CNN, NBC & Decision Desk HQ forecast Republican Glenn Youngkin to win Virginia governor election

With some 95% of the votes tallied, multiple media outlets called the Virginia gubernatorial race for Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin. A reporting delay in the state’s biggest county, Fairfax, is unlikely to change the result.

Decision Desk HQ, one of the leading organizations dedicated to tracking and reporting US election results, was first to call the gubernatorial election in favor of Youngkin, some three hours after polls closed across the state.

Later in the night, CNN and NBC also projected that Youngkin would win the race.

Youngkin enjoyed an advantage of nearly 10 points over Democratic challenger Terry McAuliffe early in the count. The gap, however, narrowed to less than 3% by the end of the night, with the Republican still edging out his Democratic opponent.

Former Vice President Mike Pence wasted no time in congratulating Youngkin, who campaigned primarily on local issues, declaring his victory a sign of “The Conservative Comeback.”

Ex-president Donald Trump, who backed Youngkin but did not campaign for him in person, argued that the Republican’s strong performance at the polls was due to his own base “coming out in force” and voting for the businessman-turned-politician. “Without you, he would not have been close to winning,” Trump said in a statement.

While Youngkin held a sizeable lead over McAuliffe for the most part of Tuesday evening, some argued that the fate of the race was not settled yet, pointing to Virginia’s biggest country, Fairfax, which missed its own 8pm deadline for reporting the results. The delay in the historically blue county prompted conservative commentators to cry foul. 

While the county, typically among the last counties to report its results, was expected to give a major boost to McAuliffe, it would not be enough to tip the balance. The Democrat walked away with 64%, ahead of Youngkin's 35% showing. Third-party candidate Princess Blanding won the remaining 1% of the vote.

The Democrat’s campaign claimed the reporting delay in Fairfax was caused by the need to rescan thousands of early ballots, and it later emerged that some 20,000 votes had to be rescanned due to a “thumb drive failure.”

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