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Decision Desk HQ has called Virginia for Vice President Kamala Harris.

While Virginia’s thirteen electoral votes is a nice haul for the victorious candidate, the commonwealth’s propensity to vote for Democrats in federal elections has made it seem not very competitive for Republicans. However, there have been some recent signs that Donald Trump was faring better there than anyone had expected.

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First, there was that Department of Justice (DOJ) lawsuit against Glenn Youngkin for removing non-citizens from the state’s voting roles, which is required due to a law signed into effect by then-governor and Democrat Tim Kaine. Curiously, the lawsuit, which was filed in October, came just as the needle seemed to be moving in the Republicans’ direction. The Supreme Court of the United States weighed in on the matter with an emergency stay and allowed the purge of non-citizens from voter rolls to stand. 

Next, early voting numbers showed that Republican-aligned voters were voting in numbers greater than had ever been seen before. As of a few weeks ago, Democrats held only an 11-point advantage when they’d traditionally hold around a 30-point advantage in early voting numbers. That trend towards the GOP has held through Election Day.

Then, polling showed Kamala Harris holding a much narrower lead than expected. Per Democrat advocacy firm Chism Strategies:

Virginia has the most surprising result of the three states we surveyed. While there have been few surveys of the state, those we have seen have mostly shown Harris performing close to Biden’s 2020 numbers and Tim Kaine running significantly ahead of Harris.

However, our survey tells a different story, with Harris up by .7% (45.2%-44.5%), a statistical tie, and Kaine not leading his Republican opponent Hung Cao by much more (46.4%-44.9%).

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Finally, Donald Trump showed up on Saturday for a campaign rally in Salem, Virginia. Trump’s team clearly saw enough reason for optimism in Virginia to warrant a stop in the crucial last days of the campaign.

State of play: Joe Biden won Virginia by +10 points in 2020. If polling is correct, and that’s a big “if,” Virginia is not as blue this time around as it has been in previous presidential elections. A win by Trump would have been a devastating blow to Kamala Harris’s chances of winning the presidency, but even a decent showing by Trump in Virginia could portend big trouble for Harris in other states.

With 47 percent of the vote counted as of this writing, Harris leads Trump 49.3 percent to 49 percent, and the race has been called for Harris.