How to watch tonight's statewide election results, plus final forecasts in key races

What the early and Election Day turnout data is saying in Virginia and New Jersey

Dear readers!

It is just after 5:00 PM ET on Election Day, which means we are less than two hours away from getting the first results in this year’s off-year elections.

I have just finished my normal Election Day routine of waking up early, doing a long workout, voting in the early afternoon, and getting all my data ready for the night’s coverage. I want to share my plan for covering the results here on Strength In Numbers, including in Virginia, New Jersey, New York City, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. I’ll also share what the final data is saying about key races, including a look at election-day turnout patterns.

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Election night plan

First, I will be doing a live stream here on Substack with my friends at The Downballot. The stream starts at 7:00 PM ET and will go to… whenever we get too tired to carry on! The link to watch (and submit questions!) is here.

I imagine (given their name) that we are going to touch on every race happening across the country, but I’ll be focusing on the statewide contests in Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. Pennsylvania has retention elections for state Supreme Court justices, and Georgia has elections for the statewide municipal utility board, which sets electricity rates (this should be a good test of how bad inflation is hurting Republicans).

Second, subscribers to Strength In Numbers have access to a private server on the instant messaging app Discord that we will be using to share results and insights tonight. If you have a Discord account and are a subscriber to SIN, click on this link to connect your Substack membership and Discord account. If you aren’t a paying subscriber, you can become one today for 20% off! While I’ll be posting some on Bluesky (with posts mirrored on X), most of my comms will be happening through Discord and the live stream.

Third, I will be updating my usual spreadsheet of county-level election benchmarks throughout the night. The benchmarks help tell us how far ahead or behind each candidate is running compared to a perfectly tied contest, and are thus useful for calling contests early. The benchmarks spreadsheet also has results of the 2024 and 2020 presidential elections, so we can compare how well Democrats and Republicans are doing versus last year’s elections.

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Understand politics with data, not spin.

Strength In Numbers is an independent, reader-supported publication for analyzing politics with hard data and statistical analysis, not punditry and partisan spin. My mission is to provide readers with data-driven, no-nonsense coverage of politics — the type of accurate, honest, and personal analysis they can’t get anywhere else in the media today. My election-night coverage is a good example of how I provide value above replacement-level journalism, when it’s crucial for readers to know the story behind the data.

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Final expectations

The results in most races tonight are not expected to be particularly close. The most competitive race might be the Virginia race for Attorney General, which looked like an easy Democratic win two months ago but was thrown into chaos by a texting scandal involving the Democratic nominee making jokes about political violence against Virginia Republicans.

Otherwise, the polls point to pretty clear leads for the Democrats. And prediction markets also point to easy Democratic wins in the Virginia and New Jersey races for governor, as well as for Zohran Mamdani in the New York City mayoral election.