Thread by @DKElections

Exciting news, fellow data nerds: We've calculated the results of the 2020 presidential race for the Virginia state House, where all 100 seats will be up in November! dkel.ec/3nUMcaz

The toplines: Biden won 60 districts, Trump won 40. All Dems sit in Biden seats, so there are five Biden-R districts. But the 2020 results aren't destiny, and Democrats will largely be playing defense this year

Summary of all results here: dkel.ec/33ll4YZ

One of the most vulnerable Democrats is Del. Christ Hurst, whose SW VA #HD12 voted 52-46 for Biden—the least-blue district held by a Dem. Many other districts where Dems face tough re-elections are in the Virginia Beach area. These also are among the less-blue seats

Another tough one for Ds is #HD75 in Southside (along the NC border), held by Roz Tyler. This district went 53-46 for Biden but was one of just 11 (out of 100) in the whole state that got redder on the presidential level between 2016 & 2020. Tyler had a narrow escape in 2019

Important to note that VA will use the *same* map as it did in 2019 due to delays in the production of census data. You can find detailed calculations for every district here: dkel.ec/2QWnHOf

And tho Dems are largely trying to protect their 55-45 majority this year, the party does have some pickup targets. Perhaps the best is #HD66 in the Richmond area, which went 54-44 for Biden. Former House Speaker Kirk Cox has left it open to run for governor

It's important to remember, though, that Biden's performance is not destiny, especially in a lower-turout off-year election. We even saw this last year. For instance, in NH, the GOP took back the lege even tho Biden won a majority of seats dailykos.com/stories/2021/4…

Of course VA is different from NH (there's no super-popular GOP gov seeking re-election, for one), but off-year electorates hadn't been particularly kind to Dems prior to 2017 & 2019. What kind of turnout we see in the post-Trump era is *the* big question

We'll take a more in-depth look at all the key VA House races later this year, once nominations are settled. And we'll be bringing you more states soon. For now, if you haven't yet, you can bookmark all of our district-level data right here: dailykos.com/stories/2013/0…

One addendum: 63% of VA votes (any cast before e-day) were not assigned to precincts. We used our Total Ballot method to distribute these, described in detail here: dkel.ec/3b3SCiG

We have a lot of confidence in this method, since we've tested it in states w/better data

But it does mean that these are estimates, and they have unknowable error bars. They're unlikely to be more than 1% in either direction, but in close races, they can matter. So #HD54, which went for Trump by 13 votes, might in fact have voted for Biden