Virginians have been early voting in next Tuesday’s Democratic and Republican primaries since at least May 2nd.

Last week, we analyzed the mail and in-person early vote through June 10. This week, we take a look at the close-to-final overall picture and take a snapshot of what has changed over the past week. To do this, State Navigate analyzed the publicly available early voter metrics from Digital Poll Watchers (dot) Org as of this morning. We then combined that data with the May voter registration statistics from the Virginia Department of Elections. We also took a look back at the 2021 final early vote numbers, estimated from the Central Absentee Precincts in the Virginia Department of Elections Data, where available, and the Virginia Public Access Project’s not-quite-final 2021 numbers where not.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Democratic early turnout is about 152% of final early vote turnout in 2021 – just slightly over 189,000 Democratic ballots have been cast or received thus far: approximately 99,000 by-mail and 90,000 in-person.
• 57,729 Democratic votes were cast or received last week.
• On the Republican side, turnout is an anemic 15,477 voters. This is somewhat understandable because there’s no statewide Republican primary; only a handful of House of Delegates districts have one.
• Virginia has about 6 million active registered voters. That means Democratic turnout is about 3.14% of all active registered voters, and Republican turnout is about 0.25%.
• Most Democratic early voters live in the suburban Democratic strongholds of the state. These include the areas from which some of the LG and AG candidates hail – the Richmond and Hampton Roads areas – as well as highly-educated Charlottesville.
• NoVa’s turnout picture is better than last week, but still mixed, with turnout slightly higher in Arlington, Alexandria and most of Fairfax County than points beyond.
• It’s still difficult to make any predictions about which LG and AG candidates are currently “leading” in the early vote. Political insiders believe the Lieutenant Governor primary is down to State Senator Ghazala Hashmi and State Senator Aaron Rouse, but the Attorney General primary between former Delegate Jay Jones and Henrico County Commonwealth’s Attorney Shannon Taylor has no clear frontrunner.

Now, let’s get into the weeds with some pretty maps:

Turnout by Locality is Down in Northern Virginia Compared to Statewide as a Percentage of the 2021 Vote

A day before election day, 151.9% of Virginia voters have voted early in the 2025 Democratic Primary as voted early in all of 2021. In the map below, a greater percentage than 151.9% voters have voted 2025 than in 2021 in the green localities; fewer have voted in the purple localities. The more saturated the color, the greater the departure from the statewide rate in five-point steps:

Much of NoVa – especially Fairfax County and Alexandria City – significantly lag the statewide 151.9% of 2021 voters who have voted thus far. Much of the rest of Virginia – especially Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Southside, and the Richmond suburbs, is significantly ahead of 2021. The city of Richmond is slightly over the statewide 151.9% of 2021; Charlottesville and Petersburg are slightly below.

Overall, Registered Voter Turnout is Better in Some Areas than Others

Combining the early vote and registered voter precinct datasets allows us to map early vote turnout as a percentage of registered voters. In the map below, turnout lags the 3.14% statewide rate in purple precincts and exceeds it in green precincts. The more saturated the color, the greater the departure from the statewide rate in half-point steps:

Virginia doesn’t have partisan registration, but the map clearly shows that Republican-leaning areas of the Commonwealth aren’t turning out in the Democratic primary. At the regional level:

• Northern Virginia: Democratic turnout is higher than average in most Arlington and Alexandria precincts and parts of Fairfax County, but generally lagging further away from the nation’s capital.
• Greater Richmond: Turnout is generally higher than the statewide average. In particular, turnout is higher than the state in parts of the home bases of AG candidate Shannon Taylor (Henrico County) and LG candidate Ghazala Hashmi (Chesterfield County). Turnout is also higher than the state in parts of Richmond City, LG candidate Levar Stoney’s base. Turnout remains higher than average in Petersburg.
• Hampton Roads: Turnout is still generally higher-than-statewide in AG candidate Jay Jones’ Democratic-leaning Norfolk and mixed in LG candidate Aaron Rouse’s more politically mixed Virginia Beach. Turnout is also generally better-than-statewide on the Virginia Peninsula.
• Rest of Virginia: Only the college towns of Charlottesville, Williamsburg and Blacksburg generally have higher-than-average Democratic turnout, though the college precincts themselves have below average turnout since school’s out. Turnout in parts of Roanoke is now slightly above the statewide 3.14%, too.

Raw Vote Maps Show More of the Same

We also mapped the number of raw votes by precinct from the Digital Poll Watchers (dot) Org data below. These maps are side-by-side in a gallery for comparison; click on any for a larger image.

189.1K Democratic votes were cast as of yesterday. A bare majority of these, 98.8K, were by-mail. 90.1K votes were cast in-person.

Like in the turnout map, precincts along the I-64 Richmond-to-Norfolk corridor largely lead the state in total returns, alongside Charlottesville and patches of NoVa. Precincts in most of the state outside those areas are very pale shades of blue, suggesting fewer than 50 total/in-person or 20 by-mail votes have been cast in most of Virginia precincts.

Approximately 138K Democratic mail ballots were issued, though about 4.5K of these ballots have also been marked as deleted in the Digital Poll Watchers (dot) Org data. That means up to about 35K additional mail votes could trickle in over the next few days – though, if history is any guide, fewer than that will ultimately be returned.

NoVa, Richmond City, Virginia Peninsula Precincts Among Biggest Turnout Gainers Last Week

We have also mapped the difference in return rate last week versus this week:

The deepest green precincts on this map (which is in half-point increments set around the statewide 0.96% increase in registered voter turnout) are in parts of NoVa, Greater Richmond, Charlottesville and parts of Norfolk and the Virginia Peninsula north of Norfolk.

In particular:

• Like last week, Arlington, Alexandria, and parts of Fairfax County once again had better turnout this week than the rest of the state.
• In Greater Richmond, Richmond City and adjacent parts of Henrico and Chesterfield Counties also generally overperformed, but parts of the suburban counties did not.
• The turnout picture in Hampton Roads was again a bit mixed, with scattered precincts in Norfolk and the Virginia Peninsula generally turning out better than much of Virginia Beach.
• Charlottesville – as always – continues to turn out better than average.

These trends are somewhat confirmed by last week’s raw total vote map below:

Richmond City isn’t as deep blue as the registered voter percent map for that city is deep green in part due to a smaller-than-average number of registered voters in many precincts, especially compared to the Charlottesville area. Charlottesville’s high-than-high numerical turnout also skews the high end of the color scale a bit.

57,729 mail and in-person early votes were cast in the past week.

Note: The Locality 2025 percentage of 2021 map and text has been edited to reflect a data error in Fairfax County. 152% of 2021 voters have voted as of yesterday, up from 142% without the data error.