RICHMOND, Va. — The polls in Virginia close at 7 p.m. on Election Day 2022. Click here for Virginia Election results. The way votes in Virginia are counted in 2022 will differ from 2020. Bill Fitzgerald and CBS 6 analyst Dr. Bob Holsworth discuss the changes.
Bill Fitzgerald
We were talking earlier about when the votes were counted last time, that is the 2020 election, all those early absentee ballots came in way at the end of the night. You're saying it's going to be kind of reversed this time around.
Dr. Bob
I do believe so, Bill. As you recall, in 2020, the last time we had a federal election, Mark Warner, the Democratic senator who wound up winning by 12 points with behind at 11 p.m., because they hadn't counted any of the earlier absentee ballots.
This time, it's going to be different. You're going to count the early ballots, the absentee ballots first.
So Democrats will probably look good very early.
But then by 7:30, 8 o'clock, we'll start getting the ballots that come in on Election Day where Republicans traditionally do better than the Democrats.
Bill Fitzgerald
So it's a dynamic that we really have to pay close attention to, because that upset a lot of people back in 2020.
Dr. Bob
Well, particularly because it took so long for those votes to be counted.
If it was counted in a half hour, and then you started putting in, you know, the same-day votes that would have made it made a difference.
But what happened is that it took three, four hours in some places, and people thought, you know, how is Donald McEachin losing in this district? Or how is Mark Warner losing to somebody that he's supposed to beat by 15 points. That's not going to happen tonight.