Episode 34: AG Debate Recap, Campaign Finance Reports, and Early Voting Expanding

Hi everyone, I’m Sam Shirazi and this is Federal Fallout the 2025 Virginia Elections. This is a packed episode where we will go over a lot of things. So I wanted to start with the Attorney General debate that was on Thursday night. Everyone was paying close attention to that because of the revelations that came out about Jay Jones’s text.00:20.30Sam ShiraziSo we’ll start first with that. debate And then we will move on to campaign finance numbers that also came out this week for the month of September. We’ll talk about that, what it might mean for the campaign.00:32.84Sam ShiraziAnd then finally, i wanted to just quickly touch base about the... Start of expanded hours and locations for early voting. It’s going to start this weekend. And just wanted to kind of touch base on early voting generally because there’s been kind of a lull right now where it’s been pretty steady, but nothing too dramatic. And I think in the next couple weeks, obviously, as the election gets closer, there’s going to be a lot of stuff going on with early voting. Just wanted to kind of set that up and then we’ll we’ll talk about it down the line.00:59.16Sam ShiraziSo lots to talk about this week. Lots of going on with the Virginia elections. I wanted to start with the attorney general debate because I think In terms of big moments left in the campaign, I mean, obviously there’s something unknown that could happen. But in terms of things we knew that was coming, there was the governor’s debate and then the attorney general debate.01:16.33Sam ShiraziAnd usually the attorney general debate is not a super high stakes thing. Frankly, not that many people usually watch it. However, this year I think was different because of the story that came out with Jay Jones and the techs.01:29.71Sam ShiraziObviously, that really shook up the attorney general race. And I think all eyes were on Jay Jones specifically in the debate to see how he would handle it. And we can I’ll play you a few clips of the debate and then we can talk about it.01:42.19Sam ShiraziBefore I get into the actual substance of what was discussed at the debate, I did want to note that the format of the debate I think was very interesting, very different than the governor’s debate format. Governor debate was kind of a typical...01:53.77Sam Shirazimedia run debate, short sound bites, like 30 second answer sessions. And, you know, I think that this format in the attorney general debate was a lot stronger in many ways because the candidates were given more time to speak.02:08.58Sam ShiraziThe Virginia Bar was the one moderating the debate. One thing I noticed, for example, and a lot of people were surprised, there was four minute opening statements. And I actually thought that was good because it gave the candidates enough time to explain their positions.02:21.15Sam ShiraziAnd then during the actual engagement of the debate, The candidates weren’t interrupting each other. I think they were both told to act in a lawyerly manner or like they were in court as opposed to a political debate. I thought that really served the debate well. I thought both of them carried themselves well.02:37.74Sam ShiraziAnd people on both sides, you know regardless of who you thought won the debate, basically said that the debate was the format of the debate made a lot of sense. And people were just generally happy that it was a more substantive debate.02:51.74Sam Shirazithan, for example, the governor’s debate where specifically Winston-Mariel Sears was interrupting more. And it was kind of hard to get a full answer from either of them because there was a lot of back and forth. So long story short, that was kind of the substance, though sorry, not the substance of the debate, the format of the debate.03:08.06Sam ShiraziAnd we can go over the substance and talk about a few things that happened during the debate. I will say before I play you a few clips, I don’t think the debate was a game changer either way. So I don’t think all of a sudden you know, the race is back where it was before the text.03:23.06Sam ShiraziI don’t think the race is over. I think it was basically what we expected. To the extent there was more expectations, I think Jay Jones had the harder task in this debate because he obviously had to step in there, deal with the text issue, and then try to talk about other things. And I think he did that I don’t think the debate either side had a huge gaffe. I don’t think there’s something where everyone was talking about the attorney general debate. I think, you know, it got some attention, but ultimately it kind of was basically what we expected in that Jay Jones had to address the text. He kind of pivoted you03:59.55Sam Shirazitrying to link Jason Meares to Donald Trump. And then obviously Jason Meares was talking more about the text and trying to attack Jay Jones. So not super surprising in many ways, but I will kind of play you some of the clips just so you get a sense of how things were.04:16.37Sam ShiraziSo the first clip I will play is Jay Jones at the beginning of the of of the debate directly addressing the text issues.04:51.72Sam ShiraziAll right. So that was Jay Jones addressing the issue with this text. Now let’s see how Jason Meares responded to that apology from Jay Jones.05:35.84Sam ShiraziAll right. So that was Jason Miara is talking about the text issue. And so I wanted to kind of get that out of the way, because frankly, that’s kind of how the debate went, where obviously it was going to be the first topic. Both sides would want to deal with it.05:49.54Sam ShiraziI think Jason Miara is during the debate was trying to bring it up again and again, you know, The reality is the moderators weren’t going to spend an entire hour just talking about text. They wanted to talk about different issues.06:00.48Sam ShiraziThey brought up other questions. And you know some of them were a little bit more into weeds, legal stuff. But I think overall, they were trying to have a debate that touched on voters’ concerns, but also talked about some of the issues that are going to come up for whoever ends up winning the election.06:17.12Sam ShiraziAnd I wanted to talk a little bit about Jay Jones’ strategy after apologizing. So very clearly, he was trying to link... Jason B.R. is to Donald Trump. And that has been the strategy of the Democrats for the most part the entire year. As I’ve said, the Virginia elections tend to just become a referendum on the incumbent president.06:35.23Sam ShiraziAnd so the Democrats, given that President Trump, most polls have him at negative approval in Virginia. The Democrats strategy is to just link the Republicans with Donald Trump.06:45.100Sam ShiraziIf you like Donald Trump, You’re going to vote for the Republicans. If you don’t like Donald Trump, you’re going to vote for the Democrats. If that happens and it really does become a pure referendum, Democrats are probably going to win because almost certainly President Trump’s going to have a negative approval in Virginia. He never won Virginia.07:01.14Sam ShiraziAnd so that’s just the Democratic strategy. And we’ll I’ll play a clip of Jay Jones doing that just to get a sense of how he was doing it in debate. in the debate07:42.81Sam ShiraziAll right. So that was Jay Jones talking about Jason Miara is not going after the Trump administration. Again, that was his strategy. And I think this race, the debate didn’t change the fundamentals. The race will come down to what is more important for voters.07:57.66Sam ShiraziAre the texts the most important issue in this race? And are voters going to make up their mind mainly on the text issue? Obviously, Republicans would like that to happen. If that happens, obviously, pretty likely that Jason Miara’s will win the race.08:11.26Sam ShiraziOr our voters, their primary concern, what’s going on in D.C., sending a message to Donald Trump. If that’s the way it happens, and obviously Jay Jones and the Democrats want that to happen, if that happens, then obviously, more likely, the jy Jones is going to win. And I think the debate can’t really answer that question.08:29.21Sam ShiraziThe only people can answer that question are the voters. And we’re going to just wait and see what the results will be on election day when the votes start coming in, because that is how this race is going to be decided at the end of the day.08:41.36Sam ShiraziYou know, I know that There’s a lot of different things going on. There’s a lot of important issues. But most voters, they’re either going to remember one or two things about the candidates and make their decision based on just a split-second decision about whether they like Trump or maybe they don’t like these texts.08:58.76Sam ShiraziAnd that’s kind of how they’re going to decide this race. And I think you know to the extent the the debate mattered, I don’t think this hurt Jay Jones anymore, or at least the debate didn’t hurt him in the sense of,09:10.89Sam ShiraziI saw some Democratic officials put out statements after the debate supporting Jay Jones. So for example, Lamont Bagby, he’s the chair of the Democratic Party in Virginia. He’s also a state senator. He put out the standard statement, you know, Jay Jones won the debate, which is not super surprising. And that’s what you expect him to put out. But I think in this context, it the statement itself was a bit of a statement because it showed that he was backing Jay Jones in the attorney general race.09:36.47Sam ShiraziSo to that extent, I think the debate kind of was one of those moments where it it put to rest some of the concerns Democrats had. And so I think on the Democratic side, there’s going to be a little bit more consolidation behind Jay Jones, if I had to guess.09:52.31Sam ShiraziI think the big question mark are independents. I think independents are going to decide the race. Miárez needs to win the independents. He’s very clearly going after them. And you know i think it’s going to be very difficult to know the state of this race, even if we get nonpartisan polling.10:07.33Sam ShiraziAnd the reason I say that is with These types of races, when candidate has some issues, it is hard to get people to poll to pull people correctly because they don’t always give you who they’re going to vote for. And oftentimes there’s a lot of undecideds and there’s a lot of undecideds until the end. So I wouldn’t be surprised if we see polls coming out 46, 45 for candidate.10:30.37Sam Shirazifor either candidate And basically that’s very difficult to know who’s going to win at the end. If you’re, you know, the last poll you get is 46, 45, it could go either way. Voters could break one way or another.10:43.08Sam Shirazii think the other thing to think about is there’s a lot of talk about ticket splitting. So ticket splitting, obviously Miare, his strategy is to try to get Spanberger voters or a certain chunk of Spanberger voters to vote for him for attorney general.10:56.16Sam ShiraziYou know, obviously most of the polls show Spanberger ahead. So if Spanberger wins, by definition, Miárez will need some Spanberger voters to vote for him in order to win. He can’t, you know, Miárez is hoping there isn’t going to be straight straight ticket voting.11:11.19Sam ShiraziAnd so I think that’s certainly going to happen to a certain extent. But I think the open question is what’s called undervoting. So that’s basically when someone may may vote for the Democrats for the governor race, but either they skip the attorney general ballot or they write someone in.11:27.08Sam ShiraziSo they don’t actually give Meares their vote. And I think that may happen to a certain extent in this race. so And obviously that helps Meares because it’s a vote that Jay Jones isn’t getting, but it’s not as good as ticket splitting because ticket splitting, you know, Jay Jones is down one, Meares is up one.11:44.28Sam ShiraziBut if there’s an under vote, then Jay Jones is basically down one, but Meares isn’t up one. So I think this All that makes this race very inherently hard to predict because you have to take into account voters who may not be telling the pollsters who they’re going to vote for. You have to take into account ticket splitting. you have to take into account undervotes.12:07.62Sam ShiraziYou have to take into account that traditionally people tend to come home to the party that they vote for at the top of the ticket, especially if this is a referendum on the president and people are just upset at Trump. So all that is very, very complicated stuff in a race like this.12:23.41Sam ShiraziAnd to be perfectly honest, I mean, I hope we get some nonpartisan polls. I’m sure we will. I still think even after the nonpartisan polls, unless they show very clear results, like someone’s winning by 10 and is above 50 percent,12:35.34Sam ShiraziI still think this is going to be very inherently hard to predict who’s going to win. You know, it’s just one of those things where you you have to get into the individual minds of each voter.12:46.12Sam ShiraziAnd it’s it’s very hard because I think some voters might think right now, well, I don’t love what he did. Some Democratic voters might think, I don’t love what Jay Jones did. But a common refrain that, for example, Representative Don Breyer basically said is, you know, I don’t – the texts were awful, but – Trump has also done bad things. And I think that’s what you might hear from a lot of Democratic voters at the end of the day.13:10.31Sam ShiraziAnd so I just don’t know. how everything’s going to shake out at the end. And so we’re just going to have to wait and see. And yeah, anyways, so Attorney General debate, very interesting.13:21.12Sam ShiraziI don’t want to dwell on it for the whole podcast because there’s a lot of other stuff going on. Definitely, if you’re interested, you can watch the debate. It’s online. Watch the whole thing. Don’t think it was a game changer.13:32.24Sam ShiraziEssentially, the race is going to come down to what’s more important for people. sending a message about president Trump or maybe these texts and the fact that people don’t like what happened. And so we don’t know, we don’t, there’s no way of knowing. We’re going to have to wait and see.13:46.72Sam ShiraziSo anyways, that was the attorney general debate. All right. Now let’s turn to the campaign finance numbers that came out this week. So these reports were covering basically the period of September and, uh,13:59.64Sam ShiraziIt covered the period that ended on September 30th. So it’s important to keep in mind these are not totally up to date to the current moment. And why is that important? Obviously, there was a lot of news that happened in October.14:13.01Sam ShiraziThere was the revelation about the Jay Jones text. Also, the shutdowns happening in the background. So lot of stuff happened in October that these reports aren’t necessarily going to capture. But wanted to kind of big picture talk about the statewide races. And I wanted to spend a little bit more time this time on the House of Delegates, because I think this report, the House of Delegates, was actually much more interesting than the statewide numbers. So the statewide numbers...14:35.46Sam ShiraziActually, the Republicans were doing much better than I would say in previous reports in terms of money that was raised for the governor’s race. So it just in one month, Abigail Spanberger raised about $12.5 million, whereas Winston Earl Sears raised about and a little over $9.1 million.14:53.12Sam ShiraziAnd obviously, Spanberger is still ahead in the money, but that was a respectable haul, certainly much better than Winston Earl Sears has been doing in the past. So I think in the governor’s race, the money is still...15:04.24Sam ShiraziDemocrats have the advantage, but the Republicans are doing a little bit better. And so you don’t see this huge gap like you’ve seen in previous fundraising reports. Lieutenant governor wasn’t super interesting because there wasn’t the same amount of money being raised.15:16.68Sam ShiraziLike previous reports, John Reed didn’t re raise a whole lot of money. He raised about $451,000, whereas Ghazala Hashmi raised over $1.4 million. So Hashmi has the advantage in the lieutenant governor’s race, but neither of them have like huge amounts of money. So I don’t think the lieutenant governor’s race is you super interesting in terms of the campaign finance.15:37.82Sam ShiraziAttorney General, obviously lot going on in the attorney general race. I thought it it’s – the problem with the attorney general race is I think there’s been a huge – These reports are a huge lag from what’s been going on. So Jason Meares has gotten a huge injection of cash because now the Republicans think he might be able to win that race. However, that basically all happened after October 1st.15:57.21Sam ShiraziSo I’ll give you the numbers in this report. And frankly, Jay Jones and Jason Meares were pretty close in this report. Jason Meares raised... about a little over 3.5 million, whereas Jay Jones raised 3.3 million.16:09.67Sam ShiraziSo we see that the attorney general race was very competitive in terms of the fundraising. However, I caveat all that by saying that’s by September 30th and a lot of stuff happened in October. So We’re going to get one more campaign finance report before the election.16:24.41Sam ShiraziAnd that’s going to be very interesting, primarily for the attorney general race, just to see how much money Jason Meares has gotten. So I don’t want to spend a lot of time in the statewide offices because, frankly, like they’re kind of confirming what we knew.16:37.72Sam ShiraziGovernor Spanbaker Spanbaker has the advantage, but... Earl Sears is catching up in fundraising. Lieutenant Governor Hashmi has consistently had an advantage. And then Attorney General, it’s been pretty close.16:48.38Sam ShiraziBut the problem is, at least for our knowledge, is we don’t know exactly how much it’s changed over the the couple weeks we’ve been in October. So that’s the statewide stuff.16:58.93Sam ShiraziI did want to spend more time talking about the... House of Delegates, because typically in the House of Delegates, I don’t spend a whole lot of time on the campaign finance because there’s so many races and I didn’t want to kind of dwell on every single race.17:11.65Sam ShiraziHowever, this campaign finance report, I think the really interesting numbers were in the House of Delegates. So as a reminder, all 100 seats in the House of Delegates are up for a reelection. The Democrats currently have a 51-49 majority, and they’re really on the offense. They’re hoping to flip a lot of seats.17:29.51Sam ShiraziRepublicans are much more in the defense. And while theoretically it’s possible for Republicans to get a majority, I think it’s very difficult. And the fundraising, again, really confirms that. So in terms of these 100 seats in the House of Delegates, if you look at all the seats the Democrats are competing in and the Republicans are competing in, Democrats raised over $16.3 million. dollars And that’s a lot of money, and that’s just in a one-month period. Compare that to Republicans where they raised...17:57.73Sam Shirazia little over 5.6 million. So Democrats, almost three times as much raised in the House of Delegates. And if you look at individual races, I won’t go through every individual race, but some of them, I mean, the Democrats are raising really big amounts of money. And and we’re talking basically from congressional level of money. So I’ll give you a few examples.18:18.70Sam ShiraziThere were four races where the Democrats raised more than a million dollars. House District 75, House District 82, House District 89, House District 97. So House District 75, this is a very competitive seat that Harris won by six points in the Richmond suburbs. The Democrat raised $1.5 million. dollars I mean, that’s really, you know, a huge chunk of change, especially for a House of Delegates race.18:44.19Sam ShiraziAnd that’s been that was kind of consistent across the House races where the Democrats are targeting incumbent Republicans. They all basically raised a lot of money. On the Republican side, there certainly were some seats where the Republicans were spending a lot of money to try to save some of their incumbents.19:00.97Sam ShiraziAnd then there were other seats where, frankly, the Republican incumbents are trying to basically hold on where it seems like they’re out on their own. you know In these situations, sometimes what happens is Let’s say you’re in a you know light red seat, but the Democrats are targeting you. Your House leadership might be telling you, look, we got some incumbents in really tight races. you know We think you’re going to be OK. You can handle it, essentially. And so they’re not necessarily getting boatloads of money because –19:32.26Sam ShiraziFor whatever reason, they might think either the seat is lost or they or they might think the seat is not going to end up flipping. and and And that’s kind of the cold calculation that happens at the end sometimes.19:43.99Sam Shiraziand you know and And this happens to parties on both sides in different cycles. And you know sometimes you’re told as an incumbent, you know you’ve got this, don’t worry about it. we’re There’s no money coming your way. And I’m sure some of the Republican incumbents would like to have more money. But the reality is given where the fundraising is, the the Republicans don’t necessarily have as much to give to each individual incumbent that’s in a tough race.20:11.08Sam ShiraziAnd at some point, probably when we get closer to the election, maybe after the next fundraising report and after we get some more nonpartisan polls, I want to really go race by race in the House of Delegates because I think the House of Delegates races are super interesting, but they don’t get that much attention because everyone’s focused on the governor’s race. Now everyone’s focused under u attorney general’s race.20:32.58Sam ShiraziBut there are a lot of seats where the Democrats are targeting the Republicans. And I could see everything from the Democrats picking up a couple seats to the Democrats picking up 10 seats. And it’s really hard to tell right now certainly the Democratic mindset is they are trying to flip a lot of seats.20:48.83Sam ShiraziAnd there are some of these seats where they’re spending a lot of money, which necessarily which aren’t necessarily the top tier battlegrounds, where you know earlier in the year, you would say they’re kind of reached seats. And you know who knows, maybe the Democrats...21:01.33Sam Shiraziare being a little bit too ambitious. Maybe the Republicans will be able to hold on to the majority of these seats. But the money is certainly telling you that they are investing big to try to flip some of these seats.21:12.86Sam ShiraziAnd i think we’ll see if that’s successful. I will say, you know, money isn’t everything. I mean there are a lot of races where the side that has more money doesn’t win. and Money is important, but it isn’t going to decide every single race. A lot of them comes down to the exact amount of ticket splitting, the amount exact turnout in a district.21:33.64Sam ShiraziAnd it’s very hard to predict individual races, especially when you’re getting down to the House of Delegates. I tend not to predict individual races because i think it’s so difficult. Chaz Naticombe, who’s been a guest on the podcast, his State Navigate site has a really good model where they do forecast who may win each House of Delegates race. I think it’s very thorough. That’s kind of my go-to because it some of these races are going to be very close.22:00.04Sam ShiraziIt’s going very hard to make a call. So... I think in probably a couple of weeks, as we’re almost at the election, I will give you, i don’t want to call them my personal predictions, but I will kind of tip my hand to the extent I feel comfortable about who may be ahead in some of these races.22:16.12Sam ShiraziAnd I think one thing it’s interesting where the money is being spent, it tells you where the parties think the races are competitive. I think that’s what money is really good at telling you.22:26.39Sam ShiraziIt might not tell you who’s going to win at the end of the day, but I think it’s good at telling you who the parties think might be able to win, if that makes sense. And again, i will give you this example one more time because it’s my favorite race that is kind of didn’t really happen this year.22:44.01Sam Shiraziso I will talk about House District 21. This is in western Prince William County. The incumbent is Josh Thomas. I’ve talked about the seat before. It was the closest seat in terms of 2023 margin and in terms of 2024 margin.22:57.25Sam ShiraziSo in terms of the seats the Democrats hold, this should be the closest seat and in theory should be a battleground. But the Republican candidate in this district only raised $1,238 and he has $937 cash on hand, not 937,000. He has $937 cash on hand.23:16.39Sam ShiraziSo what that is telling me is the Republicans are not competing here. They are not taking this race seriously. If they were taking this race seriously, they would be throwing a lot of money at it. That’s not what’s happening. So you know I’ll go out on a limb and say House District 21 is not a top-tier battleground just based off the fundraising.23:35.02Sam ShiraziI don’t want to say it’s impossible for the Republicans to ever win this seat. I don’t want to say it’s safe Democratic. But I think at this point, you know it’s pretty clear – the Democrats have the advantage in this seat. And so that’s kind of how fundraising can be used.23:48.56Sam ShiraziI don’t want to go seat by seat and just purely look at the fundraising. Maybe I will allude to fundraising when I do my episode going through each House of Delegates district. But anyway, long story short, super interesting fundraising report, more so at the House of Delegates level and House of Delegates level, Democrats have a big advantage and we’ll see if that gets translated into the actual results and if they’re able to pick up a bunch of24:09.73Sam ShiraziAll right. One last topic. And I know this has already been a packed episode, but I wanted to talk about early voting and touch base on it. So to be perfectly honest, early voting has been in a little bit of a lull. I think we’ve pretty much been plateaued where there’s been some consistent voting, but nothing overly dramatic in terms of things have changed in the past few weeks.24:30.49Sam ShiraziAs of recording of this podcast, there are over 600,000 early votes, lot of early voting. We’re going to Definitely get record early voting for a state election. i don’t think any of that has changed.24:42.79Sam Shiraziagain say it’s too early to draw big conclusions from early voting. The thing I wanted to flag is we’re entering kind of the home stretch of early voting. a couple of things are going to happen. One, starting this weekend, there’s going to be a lot more early voting locations opening up.24:58.32Sam ShiraziAnd they’ it’s kind of staggered because each locality has its own hours and locations. And so it’s not like on one day all the early voting locations are going to open. It’s going to be different in each city and county.25:10.51Sam ShiraziObviously, if you’re interested in early voting, check with your local city or county to make sure you know the hours, you know the locations. The first big one is going to be this Sunday. So this Sunday, Prince William County is going to open all of its early voting locations.25:24.12Sam ShiraziAnd right now, there’s just currently been only one early voting location in all of Prince William County. Prince William County, big county, takes a while, a lot of traffic. So relatively, the early vote has been lower than the rest of Virginia. But I knew that was going to happen because decent amount of people particularly on the I-95 corridor, are are waiting for the satellite early voting locations to open.25:47.16Sam ShiraziWhy? Because the early voting location for Prince William County, the one that’s open right now, is not on the I-95 corridor. And if you know that area, there’s a lot of traffic to try to get around. So long story short, Prince William County is going to open up this Sunday. And then they’re open pretty much except next Sunday all the way up till the end of early voting. All those locations are going to be open And that’s going to happen in various parts of Virginia at different times. It’s going to happen in Fairfax County, in Loudoun County, in Virginia Beach.26:17.04Sam Shiraziyeah All these different parts of Virginia are going to start having more and more early voting locations. There’s also going to be two Saturdays, the last two Saturdays of the election, there’s going to be early voting across Virginia.26:29.70Sam ShiraziBut I wanted to note something about the satellite early voting locations. I actually went through, and I think almost all of them are going to be in localities that Harris won in 2024.26:40.66Sam ShiraziSo that means the vast majority of people who are going to have more early voting locations are going to be in blue counties. And not obviously, everyone not everyone in those go counties are Democrats, and a decent good amount of them are going to vote for the Republicans as well.26:57.85Sam ShiraziBut I mean, I don’t think it’s that big of a leap to say, Probably the majority of people who are going to be voting at these satellite early voting locations are going to be Democrats. And that’s just something to keep in mind. And and so I do think the early voting composition going to start changing as the satellite early voting locations are going to open up.27:15.59Sam ShiraziHowever, the other thing to keep in mind is closer we get to Election Day, more people are going to early vote, more people are going figure out there’s an election. So I do think there’s going to be a lot of Republicans also coming out to early vote, particularly this time because they’re getting more comfortable with in-person early voting. They’ve been encouraged to early vote. So I do think it’s going to be interesting to see in the homestretch of the campaign, how is early voting changing? How is it staying the same?27:40.18Sam ShiraziWhat are the numbers looking like? The one thing I’ve kind of consistently warned about is I wouldn’t go too crazy with early voting analysis, even at the very end, because I think it’s just it’s hard to draw big conclusions from early voting.27:54.61Sam ShiraziI think we’re going to get a sense of turnout from early voting. Maybe at the end and like right after the end of early voting, we can really try to and analyze it in kind of a more systematic way and try to think through, okay, what does this mean for the election? But especially for something like the attorney general’s race, there’s going to be ticket splitting and undervotes and all these things. And it’s just hard to make predictions.28:18.08Sam Shirazibased on early voting data because we don’t know how people have voted. we know the numbers of people who voted, but we don’t know who they’re voting for. So I caution, you’re going to see a lot of stuff about early vote. you know I wouldn’t go crazy either way, thinking too hard about it. The thing I just wanted to flag is there’s going to be more locations opening up for early voting. The numbers are really going to spike.28:39.19Sam ShiraziSo that’ll be interesting. And I will at some point obviously update everyone on early voting. As you can see, there’s like a lot going on in the Virginia elections. We haven’t even talked about the shutdown, which is still going on, which is pretty crazy to think about.28:52.78Sam ShiraziI’m sure I will talk about it if it’s continuing. So much going on in the Virginia elections. I will try to release more episodes as things are happening. And i appreciate everyone who’s been listening. This is the homestretch. A lot going on.29:03.69Sam Shirazistay Stay tuned here for all the coverage. And I appreciate everyone who’s been listening. And this has been Federal Fallout. And i’ll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com