Democratic candidates won all 30 of Northern Virginia’s seats in the Virginia House of Delegates on Tuesday as the party was set to significantly expand its 51-49 majority in the state’s lower chamber.
As of 11 p.m., Democrats had picked up 13 seats statewide, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. With only one race undecided, the Democrats will hold at least 64 of the 100 seats, the most they have held in nearly 40 years.
That’s not how elections work. You don’t know who the winner is going to be in advance, so there’s no way to knowingly vote for “the runner up” before the polls close. Nevermind the simple math of 50%+1, making your choice of Cuomo or Sliwa or a write-in for Eric Adams irrelevant once Mamdani’s crested half the voting pool.
And in Virginia? When Dems just took the map in a landslide? Being angry at someone who didn’t vote when your favorite Democrat just crossed the line with a 15-pt margin is deranged.
Essentially every winner-take-all election comes down to the establishment and the opposition. Either you like the team in charge and vote for them, want them replaced and vote for the most likely challenger, or find both choices equivalent and do something else with your vote.
NYC’s mayor election is a great example. Every adult who looked at polling knew that it would either be Mamdani or Cuomo, and those who still voted for someone else were communicating very effectively that both choices were equivalent to them.
Look, you can do whatever the hell you want to with your vote. Spoil it, waste it on a “third party” vanity campaign, or just skip the election. Just don’t pretend that your wasted vote is somehow not a declaration that whomever wins is as good to you as the runner up.
Okay, so who filled these rolls in the NYC Mayor’s Race?
That’s not what happened in the primary. And even in the general, Sliwa and Cuomo polled neck and neck after Adams dropped out.
And then when your candidate loses you’re going to come back here and yell at me for voting wrong. Hell, even when you win, you’re yelling that I’ve voted wrong.
All I have to say is “I don’t like Dem Candidate X”. I don’t even need to tell you who I voted for. Somehow I’ve single handled ruined your favorite candidate’s election odds.
I know people who were convinced Sliwa was going to be the next NYC mayor, because Mamdani was in the primary ruining Cuomo’s chances.
Cuomo, who was endorsed by the outgoing mayor, was the establishment. Mamdani, who ran an insurgent campaign to beat both Adams and Cuomo in the ranked-choice primary, was the opposition.
That the choice was either Cuomo or Mamdani was so obvious that the leadership of the Republican party endorsed Cuomo over his own party’s nominee.
The DNC primary was not a winner-take-all election. We could call them “single ballot plurality wins” or “first past the post” if the difference is confusing to you.
Where the fuck did I say that? Go ahead and waste your vote all you want. Sometimes both plausible winners suck, and “they both are equally bad” is a perfectly fine fucking message.
Just don’t expect any rhetorical accolades for voting “either” from the rest of us.