thousand jobs that were threatened to be riffed that won’t, at least in the short term.06:18.12Sam ShiraziNow, I’ve heard from some Democrats basically saying like, you know whatever, Trump’s going to ignore this. He’s never going to actually you know honor the agreement. And you know that’s possible. But I mean, at the end of the day, like if you are a member of Congress, the most you can do is write a bill essentially and hope that the president honors it. And if they don’t honor it, you know you can go to the courts, et cetera. you know I think that was the perspective from Senator Kaine and those who voted for this bill.06:44.39Sam ShiraziAnd I think also practically, you know there’s a big question mark of what the elections meant this year. I think one way to view it, and I’ll get to the kind of more Democratic activist perspective, one way of viewing the elections is like the Democrats stood up to Trump and they’re getting rewarded for it. And what the American people want to see is people standing up to President Trump and the Democrats fighting and fighting for these things that are important like healthcare.07:08.86Sam ShiraziI think that’s one perspective. I think the other perspective, and frankly, You know, Congresswoman Spanberger, former Congresswoman Spanberger, now Governor-elect Spanberger, she also said that the shutdown needed to end. And so I think there is this other perspective that really what the voters rewarded the Democrats for on Tuesday was really more pragmatism.07:30.31Sam Shirazifocusing on issues people care about, like cost of living, et cetera, and not being so ideological, not focusing on the trans issue, which we talked about where Winston Merle-Sears just spent too much time on that issue.07:41.75Sam ShiraziSo really what the Democrats were rewarded for was for being, focused on things people caring care about and actually listening to the concerns people had. And so one argument, and this is maybe what Senator Kaine and those who support opening the government say is like, look,07:56.52Sam ShiraziPeople expect the government to work. They don’t want to miss flights. Federal employees need to get their paychecks. This has gone on long enough. We tried our best, but at some point, the Republicans were never going to compromise, and we can’t keep the government shut down forever.08:11.23Sam ShiraziEventually, people are going to start blaming us, especially if it doesn’t look like we’re trying to compromise

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode, we will go over the flips the Democrats made in the House of Delegates and kind of go race by race to see why the Democrats were able to flip the seats and what lessons could be learned from each district. And the reason I wanted to do this, i think there’s been a lot of interest in the specific...00:21.63Sam Shiraziflips the Democrats made, the number of gains they made, and some of them were pretty surprising. And, you know, my last episode, I talked about a few of them, but I wanted to give an overview of every single flip.00:32.46Sam ShiraziAnd the way I’m going to do this, I’m actually going to go from the most surprising flips to the least surprising, because I think usually the way you do this, you go from most likely the flip to least likely the flip.00:42.87Sam ShiraziNow, that’s before the election. After the election, you know the results. We can kind of go back and try to think through, okay, how did the Democrats flip these seats? What does that potentially mean for the midterms and maybe lessons the Democrats can learn in each of these specific seats?00:57.32Sam ShiraziOkay, so I will start with off with House District 66. So this is south of Fredericksburg along I-95 Spotsylvania County and Caroline County.01:09.99Sam ShiraziAnd this, I think, was the biggest shock of the night. The reason you had an incumbent, Bobby Oroc, who had been there for a long time. He was first elected to the House of Delegates in 1989. He was the dean of the Virginia House of Delegates.01:22.87Sam ShiraziAnd he was defeated by Nicole Cole, who is on the Spotsylvania County School Board. And she flipped the seat by about 4%, which you know is not even super close at the end of the day. I mean, this one, Democrats did a good job.01:38.03Sam ShiraziThis was a Trump district. They won it by 4%. And I kind of want to think through, okay, what happened in this specific district? we What you see here, this this is south of Fredericksburg along I-95, and this has seen a lot of growth because people are looking for Affordable housing, lower cost of living.01:57.96Sam ShiraziThey’re in the kind of it’s on the outer edges of northern Virginia, exurban area. Traditionally has been more rural, more Republican. i think this is the type of district where working class voters, particularly working working class voters who are not white. So the district, I think, is about 20 percent African-American.02:14.54Sam ShiraziThe affordability issue, I think, is important for them. The Democrats were able to make gains on that. And also, I think Nicole Cole was able to bring out black voters in this district. And that was an important part of her success.02:26.24Sam ShiraziSo we’re seeing when we’re thinking about the midterms in 2026, we can kind of think through, okay where can the Democrats make some gains? And I think in kind of exurban working class areas where people are feeling the pinch in terms of cost of living, that’s the type of gains they can make. So and if you think about 2018 when the Democrats flipped the house, they made a lot of gains in wealthier suburbs, kind of historically Republican areas that were wealthier suburbs.02:54.57Sam ShiraziNow, most of those seats have flipped. So there isn’t as many opportunities for the Democrats to flip seats in wealthier suburbs where the Democrats may have more of an opportunity are in more working class exurbs that are diverse, maybe have black population, Asian population, Hispanic population.03:12.23Sam ShiraziThose types of areas I think are going to be really interesting to watch in 2026. twenty twenty six And these are kind of outside major metro areas. So for example, this district is outside D.C.,03:24.01Sam Shirazikind of further down I-95. And obviously federal fallout, the district is also impacted by what’s going on with the federal cuts in DC. So I think that was part of the equation in this district. So anyways, I spent a little bit more time on this district because i think it was really interesting thinking about an exurban district and can the Democrats build on some of those exurban gains they made 2025 in 2026. Yeah.03:49.11Sam ShiraziAll right, now let’s move down to a different district. I would say this is maybe the second most surprising flip of the night, and that is House District 69. This is in the Hampton Roads area around Yorktown.04:01.08Sam ShiraziThe incumbent, Chad Green, was unopposed in 2023, but he ended up losing to Democrat Mark Downey. And we had Dr. Downey on my podcast earlier in the year, and you can go listen to that episode if you’re interested.04:16.06Sam ShiraziI think a few things to think about this district. You know, when he was on the podcast, Dr. Downey, he talked about being a doctor. And I think doctors generally are strong candidates for either party because they’re known in the community and people just trust doctors. So I think that was an advantage the Democrats had.04:32.50Sam ShiraziAnd he ended up getting about a 3% win in this district, which I think was pretty surprising because again, this is a Trump district the Democrats were able to flip. And I had flagged all the way back in 2018 my podcast with him that there’s this kind of weird thing in the district where it goes across the river into Gloucester and Gloucester is this red part of Virginia, whereas most the district is more in the blue parts of York County.04:56.53Sam ShiraziLong story short, I think Dr. Downey got a big win in York County. York has a lot of military installations, again, federal fallout. You know, the Republican did well in Gloucester. It just wasn’t enough to overcome the federal fallout in the military area.05:11.97Sam ShiraziAnd again, listen lessons for 2026. Military dependent areas traditionally tend to be Republican because obviously a lot of people in the military are more conservative leaning.05:23.79Sam ShiraziBut they may be feeling the impact of some of the federal fallout. And so if the Democrats are able to kind of tap into that sentiment with work with military voters, I think that’s going to be a big advantage potentially in the 2026 midterms.05:38.92Sam ShiraziAnd obviously, as the midterms come up, we don’t know what the final maps are going to look like in Virginia, but... The first district and the second district both have a lot of military presence. And, you know, whatever the final outcome looks like in those districts, I think that’s going to be a big opportunity for the Democrats to flip those seats based on potential gains with military voters.06:00.70Sam ShiraziOkay, now let’s go to a different type of district. This is House District 73. This is in the Richmond suburbs in Chesterfield County. The incumbent, Mark Early, he lost re-election to Leslie Mehta.06:14.51Sam ShiraziAnd the final margin will be around 3% in this district, a little over 3%, maybe closer to 4%. And I think what was interesting about this district is this part of Chesterfield has been traditionally a very...06:28.73Sam ShiraziRepublican area. And I think what the Democrats were able to do here they were able to get a lot of Spanberger voters at the top of the ticket to vote for Leslie Mehta at the House of Delegates level. So there wasn’t enough ticket splitting where the Republicans could win in this district.06:44.45Sam ShiraziAnd I think the lesson here is for 2026, the Democrats in these suburban districts are doing well. We all know the Democrats have made a lot of gains in the suburbs, in the Trump era.06:55.30Sam ShiraziThere are still some suburbs that are still... Republican leaning, but I think in this second go round of the trump and the second Trump administration, I think there’s a possibility that a lot of those districts start becoming more and more Democratic because obviously Democrats are doing well with college educated, wealthy voters.07:14.36Sam ShiraziAnd I think specifically for this district, I think it’ll be interesting to watch in 2027 when the state Senate is up because there is a very potentially competitive state Senate district in this area in Chesterfield County that again has traditionally been Republican.07:29.51Sam ShiraziAnd we’ll see if the Democrats are able to flip that state Senate seat in 2027. So again, Democrats doing well in the suburbs, not a huge surprise. I think the thing that was surprising about this race was everyone kind of have a feeling at some point this district was going to flip.07:43.73Sam ShiraziA lot of people in the back of their head kind of thought, okay, is this the year that the district flips? And yeah, it ended up being the year07:50.89Sam ShiraziOkay, now let’s head back up to Northern Virginia in House District 30. This is where the incumbent Gary Higgins was defeated by Democratic challenger John McAuliffe. he McAuliffe is going to win by around two points when all the votes are in.08:06.89Sam ShiraziAnd we also had John McAuliffe on earlier this year on the podcast, actually pretty recently. So if you want to go ahead and listen to that episode, I think it’s pretty interesting.08:17.90Sam ShiraziOkay, so this is in Western Laod and Western Fakir. Obviously, there was federal fallout. That was part of the formula in this district. I talked about in my last episode the kind of outreach to Indian voters and South Asian voters in this district, the kind of eastern part of the district that...08:35.19Sam Shiraziis becoming more suburban, has seen a lot of growth. I think that was part of the equation. But the thing I wanted to talk about this district specifically was data centers. So John McAuliffe, he made data centers a big part of the campaign.08:46.86Sam ShiraziYou’re hearing more and more about data centers because they’re taking up a lot of land. They’re taking up a lot of energy. And I think specifically the Democrats, I think are going to increasingly be running against data ce

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This episode, we will go over some lessons that both parties can learn from the Virginia elections this year, because obviously, after the results came in, it was clear that the Democrats had a very good night in Virginia.00:16.72Sam ShiraziAnd so when you have a big election like this with a big swing towards one party, the party that wins can certainly learn some lessons that they can apply to future elections. And the party that loses can also learn lessons more what not to do. So I want to kind of go over what the Democrats got right this year in Virginia and perhaps what the Republicans got wrong.00:37.41Sam ShiraziAnd before I go into those details, I did want to say like national environment, state environment, a lot of that is very difficult for a campaign to change. So as I’ve noted in Virginia, almost every single governor election, the party out of the White House wins.00:54.10Sam ShiraziAnd so that’s just to say the Democrats had a lot of advantages structurally built in. Republicans had a lot of challenges. And so as much as we kind of microanalyze every part of a campaign,01:06.15Sam ShiraziSometimes the environment carries you a long way. I will say, though, given the scale of the Democratic victory, I think it’s clear that this was not just the environment. Because it was the environment, you’d expect, okay, maybe Spanberger would win closer to the Northam number of 9%.01:21.62Sam ShiraziInstead, given the scale of her win, it’s clear that her campaigns did some things right and the Republican campaigns did some things wrong because you just don’t see that level of a win unless something went right and something went wrong.01:33.83Sam ShiraziSo I will go over some lessons that Democrats can learn for 2026. Conversely, obviously things that Republicans might try to change before then. Now, before I get into it, one last thing, and I wanted to talk about turnout and persuasion. And I’m going to talk about those in different sections. So, you know as I mentioned, there’s often this debate about turnout and persuasion, which one’s more important, which one caused the victory.01:56.27Sam ShiraziYou need both. And typically when you see huge swings like this, it’s both. So that means the party that wins has persuaded voters in the middle to to go over to their side.02:07.75Sam ShiraziAnd they’ve also brought out their core supporters. So I think in this election, there was clearly both turnout and persuasion. Democrats got better turnout and they did better job persuading the voters in the middle and getting them to vote for the Democrats this year.02:22.48Sam ShiraziSo I just kind of wanted to lay that out there because sometimes you hear things like, oh this was all about turnout. The Democrats had good turnout and the Republicans had bad turnout. I think the reality is both in Virginia and New Jersey,02:33.28Sam ShiraziThere were people who voted for Donald Trump, who voted for the Democrats this year. There were people who perhaps didn’t vote in 2024 that came out for the Democrats. So the Democrats were able to win voters that traditionally are not Democratic voters.02:48.54Sam ShiraziSo first, I’ll talk about the Democrats, what they did right. And I wanted to start with persuasion.02:53.71Sam ShiraziSo persuasion, again, is the idea of reaching those voters in the middle. And I think the advantage Spanberger had is she and her campaign probably knew the Democrats were going to come out because they were upset this year in Virginia. So she could spend a lot of time on persuasion trying to convince the voters in the middle.03:11.01Sam ShiraziAnd there’s been a lot made about her message and talking about cost of living and all that. And I thought, and mean I mean, that all makes sense. I mean, I think her focus on cost of living economy, that was clearly the top of mind issue.03:22.37Sam ShiraziHer message was clear. She was opposing what President Trump was doing in terms of the federal cuts. She was opposing the tariffs. And I think the link to the economy was the key for her.03:33.42Sam ShiraziSo see she didn’t just say, you know, Trump is bad. Trump is doing all these horrible things. She’s saying Trump is doing these things that are hurting our economy and are hurting your pocketbook.03:43.72Sam ShiraziAnd The federal cuts are are hurting Virginia in terms of job losses. The tariffs are increasing costs. So I think tying President Trump and the Trump administration to specific economic policies that are hurting people is a strong message.03:57.66Sam ShiraziAnd it’s a stronger message than just saying Trump is bad. And I think that’s part of the success that Spanberger had. Which, you know, it makes sense and it’s not necessarily super complicated.04:07.97Sam Shirazii think the thing that was underappreciated about the Spanberger campaign was her message discipline. And message discipline is very difficult. And it’s very difficult, particularly when you have someone like President Trump and kind of the Republican Party now that has become kind of shaped by President Trump. And the reason I say this is the Republicans tried a lot of things to get Spanberger off message.04:32.18Sam Shiraziyou know We talked about it in the summer. They went all in on the trans issue, and it didn’t really make a whole lot of sense. But eventually the polling showed that. But at the beginning, you know you don’t know. i think Democrats were certainly nervous about it Given the results in 2024, they didn’t want to take anything for granted.04:51.54Sam ShiraziSo I do think Spanberger, you know, she she addressed it when she had to, but she did not want to make the election a referendum on the trans issue. Because I think, you know, we’ve talked about this before, and some of the way, depending on how you frame it, it’s possible the democrat the Republican position is stronger.05:08.06Sam ShiraziBut the salience of the issue is not that important. And I think the Spam Worker campaign understood that and and understood that, you know, if you just stick to your message about the economy and Earl Sears all day is talking about the trans issue, most people are going to say, like, look, my concern is the economy. So I don’t know why you’re talking so much about the trans issue.05:27.16Sam Shiraziand then the other thing I want to talk about message discipline was obviously what happened with Jay Jones and the text. So that was kind of the October surprise and the thing the Republicans wanted to talk about the entire campaign for the, when the story came out.05:42.36Sam ShiraziAnd I think obviously Spanberger had to address that. She tried to take this position where she didn’t fully endorse Jones. She didn’t necessarily disown him. It was a kind of a tough balancing act for her.05:54.38Sam ShiraziBut she didn’t want to make the entire campaign about Jay Jones because she understood that was not going to be good for her. She wanted to keep the focus on the economy. So she addressed it when she had to, but she didn’t lose track of what was going on and she wanted to focus on the economy.06:09.83Sam ShiraziAnd so I think that is just a very difficult thing to do. I mean, it’s easier said than done. Obviously, message discipline. Yeah, it’s important. Talk about the economy. Yes. But in the day to day, when all these stories come out or President Trump every single day is doing something, he’s posting something every single day is doing something. It’s a little bit different trying to throw the Democrats off.06:30.96Sam ShiraziAnd I think for a long time, the Democrats would take the bait. Every every single post Trump did. They felt like they had to push back on it. And I think the lesson of the Spamberg campaign is you just have to have your message discipline and just focus and hammer the issue. If your issue is economy and you’re saying President Trump’s making the economy worse, just hammer that issue and don’t necessarily get sidetracked by every single thing that President Trump is doing.07:20.29Sam ShiraziI did want to talk about the turnout side. So turnout is different than persuasion in that you know that these voters, they’re going to vote for you. It’s just a challenge to get them out because they may be low propensity voters.07:32.15Sam ShiraziAnd these typically fall into different categories. usually they’re younger. Usually they are more working class. And For the Democratic coalition, this tends to be non-white voters who are working class and younger voters like college students. And, you know, it’s very tricky in non-presidential years to get these voters out.07:53.71Sam ShiraziAnd I think often in Virginia, the Democrats don’t do a great job getting these voters out in the state elections. But I think that there were specific examples where the Democrats did a good job. And I’m going highlight yeah maybe four different examples with four different groups.08:08.54Sam ShiraziSo the first is in Loudoun. Loudoun County always gets a lot of attention. the media always focused on Loudoun. Spanberger did really well in Loudoun. It reverted back to kind of the traditional, you know, advantage Democrats had in Loudoun before 2024.08:24.57Sam ShiraziAnd a lot of that was, I think, getting out and persuading you know South Asian Indian voters and also Muslim voters to go back to the Democrats to come out and vote for the Democrats.08:34.82Sam ShiraziAnd I heard things on the ground like they were trying different approaches, for example, kind of person to person contact through the Telegram app. So the Telegram app, some people use it, I think, in immigrant communities, it’s more popular.08:47.63Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, it’s different than a normal text message that, you know, maybe a text messaging service will send out for elections. You kind of have to know the community. The community needs to know where it’s coming from

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fall Out the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode, we will go over election night and the blue wave that came into Virginia on election day.00:12.95Sam ShiraziSo this is the moment that we had all been waiting for when the polls closed at seven o’clock. We saw the results come in. And I would say it was pretty surprising. i mean, we all knew that the Democrats were going to do well at the end. I think that was pretty obvious to both sides.00:28.24Sam ShiraziBut I think the scale of the victory was certainly at the top end of what was possible for the Democrats. And basically, it was a I would describe it almost as a blue tsunami more than a blue wave because...00:40.57Sam ShiraziAt the top of the ticket, Abigail Spanberger, she is going to win that race by over 15 points when all the votes are in. And that’s just, you know, a really large margin for the governor’s race, pretty much more than any of the polling had found.00:56.10Sam ShiraziAnd the biggest victory that a Democrat has gotten in the governor’s race in a long, long time. yeah. Definitely big night at the top of the ticket for Abigail Spanberger. She will become the first woman to become governor of Virginia.01:10.44Sam ShiraziFor lieutenant governor, Ghazala Hashmi also got a very large victory. She is going to be winning by more than 11%. She will become the first Muslim person and the first South Asian person elected statewide in Virginia.01:25.64Sam ShiraziSo another big win for the lieutenant governor’s race. I think perhaps the most shocking result of the night was the attorney general race, because honestly, it didn’t end up being that close when all the votes came in.01:36.31Sam ShiraziIt looks like Jay Jones will win by more than 6%, probably closer to 7% when all the votes are in. Obviously, there was a fair amount of ticket splitting, about, it looks like about 8% ticket splitting, which honestly is kind of what I thought it would end up being. 8% sounded about right to me.01:55.81Sam ShiraziI think the thing that was really surprising was just the fact that Spanberger won by so much. So 8% ticket splitting could have been a big deal had it not been for the fact that Spanberger won by by so much at the top of the ticket.02:08.23Sam ShiraziAnd so Jay Jones, he will become the first black attorney general in Virginia history. Obviously the voters voters gave him a second chance and were willing to go with him because it seems like they wanted to send a message that they were unhappy with what was going on with the Republican Party.02:25.81Sam ShiraziAnd I think the other big shock of the night after the attorney general race was the House of Delegates. So the Democrats are on track to win 64 seats in the House of Delegates. They are going to be flipping 13 seats in the House of Delegates.02:40.19Sam ShiraziAnd that is almost every single seat that they targeted. Really a huge night for the Virginia House of Delegates Democrats. They were very ambitious and they were correct to be ambitious because they were able to flip a lot of seats, including Trump 2024 seats.02:57.66Sam ShiraziSo clearly, and they were different parts of Virginia. Northern Virginia, Richmond area, Hampton Roads, a seed in Southwest Virginia. So it’s just a complete Democratic victory in Virginia.03:09.72Sam ShiraziAnd you know I’m going to do the full analysis in my subsequent podcast. This is more just kind of a quick summary of everything that happened. I don’t plan on wrapping up the podcast anytime soon. I think I want to do a few episodes to explore what happened, why it happened, individual races, what happened, and the special dynamics.03:29.62Sam ShiraziBut I think i wanted to kind of share some big picture thoughts that I had. I think big picture, there’s an argument that really... there was nothing the Virginia Republicans could do to avoid a loss this year in Virginia. i think realistically, once the scale of what was going to happen in DC on after January 20th became obvious, specifically with Doge, I think that was pretty much the end of the Virginia Republicans this year in Virginia.03:57.30Sam ShiraziNow you could argue, you know, if, if Earl Sears had ran a better campaign, maybe on the margins, it could have, the outcome could have changed a little bit, but the reality is, you know, I think what was going on with Doge was just so toxic, specifically in Northern Virginia. And we saw huge swings in Northern Virginia.04:15.97Sam ShiraziThe Democrats picked up four seats in the Northern Virginia region in the House of Delegates. just Doge, I mean, I live in Northern Virginia. It was just really, really toxic for the Virginia Republicans.04:28.94Sam ShiraziAnd there was really nothing they could do to come back from that. I mean, you know once Doge kind of went away for a little bit, you know And arguably, the Virginia Republicans were trying to mount to comeback.04:40.48Sam Shiraziyou know I think the shutdown and specifically the rifts that were threatened during the shutdown and that were attempted to be implemented, but eventually were mainly stopped through court court cases.04:52.85Sam ShiraziI think that kind of brought a lot of that back to the forefront. And most voters in Northern Virginia, it just turned them off. And there was really nothing the Virginia Republicans to do could do to win those voters back. so you know There’s a reason the podcast was called Federal Fallout. i mean I had a feeling when I started this podcast, there was going to be a lot of federal fallout. And I think you know this election has basically proven that that that’s the case. now you know Every election, there’s a lot of things going on. I think Spanberger at the top of the ticket was a strong candidate.05:24.85Sam ShiraziI think, obviously, there was issues with cost of living and you know the fact that inflation has not necessarily gotten that much better from 2024. So there’s a lot of things going on, but I do think the federal fallout, and I also think specifically the shutdown was an important issue, even though it didn’t really get that much attention on the campaign trail.05:44.84Sam ShiraziSo those are some of the... My initial thoughts. I also think, you know, another thing that I wanted to talk about was what this all means for Virginia. and And I’ll do more episodes to break this down. But essentially...05:58.85Sam Shirazithere are going to be there’s going to be a trifecta in January in Richmond, which means Spanberger is going to be able to pass laws and the General Assembly is going to be able to pass laws pretty easily. And so I think it’s going to be important for Spanberger to work with the General Assembly, think about what laws she wants, and and the General Assembly has to think about what laws it wants to spend Spanberger because when you have a trifecta, it’s better for the governor and the General Assembly to work together so that there isn’t too much, you know,06:25.74Sam Shirazitension or too much conflict out in the open. You want to kind of figure that stuff out behind the scenes. So think that’s going to be an interesting dynamic. The other thing I’m looking at are these constitutional amendments.06:36.00Sam ShiraziSo obviously redistricting got a lot of attention. Redistricting is going to move forward now, given that the Democrats won the House of Delegates. It’s possible some of these court challenges might slow it down or might mess up the Democrats’ plans. But you know redistricting is obviously on the agenda.06:51.05Sam ShiraziI think the other thing to keep in mind is the Democrats had already proposed three other constitutional amendments for November 2026. One would be on reproductive rights to enshrine in the Virginia Constitution, certain reproductive rights. There was also a amendment on marriage equality to repeal the ban on same-sex marriage in the Virginia Constitution and to protect same-sex marriage in the Virginia Constitution.07:13.86Sam ShiraziAnd then finally, there is an amendment to restore automatically restore voting rights Two people convicted of felonies once they are released from prison. So those will all be on the ballot in November 2026. I think in almost all likelihood, those are going to be passed.07:28.25Sam ShiraziSo those changes to the Virginia Constitution are going to happen. And I also think there are the national implications of these elections. Obviously, there was also what what happened in New Jersey. New Jersey, Democrats did well. They did better than expected. it really wasn’t that close, even though people thought New Jersey was going to be close.07:43.67Sam ShiraziObviously, Democrats did well in Virginia. And I do think there is kind of a message the voters are sending to the Republicans in D.C. to maybe think about the scale of what they’re trying to do.07:54.62Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, I think after every presidential election, and There is a sense by the party that wins that you know my worldview has been endorsed by the American people and they 100% agree with everything that we want to do.08:07.74Sam ShiraziDemocrats felt that way after 2020. Republicans felt that that way after 2024. I think the reality is most Americans have you know different views. They don’t always agree with a party on everything.08:20.36Sam ShiraziAnd a lot of voters will lend their votes to certain parties in different elections because whatever reason in 2024, probably because of the cost of living inflation. And it doesn’t mean you necessarily agree with every single thing a party is doing. And I think it’s important for the Republicans and the Democrats to remember that, that you know they have their specific issues, they have their verr worldview, and the voters may agree with some of it, but they don’t necessarily agree with all of it. And I think it’s important for the Virginia Republicans to and realize that. And I also think it’s it’s frankly important

Hi, everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fall Out, the 2025 Virginia elections. This episode, we will go over what to expect on election day and election night. The big day is finally here. It is election day in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Polls are open until 7 Voters can cast ballots at their local election places. And yeah, it’ll be really exciting tonight when the results start coming in.00:26.52Sam ShiraziAnd I wanted to just do this podcast for people who want to listen on Election Day to give a little bit of a preview of what Election Day is going to look like. and then what might happen once the polls close.00:37.29Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, it’s just the end of the campaign is always exciting. I think for the people who worked on the campaign and who’ve been following the campaign, I think regardless of what happens, most people are relieved that it’s over because it’s been a long haul.00:49.38Sam ShiraziAnd obviously, once the results are coming in, there will be the opportunity to analyze the results and overanalyze the results and extrapolate what happened. So before we get to that, I wanted to kind of lay out what’s going to happen on Election Day. So generally,01:02.52Sam ShiraziDuring Election Day, obviously people are going to vote and Election Day is a big wild card. I’ve talked about it before. You don’t know who’s turning out. It could be people you or have not modeled for. There’s a surge of turnout for whatever reason. One side or both sides are able to get out their voters. It’s possible turnout is not that strong. It’s possible that it’s it’s weak. you know There’s so many different possibilities on Election Day.01:23.62Sam ShiraziWe’re just going to wait and see how it all pans out. Typically what happens during election day, the certain counties and cities will post on social media or on their accounts just kind of what the turnout is looking like.01:36.96Sam ShiraziAll right, at noon, this many people have showed up. some Some people also try to call up the registrars or get information from you know local sources. Okay, I’ve heard that this many voters have come out in this city or this county.01:49.12Sam Shirazii think that’s all very helpful. you know It gives you some information, gives you a sense of what’s going on. couple things to keep in mind. i mean, you obviously have to add the early vote to that number. So if you’re saying 10% of people have come out as of 9 a.m., you also have to consider you know maybe 20, 30% came out during the early voting period. So you can’t just look at the election day turnout. i you know I think there are some things you can learn from it. I also get a little bit nervous because I think people really over extrapolate sometimes or they make these huge conclusions like, oh, turnouts down here. you know This side is going to do horrible.02:22.18Sam ShiraziSometimes that ends up happening. Sometimes it’s a little bit overblown. You have to think about a lot of different things, a lot of different factors. Do people come later? What is turnout overall looking like? So I tend to be a little bit hesitant to be you know going all crazy about turnout extrapolation during election day.02:41.16Sam Shirazithink the reality too is that at 7 o’clock, we will know, starting at 7, we’ll know what’s going happen because the results are going to be released. So Long story short, I mean, keep an eye out on turnout and and generally it’s helpful, but I would not go crazy. I would not drive myself crazy.02:58.72Sam ShiraziThere’s been elections where based on turnout, I thought it would go one way and it went the other way and vice versa. So I think it’s just definitely not worth worrying too much about the election day turnout. And, you know, we’ll all know the answer soon enough.03:12.97Sam ShiraziI think the other thing to keep in mind is so exit polls. So one of the worst phrases at we all dread is early exits. And you know I have a scoop. I know what the exit polls are going to show.03:25.31Sam Shiraziyeah It’s helpful to maybe take a look at the exit polls once the polls actually close. The thing with exit polls, it’s kind of a, they recalibrate it after they get all the data and they look at the final outcome.03:37.54Sam ShiraziAnd it’s not really meant to at 7 p.m. give you the result. I think it’s really meant to after the fact, after results come in, They get to switch up the weighing and all this, a lot of different stuff to just kind of give people a sense of what happened during the election. But it’s not really meant to be this predict prediction thing that it’s sometimes used as.03:59.85Sam ShiraziNow, realistically, if the exit poll shows a really obvious outcome, some networks will just go ahead and call it at the close of polls. Personally, i like to wait to get some results because you never know. There’s been chimes in the past. The exit polls have been wrong, you know.04:15.25Sam ShiraziI think after the 2000 election, networks tend to be very cautious using exit polls. So long story short, exit polls, they’re helpful. I tend to look at them more down the line. Really, I would not freak out about early exits or stuff you’re seeing online because frankly, it could be fake. yeah don’t Don’t go too crazy with exit polls.04:35.10Sam Shirazii Generally, that’s a good rule of thought and rule of thumb. And I think you’re never wrong just kind of ignoring the exit polls until later. Okay, so that’s kind of all up until 7 p.m. 7 p.m., the polls close, the first results are coming in.04:50.64Sam ShiraziAnd I think there’s a few things you have to think about when you are looking at results coming in. You have to think about where are the votes coming from, both geographically where they’re coming from and also what types of votes are coming in.05:06.17Sam ShiraziSo I’ll just explain the three basic types of votes that come in on election night. You have... the election day vote, which are people who have gone out on election day and voted, and that’s data from individual precincts.05:20.51Sam ShiraziAnd then you have early voting, and that’s split up into the mail early voting and the in-person early voting. And those in each county and city might come in at different times. So some counties and cities do the early voting first, they’ll put the mail and the in-person early vote first.05:36.84Sam ShiraziSome counties will do the election day first and the early voting is the last thing that comes in. And so there’s really no rhyme or reason to how that happens. And so you really have to be careful when you are looking at results from individual city or county.05:48.90Sam ShiraziWhy do you have to be careful? In-person vote, both early and on election day, tends to be better for the Republicans. So it’s hard to tell with this election, but probably the Republicans will be doing pretty well on election day vote.06:02.94Sam ShiraziI still think Democrats are going to win the in-person early vote, but just not by that much. as compared to maybe previous years, the area where Democrats have a huge advantage is the mail vote. So the mail vote is gonna be very, very blue as compared to the other types of votes.06:16.97Sam ShiraziSo if you’re looking at a county and city and you’re just looking at election day and in-person early vote, you’re gonna miss the mail vote. And you really need to wait for the mail vote to make a final call about a specific city or county.06:28.56Sam ShiraziSo I just caution all that by saying that you can’t you know just look at the first results that come in from a city or county. And then you have to think about geography, both within a city and a county and and then also within Virginia. So big picture within Virginia, obviously some counties are very red, some counties are very blue.06:47.05Sam ShiraziSo you really have to think about and look at where are the votes coming in. If it’s coming in from a red county and the Republicans are doing well, that’s not a huge surprise. Obviously, Republicans are going to win a red county. If it’s coming in from a blue county, same thing. Democrats going to be doing well.07:00.81Sam ShiraziSo you’re not going to... I wouldn’t drive yourself crazy thinking, oh my God, the Republicans are winning or the Democrats are winning when you just have votes from blue or red areas. And I will say...07:11.92Sam Shirazithe It’s hard to know exactly, but typically the smaller rural counties tend to come in first and the more urban and suburban democratic counties tend to come in last.07:24.35Sam ShiraziThat’s not 100% true, but that’s generally what happens. and so There’s been this famous thing for a long time in Virginia elections where people kind of freak out, or at least Democrats tend to freak out because they’re they’re losing. And then at the end, all of the Northern Virginia vote comes in and the Democrats end up winning.07:40.98Sam ShiraziThis has happened several times. I think most famously 2014, the Northern Virginia vote came in for the Senate race late and that kind of saved Mark Warner. you’re going to see that dynamic where probably some of the latest reporting counties will be in Northern Virginia.07:56.52Sam ShiraziSo just another thing to keep in mind. And then within cities and counties, you still have to think about the geography. So some counties everywhere, every precinct is blue. Some counties, every precinct is red. But there are plenty of counties that are fifty fifty or 50-50.08:10.25Sam ShiraziOne part of the county is very red. One part of the county is very blue. And so just because some results are coming in from one county where it looks red or it looks blue doesn’t mean that’s going to be the final result because, again, Election Day comes in precinct by precinct. Sometimes the red precincts come in. Sometimes blue precincts come in.08:26.69Sam ShiraziSo a lot a lot of caveats on when votes are coming in. I think the good news for Virginia is that Virginia, Gene

Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fall Out the 2025 Virginia Elections. This is the final countdown to election day. Tomorrow is the election in the Commonwealth of Virginia. This is the final countdown. We will see what’s going on yeah as voters get ready to head to the polls. We already have a lot of early voting going on.00:21.07Sam ShiraziTomorrow will be the last round of voting and at seven o’clock when the polls close we will start to get results. I did want to do this episode to go over a few things. So the first thing I will go over are some of the final polls that we’ve gotten in Virginia.00:34.78Sam ShiraziNow, honestly, I’m not going to go through every single poll because there’s been a lot. I will focus on maybe two polls that came out at the end that I thought would deserve a little bit extra attention. And then i will go through the early voting numbers because early voting ended on Saturday. And now we have the almost complete picture about early voting. And then we can talk about what that might mean for the election.00:55.75Sam ShiraziAnd then finally, i will spend a few minutes on the vibes, which are essentially kind of the non-data feelings that people are having about the election. And just to get a sense of where we are, because obviously this is the end. We’re going to find out who’s going to win on Tuesday evening, but I know people are interested in getting my thoughts before the election is over and I may kind of tip my hand in some of these races. I will not be giving like individual predictions in the House of Delegates or anything like that, but I will kind of give you my sense of where things are.01:27.03Sam ShiraziAll right. So to begin, let’s go over the polls. And, you know, there’s been a few different types of polls released. I think generally all the polls are showing that the top of the ticket, Abigail Sperenberger is leading and that she is going to win by a healthy margin.01:43.54Sam ShiraziLieutenant Governor, there’s been, you know, polls that have come... and shown different things, but generally, Gazella Hashmi is leaving and leading in the lieutenant governor spot. I think attorney general is the big question mark. Most of the polls at the end have shown Niara’s ahead, but interestingly, there have also been some polls that have showed Jay Jones ahead, so I’ll talk about that.02:02.30Sam ShiraziAnd so, The polls, I think in some elections, they’re really interesting. This one, because all the polls have consistently, at least the nonpartisan polls have consistently shown Spanberger up by about 10%.02:14.14Sam ShiraziI think it’s not as interesting, but I will go over a couple of the final polls that have come in. And, you know, I’ll just say from the start about the governor’s race, I think, you know, most observers and frankly, a lot of Republicans behind the scenes will tell you that,02:28.79Sam Shiraziyou know it is going to be very difficult for Winston Earl Sears to win. i mean, I don’t want to say it’s impossible. you know i think yeah you never you never want to say never, but I think unless something really, really crazy happens, in all likelihood, Abigail Spanberger is going to win the governor’s election. I think that’s not a huge leap to say that.02:46.74Sam ShiraziI think the reality is The margin is what’s going to matter. Is she going to win by 10 or more? Is she going to win closer to seven? i mean, obviously, there’s a range. It depends on turnout. there’s a you know It’s not a done deal, the final margin. so we’re just going have to wait and see what happens.03:02.46Sam ShiraziI will give you kind of some poll numbers that have come in at the end. and And I wanted to highlight two extra polls. So obviously, on Saturday, I had Chaz Nandy come on. He went over the State Navigate poll.03:13.15Sam ShiraziI thought that was really helpful. you know That poll, frankly, was better for the Democrats than a lot of other polls that had come out. And I think you know as Chaz kind of explained what went into that. And I think there’s been these two polls at the end that kind of confirm what Chaz has been finding, because I think There’s these two pollsters that, you know, they both got a lot of attention for various reasons. And I’ll go through that the final two polls that I want a spotlight on this podcast. Obviously, want to give a shout out to for... chat chazz for03:43.67Sam ShiraziDoing the House of Delegates polls and also the statewide polls. And it was really interesting to get to hear from him about that. But without further ado, I will first go over Atlas Intel. And the reason that this poll was really anticipated was Atlas Intel, you know, their claim to fame in 2024, they were very accurate.04:01.47Sam ShiraziAnd, you know, they just were able to get the numbers right. And almost every single swing state, they saw that Trump was going to win. That’s what their numbers showed and they were right in 2024.04:12.13Sam ShiraziAnd in this year, for example, in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, they were pretty close to the final resort that result. Their final poll had the Democrat winning that race by 7%. The final margin was 10%.04:23.30Sam Shiraziso You know, again, they show pretty much what ended up happening, especially since most of the polls in that race were much closer. but So everyone was looking to see what would happen in the Atlas Intel poll.04:34.29Sam ShiraziIt was a little anticlimactic, to be honest, because it was basically what everyone thought it would be or is basically where the vibes were in Virginia. And we’ll talk about the vibes a little bit later. So quickly, I’ll go over the Atlas Intel poll.04:46.94Sam ShiraziFor Governor, it had Spanberger at 54% and it had Earl Sears at 45%. For Lieutenant Governor, it had Hashmi at 52% and it had Reed at 46%. And then for Attorney General, it had Meares 48% and jones at So governor number, Spanberger around 10%, which she usually gets in nonpartisan polls.05:08.78Sam ShiraziHash me, I think there’s less ticket splitting here. The 6% number, if Spanberger is winning by 9%, sounds about right. I think the AG race was interesting. You know, another close AG race. I think everyone expects their AG race to be close. So not a huge surprise there. It did show Miro is slightly up here.05:28.68Sam ShiraziSo before I move on to the next poll, I already talked about governor. Most people think Spanberger is going to win the governor’s race. I think for lieutenant governor, you know we can talk about the dynamics there.05:38.60Sam ShiraziSome of the polls have been pretty close where Hashmi is only up by like two or three. And a lot of people are like, oh why is the lieutenant governor a race so close? I think realistically, most of that is just name ID. People don’t really you know know the lieutenant governor candidates as well as they know the governor candidates.05:53.79Sam ShiraziI also think Spanberger, frankly, will be doing better at the top of the ticket. I do expect probably 2%, 3%, 4% max ticket splitting for lieutenant governor because I think Spanberger just appeals to certain voters that you know traditionally don’t vote Democratic, but they might vote for Spanberger.06:08.97Sam ShiraziSo Long story short, I think Hashmi definitely favored, especially if Spamburger is winning by around 10. I think you know it’s not a huge leap to say that unless something crazy happens, Ghazal Hashmi should win the Lieutenant Governor’s race.06:22.57Sam ShiraziAll right, I want to talk about one last poll before moving on. And that was the Emerson poll. So Emerson traditionally is not thought about as a super favorable pollster for Democrats. I think, you know, they’re nonpartisan.06:37.81Sam ShiraziMost of the time, they’re They’re pretty, you know, i don’t want to say favorable for the Republicans, but you don’t usually see these super great results for Democrats in Emerson polls. And the New Jersey poll this year was a good example. So Emerson came out with a poll in New Jersey and it found the Democrat, Mikey Sherrill, was only up, I think, one or two points in the New Jersey governor’s race.06:58.22Sam Shiraziwhich was kind of surprising. And that was a lot closer than other polls have found. And we’ll see if they’re right in in New Jersey. But I think it’s a good example just showing you why Emerson is not thought of as this, you know, super pro Democratic pollster.07:11.81Sam ShiraziI will go through their Virginia numbers, which I think was surprising and I think was a little bit of a reality check for the Republicans. so The Emerson poll for governor, it had Spanberger at 55% and Wintemarle Sears at 44%.07:25.95Sam ShiraziAnd then for attorney general, it had Jay Jones at 49% and it had Jason Meares at 47%. So the governor number in the Emerson poll, not super surprising. Again, in most nonpartisan polls, Smeanberger is around 10%. I think that wasn’t that big of a surprise. I think the big, bigger surprise in the Emerson poll was the attorney general number. So they found that Jay Jones was up 2%.07:47.37Sam ShiraziAnd as as I said, most other public polling, you know besides maybe the State Navigate, has found that Miara’s is ahead. And so when you’re thinking about Emerson not necessarily super favorable to Democrats, and then you’re seeing that Emerson is finding that Jay Jones is up 2%, you have to start thinking, okay, you know what are the odds that Jay Jones is able to win? And I think I have been flagging for a long time.08:12.50Sam ShiraziThis race is inherently unpredictable. I think there are a lot of different things you have to consider. You have to consider you know shy Jay Jones voters, people people not necessarily telling pollsters how they’re going vote. going to have to consider ticket splitting or lack thereof. You have to think about straight ticket voting. You have to think about undervoting.08:29.75Sam ShiraziThere’s just so many things that go into a ra

Hi everyone. I’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia Elections. This episode, I am really excited to have Chaz Nuttycombe on. He is the director of State Navigate, and he’s been doing a lot of great work with the polling, with his model, with early vote tracking. So just a lot to talk with him about. So I’m really excited to have Chaz on. Thanks for joining me.00:22.66Chaz NuttycombeHey, thanks for having me on You know, i like Virginia years more than the even.00:24.57Sam ShiraziSo Chaz, before we get into it, I just wanted to see how you’re doing. I know it’s a really crazy time of the year and like, how are you balancing everything?00:36.21Chaz Nuttycombei mean, like last year, this time a year ago, was like writing a book pretty much. I wrote like maybe two or 300 something pages on state level elections, whereas, you know, I’m just writing an article and just you know, following up with folks and just making sure that you know, our our forecast is as good as it gets.00:58.27Chaz NuttycombeAnd preparing for election night with the NAVCAS, which will project the winners, as well as what is the live projected margin using the results coming in.01:09.53Chaz NuttycombeSo, you know, just really at this point preparing for final final forecast stuff and and election night.01:18.08Sam ShiraziYeah, well, I know everyone’s going to be keeping a close eye and I recommend on election night having State Navigate open as well as following Chaz on social media. So I did want to get to these polls, which, you know, it’s really awesome that you are doing these polls, particularly the House of Delegates polls, because basically no one does that in a public way. And I think, you know, yeah there were polls in House District 86, House District 73. People can go look those up. But I did want to talk about the last House of Delegates poll you’re going to be releasing, which is in House District 64. So can you tell me about that poll?01:51.49Chaz NuttycombeJustin Fields’ know, first off, I want to thank the people who have donated for these polls, or know we had a sponsor for our first house delegate district poll as well02:04.27Chaz NuttycombeI am very fortunate that we were able to do this. I’m very fortunate to be working with the talented team, putting these together, people who are a lot smarter than me, frankly.02:16.07Chaz NuttycombeAnd yeah, so this last poll for a House of Delegates seat that we did is in House District 64. this is in Stafford County where Paul Mildy is running for reelection for his, you know, he just got elected first term in the house in 2023 running against Democrat Stacy Carroll.02:39.99Chaz NuttycombeAnd this one is full of federal workers. And I figured, well, you know, Sam, we got to debut this on federal fallout. given the shutdown going on especially i was interested in seeing you know if there’s maybe any kind of effect here and it does seem like there is a little bit so i’ll just kind of dive right into the numbers we’re recording this at 10 a.m on on friday happy halloween and this will be coming out toward the end of today today and then tomorrow we’re releasing our statewide03:15.20Chaz NuttycombeI’ll go over the statewide next, but let’s start on 64. So 64 is a, it’s mostly a non-college district in terms of its electorate.03:28.56Chaz NuttycombeJust like 50 some percent of voters don’t have a college degree, at least in 2024. And it is becoming increasingly diverse, both in age and race.03:42.14Chaz NuttycombeIt’s like, maybe 20 something percent black, which I was surprised by. i and then I think it’s like 10% Latino, 3% Asian, something like that.03:55.28Chaz NuttycombeSo, you know, this is a very competitive seat. We have this as a race that’s going to be decided by less than 2% either way. In our forecast, we have Paul Milding narrowly favored.04:08.62Chaz NuttycombeSo the race for governor, it is 4948 spamburger this seat voted for trump by oh let’s see here i’ll have to pull up state navigate uh and go to our site to find out the number uh i believe it voted for trump by one to two percent let’s see here 64 voted for trump last year by 1.9 percent so just about two points so this district is moving, leftward on, uh, you know, in the race for governor, comes as no surprise.04:43.64Chaz Nuttycombeso that is, you know, about a three point swing towards Bamberger. and then, and that’s kind of interesting. We look at our 73 poll because there was only a two point swing towards Bamberger from 2024, in, in that result.04:57.36Chaz NuttycombeUh, and then, in the race for Lieutenant governor, John Reed has a three-point lead, 50 to 47, over Ghazala Hashmi. And then 50 to 46 lead in the race for Attorney General, where Jason Mieris has a lead over Jay Jones.05:13.94Chaz NuttycombeAnd then Paul Mildy has just a one-point lead, 49, 48, Mildy, in the actual House of Delegates race here. And I think that it’s not surprising the House of Delegates result. It’s not surprising at all.05:29.71Chaz NuttycombeYou know, Millie’s been getting just heavily outspent on the airwaves. I feel like he’s been kind of lazy in his campaign this year. I think he hasn’t really taken his race that seriously. And i think in general, the Republicans haven’t.05:45.45Chaz NuttycombeBut, you know, i I think that at the end of the day, we have him narrowly favored. Our poll has him narrowly favored. So, you know, if he wins, a win’s win. But this race is too close for comfort for him.06:00.11Chaz NuttycombeAnd I would also note that out of all of these polls that we’ve done for the House stuff, This one is definitely has the least amount of certainty.06:10.95Chaz Nuttycombeit doesn’t have as many respondents as our other two House polls. And then it was also harder to get younger voters in here and non-college and minorities.06:22.97Chaz NuttycombeWe still waited the 2024 electorate with those demographics and everything. But like in the actual raw sample, it was hard to get them. So I wouldn’t be surprised if this district flipped, quite frankly.06:36.30Chaz NuttycombeBut I think the most interesting thing here is that Mieris only has a four-point lead in this seat that Trump won by two points, right? That House is District 73 poll, he had seven-point lead in a seat that voted for Harris by one point, right? That was a very good poll for him.06:52.78Chaz NuttycombeSo he’s not really making up much ground here. And I’m wondering if It’s just because of the shutdown. I mean, but so we asked, we asked in the survey, who do people blame for the shutdown?07:07.59Chaz NuttycombeAnd I think ba if I’m remembering correctly with what we had in 86, this one’s a little bit larger with blaming Republicans. So 43% blame Trump slash Republicans in Congress.07:21.16Chaz Nuttycombe38% blame Democrats. 17% blame both. blame democrats seventeen percent blame but And then we also asked how much of an impact is the federal government shutdown going to have on your vote this year?07:35.47Chaz Nuttycombe33% impact at all. said barely any impact. impact. twenty percent said some impact twenty seven percent said large impact and thirteen percent said the biggest impact and you know when this poll comes out you’ll be able to see like you know who’s saying it’s having an impact and who isn’t but yeah so i think that is honestly unlike the 73 poll yesterday i think the 73 poll in chesterfield which is early versus meta was a good poll for the republicans relatively speaking i would say this one is a good one for the democrats even though you know know um08:23.00Chaz Nuttycombeso you know, they’re they’re down one point in the House of Delegates race. I think, relatively speaking, especially that AG number, that’s a good number for them.08:33.00Sam ShiraziYeah, so super interesting stuff. I appreciate you going through all that. I did want to kind of follow up with a specific question about the shutdown and also kind of the federal fallout from Doge earlier in the year.08:44.82Sam Shirazii mean, do you think, I mean, there’s some kernels in here. Obviously, it’s one poll, but I wanted to talk compare it also to the eighty six House of Delegates district poll where the Democrats did pretty well in that poll.08:57.59Sam ShiraziObviously, Nova, Hampton Roads feeling more of the federal fallout potentially than the Richmond area. do you think there’s this dynamic where Democrats are benefit benefiting from federal fallout shutdown?09:10.24Sam Shirazicould make an impact in the House of Delegates in and Hampton Roads, Nova, and then potentially, obviously a lot of votes in Nova potentially could save Jay Jones in the sense of people are just going to vote straight ticket because they’re mad about what’s going on with the Republicans in D.C.09:27.01Chaz NuttycombeYou know, I think that I guess the answer is maybe. I mean, it’s, you know, I’m in Richmond, so I’m a little blind to like the impacts of federal government stuff, the federal government shutdown.09:41.49Chaz NuttycombeI think that, think that may be part of it. We didn’t ask in the 86 poll how big of an impact the shutdown is having, but, you know, a plurality of respondents said they blit and blame Republicans.09:56.36Chaz Nuttycombeand, but, you know, I mean that, that Cordoza number running behind, with some Sears is mainly just because of the negative ads gone against them.10:07.13Chaz Nuttycombeso, I mean, I think that the shutdown is having an effect in some of these seats. It looks like I would say with 64 86.10:16.96Chaz Nuttycombe73, not so much. I think that’s a valid theory. i think also, you know, with 73, I think why that wasn’t a great poll for Dems is because of just the kind of, let’s let’s say, ancestral Republicans there.10:30.98Chaz NuttycombeBut, yeah.10:32.45Sam ShiraziWell, I had one other question on this poll before we move on, because I know we got so much else to cover. Both in the 86th district and in this district, I think kind of traditio