11/1/2023 - VA Senate moves to Likely D, and our FINAL Bang for Your Buck Update!
This is the last call to invest your money in a race here in Virginia, act while you can in the BEST districts to do so.
Intro
Hey, y’all!
Wow, we’re 6 days out from Election Day. Can’t believe it. The next 6 days are gonna be pretty hectic for me as I finalize predictions and make sure we have all our ducks in a row for Election Night.
On that note, we’re going to be having volunteers at many registrar’s offices across the Commonwealth. In case the Department of Elections website crashes, we’ll still be getting results from volunteers so we can make calls if we can while the site goes down. It’s a big if, but that’s happened during every big election night in Virginia, so it’s worth being prepared.
We’re going to be paying our volunteers, and there’s a lot of them. If you could help us offset the costs, we’d appreciate it:
Halloween Forecast Update
HD-75 | Very Likely R → Likely R
HD-89 | Lean R → Tilt R
SD-27 | Tilt R → Toss-Up
Last night I held a Twitter space to discuss the forecast update and have a Q&A session, so my reasoning for these changes will be made public compared to previous updates.
HD-75
In HD-75, where incumbent moderate Republican Carrie Coyner is running for re-election against Democrat Stephen Miller-Pitts, I’ll admit that I should not have moved this seat back into the Very Likely Republican column. Earlier last month I moved it to the Likely Republican column because a Democratic source familiar with House Democratic Caucus plans said that Miller-Pitts would be getting more investment from the caucus. Then when the finance reports came out showing the September finance numbers, it showed that the caucus wasn’t investing in Miller-Pitts then, so I moved it back to Very Likely Republican as I had taken it as my Democratic source being mistaken.
However, the source was right, it was just that the investment didn’t come until October when examining the finance reports. Miller-Pitts is even on the air and easily outspending Coyner on TV. This likely indicates that the House Democratic caucus sees the race as winnable despite Miller-Pitts running a lackluster campaign throughout the year and arguably being a subpar candidate, even drawing some ire from local Chesterfield Democrats according to those familiar.
This could be a sleeper race for Virginia Democrats, but Coyner is pretty popular in her district so I wouldn’t count on an upset. However, there were two upsets in House races in my “Likely” column in 2021. So we’ll see.
HD-89
This is similar to the Miller-Pitts situation, but the House Democratic caucus invested in Democrat Karen Jenkins more starting in September after the Gibson scandal freed up more resources. This is a pretty close seat that narrowly voted for Jen Kiggans in 2022, and I think with the environment we’re looking at this is going to be a similarly close race. Republican Baxter Ennis definitely still has the advantage here, and unless I find out over the next few days that Jenkins has an even better chance of winning, this should be the final rating quite honestly. I’m not ruling it out entirely that I could see this end up in our “Tilt Democratic” column (Toss-Ups get eliminated in the final predictions), but it’s unlikely. Still, Jenkins has roughly a 4-in-10 chance of winning now despite only getting resources her way toward the end of the campaign. She’s played catch-up, the only question is if she has played enough catch-up to win outright on Tuesday.
SD-27
This one’s the big one, and shifted the VA Senate from Lean D to Likely D. Due to Tara Durant indicating in an audio recording that she is open to an abortion ban beyond 15 weeks. Unlike the Stirrup recording, this was this month instead of the June primary.
Durant’s been fighting off a flank from her right in her former primary opponent, Matt Strickland, running a write-in campaign. I’ve generally thought she could hold her own enough in persuadable voters to be a slight favorite in the race despite this, but a lot of voters in that universe who see this are going to break for Democrat Joel Griffin now most likely. The only thing the Democrats have to do there is get out the story to the electorate immediately.
If anyone was going to fall for this trick despite John Stirrup falling for it months ago, it’s Durant. She has been fighting the right flank (mainly in Spotsylvania) throughout the Fall campaign and Republicans know that she’s in a tough spot. A lot of Republicans I’ve talked to have been worried about her for weeks, and they’re certainly going to be even more worried with the story coming out.
The map’s pretty tough for Republicans in winning 20 seats in the chamber now - they need to win two Toss-Ups, a Lean R seat, a Likely R seat, and then pull off an upset in either a Lean D seat or a Likely D seat. That’s pretty difficult to do, though it’s still quite possible as there’s roughly a 1-in-4 chance of Republicans flipping the Senate. As someone who predicts thousands of elections, I’ve seen plenty of 1-in-4 electoral scenarios happen. So don’t rule them out.
Virginia House of Delegates Forecast
Virginia State Senate Forecast
With that, let’s talk Bang for Your Buck. First off, thank you to all our paid subscribers! Whether you wanted to just access our exclusive state legislative datasets and/or Bang for Your Buck, or other older content such as my primary predictions in June, all of us at CNalysis appreciate your support. Y’all help us keep the lights on, pay our hardworking staff, and give us more resources to expand our future endeavors.
This is our last update to Bang for Your Buck as we’ve just put out our second-to-last forecast update (Final predictions come out at noon on Monday, November 6th) and we are no longer going to find out any new campaign spending or cash on hand before election day (besides on advertising RE: spending).
If you want to donate to a campaign, you should do so today. Our final model has had a pretty interesting update that shows what the best districts to invest in are, regardless of your preferred party. If you don’t have a paid subscription, you can get one by clicking the button below and getting access to our model as well as exclusive state legislative data.
Let’s dive in.