9:42 PM: The abortion referendum in Ohio is definitely going to win. It’s been called. It’s currently at about a 10 point spread and I’ve seen some saying this is a slight underperformance against expectations. But just looking at the big urban counties it seems like there are a lot pro-abortion votes still out there. This is me eyeballing the counties myself rather than cribbing from some smarter person. But it seems like that percentage should go higher.
9:36 PM: Check out this little update at 538 about Democratic turnout advantage in Ohio.
9:25 PM: Just to make this official: The Ohio state constitution will now guarantee abortion rights and other reproductive rights.
9:19 PM: Also, doing my best to avoid typos tonight. But I’m flying solo tonight and eyeballs deep in numbers. So more difficult than usual. Appreciate the congrats.
9:18 PM: Definitely seems possible that Democrats recapture the Virginia Assembly, thus sending the battleship of Youngkinism to a watery grave.
9:12 PM: I’ll restate the point I made below. You’ve got this pretty bad poll out tonight for Biden. Trump four points ahead of him according to CNN. But Democrats are having somewhere between a decent and strong night. That’s not what you’d expect if that poll is accurate. I’m not saying the poll is wrong, as in technically flawed. But is it predictive? Or is it that we’re in a strong Democratic environment but Joe Biden himself is just wildly unpopular and so is losing to Trump? I’ll try to discuss this tomorrow. But there are decent arguments for both interpretations. And for the first interpretation the argument would be that a lot of Democratic voters are expressing dissatisfaction with Biden in these polls but when it actually comes time to vote will tend to come home for him.
8:58 PM: Another key question. There’s been this idea out there that Democrats have only been over-performing in special elections because they’re super low turnout contests. But tonight’s numbers really put that in doubt. The trend seems to be continuing. Some of that is relative to Joe Biden in 2020. But some of it is relative to expectations. And “expectations” requires some explanation. Democrats are generally having a pretty good night tonight. But it’s hard to get a handle on the battle for a state legislature since there’s so little race by race polling. A lot of it is conventional wisdom and vibes. Those seem to have at least slightly overstated Republican chances. We still need more results and I still need to look at more races. My sense is largely impressionistic so far. But at least so far it really seems like we continue to be in a post-Dobbs electoral environment in which Dems tend to out-perform recent benchmarks. Just keep it in mind.
8:46 PM: Just to connect the dots, with these results there will no be an abortion ban in Virginia. Youngkin needed a trifecta. He’s not going to get it.
8:40 PM: Things are looking pretty good for Dems in the Virginia Senate. Having a hard time keeping track of all the different races. But the ones that are showing are good for Dems.
