Everyone keeps making the same lizard people nonsense. It simply isn’t true in Virginia.
Virginia had a “red mirage” because conservatives voted in person and mostly on Election Day. You can verify this from the precinct data on the Virginia Department of Elections website.
Precincts that were never won by the GOP had unheard of swings all around the Commonwealth, but if you compare the raw votes to previous elections, it’s very easy to see what happened.
I’ll give you one example. Look at the Ivy Precinct in Albemarle
County.
Donald Trump narrowly “won” this precinct in 2020. 49-47. However if you look at the raw number of voters you will see that something is very, very wrong in that less than 1000 votes were recorded in the precinct.
In 2004 (the last time the GOP carried Virginia in a Presidential race) Kerry won this precinct with 53% of the vote and there were over 2300 votes in the precinct.
Do you really think that 1300 voters disappeared between 2004 and 2020?
In every single local you can see the central absentee (mail in vote totals) off the charts in 2020.
Republicans voted in person. Democrats voted by mail. The mail in votes are ALWAYS the last votes counted and posted. Legally the local election boards weren’t supposed to touch them until election night. Hence, you get the in person vote totals first, making it look like a massive landslide for President Trump and THEN the mail votes drop.