270 to Win

WHERE DO WE STAND?

DATA FROM ASSOCIATED PRESS

GRAPHIC BY ALYSSA SLOVIN

Virginia is known as a purple state, or a battleground state, when it comes to politics. However, recent elections have shown consistent patterns of favor of the Democratic Party. This year’s election turned out no different, with Virginia staying decidedly blue.

Shortly before noon on Saturday, Nov. 7, former Vice President Joe Biden was named president-elect following his victory in Pennsylvania. He defeated incumbent President Donald Trump after a dramatic campaign that unfolded amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and national reckonings for racial justice. Biden and his running mate, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, won the presidential race  after performing strongly in the oft-mentioned “blue wall” states — Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan — which fell to Trump in his surprise victory four years ago. Pending final certification at the time of writing, the Biden-Harris ticket is also poised to flip  Georgia, states that hadn’t voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since the 20th century.

Before the race was called, millions of Americans spent election week lasering in on precinct-level maps of essential swing states across the country, doting over vote batches coming out of Maricopa County, Arizona and staring at absentee ballot totals in Erie County, Pennsylvania. Just two presidential elections ago, Virginia occupied this crucial spot in American politics, as eyes would turn to close contests in the suburban counties of Fairfax, Prince William, and Loudoun on a perennial basis. 

Now, the commonwealth is hardly on the periphery of the American election-watching public. In 2020, Virginia shed its early-2010s reputation as a ‘battleground’ state and voted handily for Biden by a whopping 10 points, while simultaneously supporting incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Warner in a landslide victory. Of Virginia’s seven Democratic congressional representatives, all won re-election. Most notably, Reps. Elaine Luria and Abigail Spanberger secured second terms in Washington, D.C. despite facing stiff challenges from Republican candidates in conservative-leaning districts.

Seemingly overnight, Virginia has become a reliably blue state, mirroring the electoral patterns of similarly diverse and suburban states like Colorado and Nevada thousands of miles away. The Flat Hat Magazine sought to contextualise the commonwealth’s recent leftward trend by analyzing how the state’s different regions and demographics are creating a political environment ripe for Democratic success.

Virginia’s political evolution is a shockingly new phenomenon to outsiders and residents alike. Before the 2008 presidential election, Virginia had not voted for a Democrat for president since 1964, when Lyndon Johnson carried the state in a national landslide. After Mr Johnson’s rout, Virginia switched back to supporting Republican presidential nominees for almost four decades. The commonwealth’s uninterrupted Republican streak from 1968 to 2004 perfectly aligns with the track records of nine other states — Utah, South Dakota, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Kansas, Nebraska, Indiana, Idaho, and Alaska — all of which voted overwhelmingly for Mr Trump last week.

While the partisan makeup of Virginia’s congressional delegations and statewide legislative assembly fluctuated during the latter half of the 20th century, Virginia entered the 2000s with exclusively Republican statewide office holders, including the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and both US senators. The 2000 presidential election, while extremely close in the national popular vote and Electoral College, was a blowout in Virginia — Texas Governor George Bush beat Vice President Al Gore by more than eight points, solidifying the commonwealth as a bastion of conservatism.

Everything was different after 2008. Insurgent Illinois Sen. Barack Obama flipped Virginia back into the Democratic column with an impressive six-point margin and won the state in 2012 by a slightly-reduced four points. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton prevailed in Virginia by more than five points even as she lost several Democratic strongholds in the upper Midwest, foreshadowing Democratic successes in the 2017 and 2019 statewide elections and setting the stage for Mr Biden’s staggering 10-point victory last week.

Virginia’s rapid leftward movement since the 2008 election is emblematic of an evolutionary shift within the Democratic Party. Massive gains among well-educated suburbanites, coupled with steadfast support from communities of colour, have uplifted center-left candidates across the country since Obama set the stage for success more than a decade ago — and there’s no better place to see these trends actualised than in the commonwealth.

The Democratic Party’s success in Virginia stems from its strength in three principal regions: Northern Virginia, suburban Richmond, and Hampton Roads. In Northern Virginia, Biden ran up the score by racking huge margins in the counties of Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince William, securing nearly 70 per cent of the vote in Fairfax, which according to US Census estimates is now home to almost 14 per cent of the state’s population. He also did strongly in the suburban counties of Chesterfield and Henrico immediately outside Richmond and overperformed Clinton’s margins in Tidewater Virginia, notably flipping James City County, which envelops the City of Williamsburg and the College of William and Mary.

Biden also improved the Democratic ticket’s vote share even in counties it lost, as seen in the “vote swing” map tracking changes in vote share from the 2016 presidential election. Every county coloured in blue reported a higher vote share for the Biden-Harris ticket than for the Clinton-Kaine ticket four years ago, demonstrating Biden’s appeal in eastern Virginia and among the state’s suburban and exurban cores.

Notably, Democrats continued to lose ground in western Virginia following Clinton’s dismal performance in rural counties bordering West Virginia in 2016. While Biden and Democrats up and down the ballot have enjoyed vast success in the state’s three most populous regions, they face existential struggles in the commonwealth’s westernmost regions, though decreasing populations in these areas limit the influence they play in statewide politics. 

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam won his statewide election in 2017 with a similar strategy to Clinton and Biden: focus on the state’s suburban regions in the east, particularly by running up the score in Northern Virginia and the Hampton Roads area. Tracking vote swing in counties between the 2009 gubernatorial race and Northam’s victory in 2017 shows this tactic in action, as Democrats prioritised their efforts in the east while hemorrhaging support in rural, mountainous Virginia. 

Shifting demographic and geographical concentrations of power in Virginia will make it difficult for Republicans to regain strength in the state, unless they can credibly draw suburban, well-educated voters out of the Democratic fold and back into the red. Most political junkies can hardly stomach the thought after emerging from a contentious and competitive general election season, but in just 12 months, Virginia voters will elect a new governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and 100 delegates to the General Assembly’s lower chamber. If neither the Democrats nor the Republicans change their agenda and messaging before November 2021, Virginia’s blue trend line shows no sign of stopping any time soon.