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 3. This week, we take another look at the overall picture and take a snapshot of what has changed over the past week. To do this, State Navigate analyzed the publicly-available early vote 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. This week, 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 VPAP’s not-quite-final 2021 numbers where not.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Democratic early turnout is about on par with final early vote turnout in 2021 – just slightly over 131,000 Democratic ballots have been cast or received thus far: approximately 87,000 by-mail and 44,000 in-person.
• 34,215 Democratic votes were cast or received last week.
• On the Republican side, turnout is an anemic 11,422 voters. This is somewhat understandable because there’s no statewide Republican primary.
• Virginia has about 6 million active registered voters. That means Democratic turnout is about 2.2% of all active registered voters, and Republican turnout is about 0.2%.
• 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 and Alexandria than parts of Fairfax County and points beyond.
• It’s still difficult to make any predictions about which LG and AG candidates are currently “leading” in the early vote.

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

Turnout by Locality is Down in Northern Virginia Compared to 2021

A week before election day, almost as many Virginia voters have voted early in the 2025 Democratic Primary as voted early in all of 2021. In the map below, more voters have voted in 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 and Alexandria Counties – significantly lag their 2021 final early vote numbers. Much of the rest of Virginia – especially Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Southside and the Richmond suburbs, are significantly ahead of 2021. The cites of Richmond and Petersburg are slightly over their 2021 final early vote numbers. Despite gangbuster turnout, Charlottesville is slightly under its final 2021 early vote tally.

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 2.18% 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 slightly-greater to about average in 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 high in the home bases of AG candidate Shannon Taylor (Henrico County) and LG candidate Ghazala Hashmi (Chesterfield County). Turnout has also increased over the past week in Richmond City, LG candidate Levar Stoney’s base. Turnout remains higher than average in Petersburg.
• Hampton Roads: Turnout is 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.

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.

131.4K Democratic votes were cast as of yesterday. The overwhelming majority of these, 86.8K, were by-mail. 44.5K 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 20 total/in-person or 10 by-mail votes have been cast in most of Virginia precincts.

NoVa, Richmond City 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 5-tenths of a point increments set around the statewide 0.57% increase in registered voter turnout) are in parts of NoVa, Greater Richmond, Charlottesville and parts of Norfolk.

In particular:

• Arlington, Alexandria, and parts of Fairfax County – which opened more early voting locations last week – had better turnout this week than the rest of the state.
• In Greater Richmond, Richmond City and adjacent parts of Henrico County performed best.
• The turnout picture in Hampton Roads was a bit mixed, with precincts in Norfolk and part of 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 skews the color scale a bit.

Data willing, we’ll be back next week with a final update.