Virginia Election Results: Why Webb Will Win--The Final Precincts

[See updates at bottom--this one's over. CNN is missing the story.]

Here's where it stands in Virginia as of 1:30 a.m., with the Curmudgeon about to go to bed:

(All data is from the Virginia State Board of Elections website)

Webb leads by 1524 votes with only 13 precincts yet to report, out of 2443 total precincts.

The precincts that have not yet reported are almost all absentee ballots, mostly from larger counties/cities that gave Webb pretty wide margins of victory.

Those include absentee ballots in Arlington County, Fairfax County, Fairfax City and Richmond City, all of which went heavily for (56% to 72%) for Webb. In addition, there are absentee ballots from Loudon county, which went narrowly for Webb. There are also two regular precincts yet to report from Richmond City, which Webb carried by a margin of 72%-26%. All of these are large jurisdictions with lots of absentee ballots.

The remaining precincts are absentee ballots and a couple of missing regular precincts from smaller counties that went for Allen: Halifax, Isle of Wight, and James City County.

Even if the absentee ballots tilt a bit more Republican than the election day ballots, we think Webb will run up an additional margin of several thousand votes by the time all the ballots are counted (as much as 10,000--there are thousands of absentee ballots in Fairfax and Arlington).

We hope we're right.

Oh, and as for a recount: we had one last year in the Attorney General race. The margin was less than a 1000 votes and a complete statewide recount resulted in a change of only a handful. If Webb is up by several thousand votes, that should be it.

UPDATE 1:

We didn't go to bed yet, but our analysis is right. As of 2:00 a.m., Webb's lead has increased to 7811 votes after Fairfax and Arlington reported their absentee ballots and Richmond reported two missing precincts.

There are now only 9 precincts left, one of which is Richmond City's absentee ballots. We expect Webb to win by about 10,000 votes!

Update 2:

With 8 precincts left, Webb is up by 7634. The most recent precinct to report was Virginia Beach City, which gave Allen a slight margin on absentee ballots. We expect Webb to pick up a couple thousand votes from Richmond City and Fairfax City absentee ballots, and Allen to pick up a few hundred votes from the smaller counties that are still out.