Where do the candidates stand? See how they answered our questionnaire (or if they didn’t) in our Voter Guide.Today we shall engage in tasseography, the formal name for trying to divine the future by reading tea leaves — or, in this case, the early voting trends.An 1842 engraving by Nicholas Joseph Crowley showed the popularity of “reading” tea leaves in Victorian Britain. Public domain.We may expose this ancient practice (tasseography, not early voting) as a fraud. We may not. We’ll just have to see where the data leads us.We begin with a pattern that has both intrigued and confounded me: We’re seeing more early votes out of some rural (and therefore Republican) congressional districts than we are Democratic ones. Why? And what does this mean, if anything?I’ve heard various theories advanced:Democrats in rural areas are voting at heavier rates than in the past. This is possible, but I’m skeptical because if that were true, I’d expect to see Democrats in more metropolitan areas voting at heavier rates and they’re not.Republicans are outvoting Democrats, and this portends an upset by Donald Trump in Virginia this fall. This first part of that seems possible, perhaps even likely given how strongly Gov. Glenn Youngkin has pushed early voting, but the latter goes against the polling we’ve seen.This is an aberration because the strongest Democratic localities are only just now opening satellite voting locations. That means it’s been easier to cast early votes in Franklin County than in Fairfax County. This seems quite plausible to me, but I still like to check things out.This means nothing at all; it’s risky to draw too many conclusions from early voting trends. I definitely like to caution against drawing unwarranted conclusions. However, I also don’t like to leave unexplained election phenomena unaddressed.Let’s look at the numbers. As of Oct. 15, here are the early votes by congressional district, as compiled by the Virginia Public Access Project. I’ve noted which party currently holds which district.DistrictCurrently held by:GeographyEarly vote1stRChesapeake Bay to Richmond suburbs102,4005th RSouthside, Lynchburg, Charlottesville86,4126thRRoanoke Valley, Shenandoah Valley77,9197th DPiedmont, Fredericksburg, part of Prince William74,7172ndRHampton Roads, Eastern Shore, part of eastern Southside74,31010thDNorthern Virginia 70,5374thDRichmond, part of eastern eastern Southside70,0749thRSouthwest Virginia68,53311thDNorthern Virginia 64,9008thDNorthern Virginia 63,3243rdDParts of Hampton Roads48,652Early voting so far. Courtesy of Virginia Public Access Project and State Board of Elections.We know that in 2023, the 1st also recorded the most early votes but the 10th and 11th were second and third, while bottom three were, in descending order, the 6th, the 9th and the 3rd.We also know that in 2022 the top three early-voting districts were the 1st, 2nd and 10th (with the 11th close behind) and the three lowest early-voting districts were, in descending order, the 6th, 9th and 3rd.We can’t make a comparison with 2020 because the congressional districts were shaped differently then.From these comparisons, we can conclude that we shouldn’t be surprised that the 1st is so high and the 3rd is low because that’s how it’s always been. The question is, should we be surprised that the 5th and 6th are so high and the 8th, 10th and 11th are so low? (I am baffled that the 7th isn’t higher. It’s an open seat in a swing district that’s one of the most closely contested in the country; I would have thought that might have been in first place.) The big caution is that this is like looking at a sports box score partway through the game. In this case, since satellite voting locations in Northern Virginia are just now opening, a lot of Democratic voters may not have come off the bench yet. We need to keep an eye on how these numbers change over the coming weeks. We also know from historical trends that most of the early votes are cast closer to the traditional Election Day. The game isn’t over. It’s just begun.The real question is what do previous elections tell us about early voting trends? Arlington-based election analyst Sam Shirazi has called attention to this example of why we shouldn’t be getting overly excited about early voting trends.House District 21 covers part of Prince William County. Courtesy of Virginia Supreme Court.Last year in House of Delegates District 21, which covers part of Prince William County, Republican John Stirrup won the early in-person voting 5,073 to 4,824 — but still lost the election to Democrat Josh Thomas.That would seem to go against the trend that Democrats are more enthusiastic about early voting than Republicans have been. This example actually opens a door to a deeper look at early voting trends.There are two ways to vote early: in person or by mail. When we go back to look at early voting in the 2023 state legislative races, we often find that the in-person voting tracked the overall results — if Republicans won the race, they typically won the early in-person voting as well. Republicans haven’t been shy about voting early in person, at all. The big political gap has been with mail voting. Some Democrats love that, and Republicans most definitely do not. In that House District 21 race, the Republican Stirrup won the early in-person vote by 249 votes — but Democrat Thomas won the day-of voting by 59 votes, and then swamped his opponent in the mail balloting by 1,020 votes.The 41st House District covers most of Montgomery County (but not Christiansburg), western Roanoke County, and the Bent Mountain area. Courtesy of Virginia Supreme Court.That kind of imbalance in the mail voting happened over and over. Those of us in the western part of the state well remember House District 41, which covers parts of Montgomery and Roanoke counties. Republican Chris Obenshain saw his margin dwindle as the mail ballots were counted because they went heavily for Democrat Lily Franklin. In the end, he won by just 183 votes, a margin of 50.31% to 49.57%. When we look more closely, we see Obenshain won the early in-person voting with a slightly higher percentage — 51.3% — than he won the overall race. He won the day-of voting with a higher share yet — 55.7%. It was in the mail balloting (and also the provisional balloting) where he almost lost the election. He took just 26.2% of the mail ballots. In that race, mail votes accounted for 9.8% of the total votes cast. In the House District 21 race, 11.9%. Those percentages seem pretty standard.Big picture, here’s what we know: The mail vote is overwhelmingly Democratic. We can speculate about the reasons why — Democrats are more trustful of the government to deliver the mail; Republicans like the certainty of voting in person, be it early or day-of — but the numbers are quite clear. In 2021, 2022 and 2023, the mail ballots in Virginia have gone Democratic, with vote shares ranging from 68.7% to 76.0%. If a race is close and there are a lot of mail ballots yet to be counted, the advantage is going to be toward the Democrats. This isn’t fraud, this is just voter preference. I personally think it’s an unwise preference. I know too many people who have requested mail ballots and never got them. Even aside from ballots, I know of too many instances where mail has gotten stuck somewhere in the system. I think those who vote by mail are risking uncertain (and disputed) outcomes when elections ought to produce certainty. I’d rather not have elections hinge on the efficiency of the postal service, particularly when a federal audit last year found that Virginia had the third-slowest mail delivery in the country.Nonetheless, many people do trust their ballot to the mail, and we see some clear geographic differences in voting preference in who does. In 2022, voters in the 11th Congressional District in Northern Virginia cast more mail ballots than anyone else in Virginia — 40,468 in all. That accounted for 40.8% of the early votes cast in that district and 13.9% of the total votes cast there. By contrast, the 9th District in Southwest Virginia cast just 15,840 votes through the mail — 25.0% of the early votes in that district and just 6.2% of the total votes cast there. The 6th District had slightly more mail votes cast, but a similar percentage — 24.3% of the early votes and just 6.7% of the overall total.Now let’s tie all this back to the early voting trends we’re seeing. When we look beneath the totals, we see that once again the 9th and 6th districts have the lowest amount of mail balloting — no surprise. The highest numbers are in the 1st, 8th and 11th. Again, no surprise. I also noticed that the proportions between in-person early voting and mail voting are about what they’ve been in the past. The 11th District in 2022 saw 40.8% of its early votes cast by mail; so far the percentage is 37.6%. That doesn’t seem like much of a change to me. Likewise, the 9th District has proportions not much different than in the past. What’s different is that, at the moment, the 9th (a 70%-plus Republican district) has cast more early votes, regardless of method, than the 11th (a 70%-plus Democratic district) when it never has before in the final count.Perhaps over the coming weeks, we’ll see the early vote in the 11th and other Northern Virginia districts increase as more satellite locations open and the mail ballots come in. Perhaps none of this matters, and we’re seeing Republicans embrace early voting at a time when Democrats might be reverting to more traditional day-of voting. All we can say for certain is that, so far, we are not seeing the patterns we’ve seen before at the end of early voting.The impact of purging voters from voter rollsVoting booths are lined up in the Lynchburg Registrar’s Office on Thursday, one day before early voting was set to begin. Photo by Matt Busse.That’s one of the topics I’ll deal with this week in West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter, which goes out Fridays. Other topics I’ll address are:A curious finding in this week’s campaign finance reports that may shed some light on 2025.Attorney General Jason Miyares tours Southwest Virginia.Meet the candidates that Cardinal readers are searching for most in our Voter Guide.You can sign up for any of our free newsletters below: The Daily Everything we publish, every weekday The Roundup A roundup of our 10 most popular stories each week, sent Saturdays at 7 a.m. Cardinal Weather In-depth weather news and analysis on our region, sent Wednesdays West of the Capital A weekly round-up of politics, with a focus on our region, sent Fridays Your Weekend Spread your wings this weekend with our go-to guide for celebrations, festivities, and other events happening in our region, delivered every Thursday at noon. Cardinal 250 Revisiting stories from our nation’s founding. Delivered monthly Sign up The post Early voting trends remain a puzzle, but they’re not always predictive. Here’s what we know and what we don’t. appeared first on Cardinal News.First published by Cardinal News.