I don’t have to tell you that Michael Feggans won by 8, that the State Senator (Rouse) whose district is included in Feggans’ won by 12, and the Dems flipped the House of Delegates. We found the margins surprising, because when we went to bed, Feggans was 4 behind and Rouse up by less than one. Even when Gideon texted us an hour later that Feggans was now expected to win, he was only up 4. Unfortunately for the numbers-inclined, the Virginia counties were not consistent in whether they counted mail or Election Day ballots first, not to mention geographic implications in partial reports that we can not even guess at. In our district, however, we can be sure that the mail vote was counted last, as it accounted for the entire ~2200 vote margin and then some. Feggans fought the Republican to a near-draw between the early in-person vote (pro-Dem) and the day-of vote (pro-Rep), but last I saw was up 2:1 in the mailed ballots.

This means I can’t say much about the remaining uncalled races. First, there’s three days’ grace for receipt of mail ballots. In one race, they have not yet finished with the initial count, and no one seems to know what type of ballots remain uncounted, or why. Then there will be the curing attempts on the mail ballots that have some sort of error. So, I wouldn’t give up on those yet.

There were nine canvassers from the East Bay, and we knocked, by my count, on about 2000 doors. The campaign had all the volunteers needed. We heard every target door was knocked on at least twice. We funded a well-organized machine that was ready for everyone who came through the door. (This does not apply to their poor taste in donuts.) Student delegations came down from DC to help. We were a little skeptical of the young campaign managers’ confidence based on turnout, but they were correct.

This post would be seriously incomplete without mentioning our wonderful hosts, David and Carol Pariser. Not only did they open their spare bedrooms, they cooked us dinner and uncorked a really first-rate wine every night.