Virginia Beach voters went to the polls Tuesday to elect a new member to the Virginia House of Delegates. Former Republican Delegate Barry Knight passed away in February. Republican C. Andrew Rice leads Democrat Cheryl Smith 62-38% in the unofficial tally as of Wednesday night. This was about a 11.5-point improvement on Knight’s 57-43% victory over Smith last November. It was also an improvement on President Trump’s 57-42% victory in the district in 2024. How did this happen – and what, if anything, does a near-12-point Repubican swing have to do with voting in the April 21 Special Constitutional Amendment election?
To try to answer these questions, State Navigate reviewed turnout and vote data for all six 2026 House of Delegates special elections. Below you’ll find charts and graphs showing the overall margins and turnout in those elections compared to the House of Delegates elections in those districts last November and much more!
The Overall Vote
As the above chart shows, the other 5 special elections were in heavily Democratic districts. In fact, one district (HD-5) is so heavily Democratic that no Republican contested it in 2025. In contrast, this week’s HD-98 election was in a fairly competitve district.
Ignoring HD-5, HD-98 turnout as a percentage of 2025 House of Delegates votes was 6 points higher than average – and that’s before all the HD-98 mail and provisional votes have been counted. HD-98 was also one of only two districts that swung towards Republicans at the HoD level.
A deeper dive into the data by vote type reveals something even more interesting:
Thus far, the HD-98 swing is almost exclusively due to the election day vote. There is both a near 12-point swing toward Republicans in the election day vote and 14-point increase in the share of the vote cast on election day (the latter will lower slightly as additional mail and provisional votes are added to the tally). Meanwhile, the in-person early vote margin was largely unchanged from 2025 as it lost 8 points in share. Democrats performed better in the miniscule mail vote.
That Republican voters would rather turn out on election day instead of early should suprise no one. But thus far, the HD-98 special is the only special with this big an increase in both election day margin and turnout.
The HD-98 Precinct-Level Vote
State Navigate also drilled down to the precinct level in HD-98 to see if we could find any interesting patterns. One pattern immediately jumped out:
As the chart above shows, the most Republican-leaning HD-98 precincts generally turned out at the highest rates compared to 2025; the most Democratic-leaning precincts turned out the least. For whatever reason – candidate quality, bad weather or increased Republican enthusiasm due to the Constitutional Amendment special election – Democrats were just not that into the HD-98 special election.
The Precinct-Level Vote Compared to Others
State Navigate also compared all 6 special elections at the precinct level. The graphs below show just how special the HD-98 special election was:
On the left is a scatterplot showing the vote in all 122 precincts that voted in 2026 special elections; on the right, a scatterplot of the 101 precincts not in HD-98. The horizontal (x) axis on both charts shows 26/25 HoD precinct turnout. The vertical (y) axis shows D-R precinct margin.
There was a weak -0.22 correlation between the margin and relative turnout before this week’s HD-98 special election. Thus far, including the HD-98 election increases that correlation to a strong -0.62. That means that voters in more Democratic-leaning precincts generally have been turning out at lower rates than voters in the most Republican precincts. The most-special-special election pushed that relationship to the max.
In fact, HD-98 is home to over half of the top 20 precincts in relative turnout. Here’s that chart:
The Bottom Line: Will the April 21 Special Constitutional Amendement be More Special?
As our Constitutional Amendment Early Vote Tracker has consistently shown, to date, Republican-leaning precincts are generally in-person early voting at higher rates vs. 2025 than Democratic-leaning ones. This was particuarly true in HD-98 before election day: the deep green precincts in south Virginia Beach on the map below are pretty much coterminous with HD-98.
What this ultimately means for the fate of the April 21 map vote is unclear. On the one hand, that the HD-98 early vote kept pace with the 2024 election is a good sign for No. That Republican voters turned out in droves on election day also bodes well. On the other hand, Republicans lost Virginia in 2024 and statewide in 2025. We also didn’t see that much improvement in the HD-98 eary vote compared to 2024 President or even 2025 Governor (Sears won HD-98 53-47%). Finally, relying on increased election day turnout that might not materialize is risky: a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
We leave you with a word of caution reading too much into things: As always, reading the early vote tea leaves is fraught with peril, and even the most special of special elections are so special that they might not be indicative of anything.
