High ‘voter enthusiasm’ produces early voting surge in Southwest Virginia
ROANOKE, Va. ( WFXR ) -- With less than two weeks until election day, Virginians are turning out to the polls in massive numbers.
Statewide, and specifically across Southwest Virginia, turnout is greatly outpacing where it was at this point in the 2022 election cycle.
Through Tuesday, more than 820,000 ballots had been cast in Virginia, nearly double the roughly 447,000 that had been cast with two weeks to go until the 2022 election.
Of Virginia's 11 congressional districts, three have already outperformed total voter turnout from that 2022 midterm cycle, with several more weeks to go.
Those three districts are the three covering the southwestern part of the state: the 5th, 6th, and 9th.
By locality, 21 of the 34 cities and counties (62 percent) located within the WFXR viewing area, which stretches from Grayson County to Charlotte County east to west, and from the southern border up to Highland County North to South, have already outdone their final respective voting tallies from 2022.
"Voter enthusiasm is what we would call it and right now, it seems that Democrats are extraordinarily motivated to get out to the polls," said Liberty University Helms School of Government chair Aaron Van Allen. "Either because of their frustration with President Trump, because of the economy, because of what's happening on Lynchburg City Council or Roanoke City Council, whatever it may be. They're very enthusiastic to get out to the polls."
Van Allen says that enthusiasm is driving up turnout in our three local congressional districts, all of which are historically, or at least recently, considered Republican-controlled districts.
"Even though they may be more Republican across the entirety of the district, if you look in very specific pockets that Democrats have historically controlled and even those that Democrats have made inroads in and say, what we see is that Democratic turnout has been very high," said Van Allen.
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