If you haven’t heard of Rachel Bitecofer of the Wason Center for Public Policy, she’s the political scientist/analyst who shot down famed Larry Sabato’s 2017 VA GOV toss-up prediction, and boldly predicted a huge blue wave. Months before that election, back in July 2017, Bitecofer accurately predicted the growing blue wave with Dems easily sweeping the statewide races and flipping 6-7 state house seats. As we know, Dems beat even her bold predictions, flipping15 seats.
In July 2018, Bitecofer made another bold prediction, Dems would flip 42 seats and gain control of US House of Representatives.
Ever since she’s been pushing back hard on twitter against the all male prognosticator club, who stubbornly or timidly, stuck to rating many of those races as “toss-ups.”
Today, Bitecofer responded to NYT's Nate Cohn’s tweet regarding possible incorrect turnout models.
As of today, 538, Larry Sabato and Cook all currently rate VA-2 and VA-7 as toss-ups or Lean R.
However, with absentee ballots currently up 92% statewide in VA from 2017, Bitecofer sees a real possibility of a blue tsunami heading for VA-2, VA-7 and VA-10.