With the 2012 results, are VA/CO slowly becoming D leans and not 50/50?

[tokar]

Virginia is a tough case...

Presidentially, it is probably a SLIGHT DEM lean. There have been 900,000+ new voter registrations in Virginia in the past 8 years. I have been trying to find registration data by county, but it is all broken down by locality AND MONTH. Forget trying to sort through all that to get the information I want (registration by county per year). I will venture a guess and say that the majority of those registrations were to the 5 NoVA counties (Fairfax, Arlington, Alexandria, Loudon, Prince William), indicating the state has become a lot more democratic. 1/3rd of the vote comes from these 5 counties (akin to Pennsylvania and its 5 major counties of Montgomery, Philadelphia, Bucks, Chester, Delaware). But, like other people have been alluding to, it is all about turnout. While Virginia has that nice 33% vote from the 5 counties, the state doesn't have the luxury of leaning on one particular county like Pennsylvania does with Philadelphia.

I calculated the numbers. In 2008, the vote margin in Philadelphia ALONE covered the vote margin in Republican-won counties, and then some. Philadelphia margin was 478.7k, the sum of the Republican-won counties was 317.9k.
In 2012, the republican-won counties beat out Philadelphia's margin by a mere 10,000 votes (477.7k to 467.2k).
With good turnout, Democrats can just lean on Philadelphia, which is why the PVI is a DEM lean. This is not the case as I am seeing in the numbers for Virginia. I mean, it is CLOSE, but not there yet.
In 2008, the vote margin in republican-won counties was 262.3k, while the 8 localities of Northern VA (Loudon, Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax, Prince William, Fairfax City, Manassas City, Falls Church City) accounted for a margin of 250.9k. A difference of ~12k.
In 2012, the vote margin in republican-won counties was 346.3k, while the vote margin in the aforementioned Nothern VA localities was 280.2k. A difference of ~66k. Dem margin in NoVA went up, but so did the margin in republican-won counties, at a larger clip than NoVA did (+84k vs +30k in NoVA).
Thankfully for Democrats there are a handful of other vote-sinks in Virginia (Norfolk, Richmond, Charlottesville). Add in just Richmond City in 2008, and the margin covers the republican-won counties. Add in Richmond City in 2012 and Dems are still short 15k. Add in Norfolk and it is covered by 15k.

I mean the numbers are there, but until margins are great enough where we don't have to wait for 90% of the vote tallied for NBC/ABC/FOX to make a call, it wont be lean DEM. I think the reason that the news organizations are able to call Pennsylvania so early is that they can just determine the turnout in the 5 Philly counties and see if the margins will be there. With Virginia the margins in most counties are rather thin, so we have to wait for returns in many democratic counties before determining.


One other point with Virginia...
While Obama and Tim Kaine got the majority of the popular vote in the state, Republicans received a higher percent of the vote in the house elections, 1.877m to 1.806m (a margin of 70.7k votes).
(Pennsylvania DEM's received 2.703m votes to GOP's 2.627m votes in house elections, a margin of 75.9k votes).

I only analyzed the two states I know best. I am sure it is a similar story with other states as well, just like Colorado (i.e. the margins in the Denver area are enough, overall, to overtake all Republican-won counties, but the margins are probably too slim to the point where the news organizations have to wait for a good portion of the vote to be counted).