What made Rubio do so well in Virginia during the GOP primaries?

[Deblano]

I would add that, both in Nova and on the coast, military spending is a big thing, and Rubio was definitely the most hawkish of the major candidates.

[HilLarry]

NoVa <333333

[uti2]

It wasn't just NoVa, it was Richmond, Charlottesville, and the Roanoke/Virginia tech area. Rubio was proven this cycle to be the candidate of upper class college educated Republicans, at least early on until he collapsed post Super Tuesday. Virginia is quite quickly becoming a place of top tier economic status, I would say Trump was saved by Kasich being in the race splitting that vote (who was even more of the upper class Republican selection than Rubio).

But yeah, NoVa is obviously a place for a lot of people who work in Washington, and we know that Rubio was loved by them, Trump and Cruz hated.

No, the real reason he did well was due to tons of NOVA democrats voting for him in the open primary trying to 'stop trump'. Trump was consistently up +10 in the rest of Virginia. This was actually a well-reported phenomenon at the time.


You had the whole kkk controversy + the media was constantly bashing Trump at that point:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/02/why-liberals-should-vote-for-marco-rubio/471444/

http://www.fairfaxtimes.com/articles/clinton-trump-win-virginia-overall-rubio-wins-in-fairfax-county/article_4412522c-e031-11e5-88c2-6bdb7adf8580.html

It was never any organic momentum.

[uti2]

Virginia was also completely open; in most places, folk wisdom would suggest that would benefit Trump.  In NoVA, there were a lot of people coming into the polls and sheepishly apologizing to the poll workers for asking for a Republican ballot ("I normally never do this, I swear.").  Kasich also benefited from this, obviously.

Exactly, you can see the news stories from local nova news showing hillary-supporting virginia democrats crossing over trying to 'stop trump', it was all over contemporary twitter too if you search the twitter archives, tons of incidents of democrats crossing over in fairfax.

[Mr. Reactionary]

Myself and a fair amount of anti-Trump people I know voted Rubio because at the time he was the most likely not-Trump candidate who could win. A Dem friend from Loudon voted Rubio because Trump scares her. Several Libertarianish friends in Richmond voted Rubio because they felt Trump was worse. My brother who hates the Clinton family voted Rubio because he thought he had a better chance of beating Hillary. A bluedog friend of mine from Hampton had been making Rubio is a robot jokes days before the primary and ended up voting for him because he thought Cruz was creepier. With the exception of my dad, all the people I have directly talked to who voted Rubio in Virginia did so more as a reaction to Trump than because they purely thought Rubio deserved the vote.

[uti2]

Myself and a fair amount of anti-Trump people I know voted Rubio because at the time he was the most likely not-Trump candidate who could win. A Dem friend from Loudon voted Rubio because Trump scares her. Several Libertarianish friends in Richmond voted Rubio because they felt Trump was worse. My brother who hates the Clinton family voted Rubio because he thought he had a better chance of beating Hillary. A bluedog friend of mine from Hampton had been making Rubio is a robot jokes days before the primary and ended up voting for him because he thought Cruz was creepier. With the exception of my dad, all the people I have directly talked to who voted Rubio in Virginia did so more as a reaction to Trump than because they purely thought Rubio deserved the vote.

The important parts of this paragraph are when you mention the dem crossovers. The bulk of them weren't serious about not backing hillary in general, hence VA polls showed it be one of her strongest states, beating all the republicans quite easily, it had more to do with in-the-moment anti-trump sentiment. You even saw dems temporarily cheer for cruz after his recent convention speech, for instance.