Election with a ten seat majority in the chamber. the washington post is currently reporting, 40 seats for the democrats, and 41 seats for the republicans. leaving 19 seats with the results unknown, washroom in from the cook political report tweeted this earlier, dems appeared to have averted an outright gop majority in the virginia house of delegates, by my count, dems are currently leading by 2% or less. in five races, if those winds hold, 50 democrats, 50 republicans, tie. joining me now is charniele herring she s the majority leader of the house delicate former chair of the democratic party of virginia. she s also the co-chair of mcauliffe s campaign. delegate herring good to talk to. you things for being with us tonight. first of all we have a lot of ground to cover tonight, but do you know, information that s more updated than what s wasserman had about the state of the race for the virginia house of delegates right now?
not right now, what we are doing is we re still waiting for some to report, we have provisional ballots, that will need to be cured. and canvassed. we are not giving up, there is no more information, there s just a lot of races out there that are closed, we have races that have been competitive two years ago, which is waiting to see. okay you are also the co-chair of the mcauliffe campaign. this was not looking like the outcome several weeks ago. what do you make of what happened tonight. with the election of glenn youngkin? right now, i m still trying to assess it, i will say that my focus, because i am the leader in the house, my focus has been on my candidates, but there has been, i watched the earlier segment, in the breakout. virginia, what s important to virginians. and of course our economy is important to virginians.
Plurality youngkin was at 43, mcauliffe wins that 50, this chart shows economy and jobs number one concern, and education is number two key concern. taxes number three. youngkin talked about education in new speech, first and taxes. but this is intriguing to me. that the economy leads, and youngkin leads because of the economy. absolutely. mcauliffe made about here that he would hug joe biden. and however people felt about joe biden s economy as people put, it that is how they would see this race. that s exactly what s the youngkin camp that on. they end up winning that back. this matters every year. the idea of national races, or the nationalizations of local and state races, but even more so, nowadays. especially when the administration, sent president biden, vice president kamala
We have a strong economy, as well as increasing our workers rights. at the same time education, i m sure that there will be a deep freeze about what happened. and again, i m sure the mcauliffe camp, we re still waiting for all the provisional ballots. they need to be canvassed and counted. obviously virginia is a big state, it s an important state. you have real local issues. and the tea leaf readers tonight, are all trying to figure out how much of this is about virginia, how much this is about youngkin in mcauliffe. and how much this is about biden and democrats at a larger level. our exit polling asked one question, one reason for your vote for governor today? to express opposition to joe biden 28% of people said so, to express so port for joe biden, 20% said, so joe biden was not a factor. it was actually the biggest group. that was 48%. for all those who are saying this is some kind of referendum, and what s going on with joe
Good evening good morning and welcome to msnbc s special election coverage. and was too close to call for much of the night, at 12:30 am nbc news projected that republican glenn youngkin will be the next government of the commonwealth of virginia. he defeated terry mcauliffe the democrat who previously served as virginia s governor from 2014, to 2018. but the emerging story right now is how close it is in new jersey. where democratic governor phil murphy is running for a second term against republican challenger eric schiller elie,