Are the northern VA burbs strong enough to carry the state on its own?

[sg0508]

After yet another democratic win in which the vote tally wasn't quite as strong as to what we're used to seeing now in the VA suburbs, is Fairfax strong enough to carry the state on its own, or do you think democrats still need help in the collar (i.e. Prince William) and downstate towards VA Beach at this point?

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Obviously not if this is what was needed to get McAuliffe by by 2.48%.

[sg0508]

My point was that TMac was pretty weak elsewhere, south and west, although again, VA Beach was split down the middle, which even 10 years ago you wouldn't see.

[DINGO Joe]

I actually expected McAuliffe to win Va Beach.  McAuliffe won metro Richmond and the Tidewater.  Obviously you need to win more than NoVA, but you don't need to win old Virginia anymore.  Haven't had to for awhile.

[Skill and Chance]

NOVA is part of it but it doesn't explain everything.  McAuliffe outperformed Obama in the 2 party vote in Fairfax/Arlington/Alexandria but also in Henrico, Albemarle/Charlottesville and some Hampton Roads areas.  This means that the GOP winning path necessarily goes through the outer suburbs from now one.  The Appalachian turnout strategy is gone for R's after Cuccinelli. 

On a related note, that swing along the Potomac River makes me wonder if McAuliffe might have won VA-10?

[pbrower2a]

Virginia is 20% black, one of the highest percentages in America.  Virginia is a fairly-rich state, so it has a large black middle class, and in view of its competence in political leadership such will make politics much tougher for Republicans who have thrown away any reasonable chance of gains among the black middle class. Add the government employees and contractors who know that Big Government is preferable to low taxes, the GOP gets reduced to rural white voters whether in Appalachia or in true farm country.

Rural interests used to dominate Virginia politics -- but that is over. 

[Filuwaúrdjan]

That's not how elections work.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Rural interests used to dominate Virginia politics -- but that is over. 

Hardly anyone who posts on this forum was alive when it was still possible to seriously claim that the politics of Virginia was dominated by rural interests.

[Beet]

That's not how elections work.

Right. This forum is really regressing...

[IceSpear]

This means that the GOP winning path necessarily goes through the outer suburbs from now one.  The Appalachian turnout strategy is gone for R's after Cuccinelli. 

Everyone said that the strategy of focusing solely on the white vote was dead after 2012, but the GOP seems to have doubled down on it.

[Non Swing Voter]

After yet another democratic win in which the vote tally wasn't quite as strong as to what we're used to seeing now in the VA suburbs, is Fairfax strong enough to carry the state on its own, or do you think democrats still need help in the collar (i.e. Prince William) and downstate towards VA Beach at this point?

Short Answer: No

Long Answer: NOVA (particularly Fairfax) is becoming a larger and larger portion of the equation.

Currently if you look at the Virginia vote, roughly 1/3 of the vote comes from NOVA.  NOVA is loosely defined, but usually it consists of the two inner DC suburbs (which are basically just extensions of DC), Alexandria and Arlington.  Then you have Fairfax, then you have Loudon and PW counties right after Fairfax.

What has basically been happening over the last 20 years and continues to happen today is that city folks from DC move into Arlington and Alexandria (or go there initially).  After a while they start transitioning to Fairfax.  But Fairfax isn't all that big and the population is getting very dense, so affordability and congestion have become issues, this has pushed some Fairfax people into the collar counties that are cheaper to live in and less urban.  As the DC-centric people have moved further and further out, the areas are becoming more and more socially liberal.  The collar counties are basically as moderate as Fairfax was 10-20 years ago, meanwhile Fairfax is voting almost like Arlington and Alexandria were.  Arlington and Alexandria, though not gaining all that much in population are voting more like DC proper, where democrats can run up huge margins. 

So basically, Fairfax is only one part of the equation even in NOVA.

Now right now NOVA is about 30% of the vote.  But that is increasing and will probably hit 40% of the vote in the next 15 to 20 years because of rapid population growth coupled with minor population loss in Southwest Virginia.

When NOVA hits 40% of the state population, game over for Republicans unless they drastically change their position on almost every social issue (particularly abortion, gay marriage, and gun control)... which they won't do because the party is centered around those issues.  This is because democrats are starting to rack up huge margins in NOVA.  They tend to win the inner DC precincts by as much as 10-1 margins, they win Fairfax by 20 point margins and they win the collar counties by decent margins.  Only in the Southwest do Republicans win by equally strong margins, but Southwest Virginia is maybe 1/5 the population of NOVA at most.

Until NOVA hits 40%, Democrats must supplement their showing in NOVA in other areas, because they lose most of the rural counties throughout the state.  There are a few key areas where they pick up these votes.

1) Richmond metro area.  Though it's relatively small, they win by huge margins.

2) College towns like Charlottesville... again, small but they win by overwhelming margins (i.e., I think they typically win Charlottesville by something like 10,000 to 1,000 votes).

3) Virginia Beach region.  They are doing better here, but really they just need to split the vote here overall.  This is probably the second population base in the state after NOVA.  There are strong Republican and Democrat areas.  When Democrats win this region overall, it's impossible for Republicans to win statewide.  If they lose it just slightly, they are at an advantage overall because Republicans can't compensate for their losses in NOVA.

In sum, Virginia is a lot like Florida.  NOVA provides the base that Democrats get in the South Florida population center.  The panhandle of Florida is like the Southwest in Virginia.  The Virginia Beach region is kind of like the I-4 corridor.

The difference is that Virginia tilts two notches more to the left because the southwest is weaker than the panhandle is.  So, basically Democrats need to win the I-4 corridor (Tampa, Orlando, etc.) to win statewide, whereas Democrats just need to break even in the Virginia Beach region to win statewide.

As NOVA increases in population, Virginia will be more like Oregon or Washington.  Democrats will be able to just rely on the urban population center to carry the state as long as they carry a few of the other small cities like Richmond.

Right now Virginia is between Florida and Oregon, but I would say it's closer to Oregon because there aren't that many swing voters, and there are more reliably democratic voters now than reliably republican voters.

But until NOV

[ElectionsGuy]

Pretty much, although rural areas are still getting more republican keeping Virginia competitive. But Northern Virginia is growing larger than the rest of Virginia is getting more republican. So in the end, its trending democratic.

[DINGO Joe]

Just looking at past elections, the continued shift of metro Richmond towards the Dems is quite noticeable.  Jimmy Carter basically lost VA in 1976 because of metro Richmond (Carter won the Tidewater and  narrowly lost NoVa)--now it's a constant for the Dems, and Northam utterly destroyed Jackson in the metro. 

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Obviously Democrats still need 'help downstate'; Hampton Roads, Richmond, and Democratic votes in parts of the state that Democrats don't win overall are still absolutely necessary and will be for the foreseeable future. The talking points about NOVA and how it's driving Virginia's political shift are accurate to a point but 'driving' a political shift and being the whole scope of that shift are very, very different animals, and it's frankly specious to claim that the latter is very often the case at all.

[ag]

It will be interesting to see, what is the impact of the Silver line on the Tyson´s corner going to be. Will the population there grow, or will it just be all reverse commuting? Could it, actually, reduce the resident population?

[LastVoter]

It will be interesting to see, what is the impact of the Silver line on the Tyson´s corner going to be. Will the population there grow, or will it just be all reverse commuting? Could it, actually, reduce the resident population?

Doesn't DC have pretty strong NIMBY forces?

[Adam Griffin]

These aren't realistic scenarios per se, but I'll attempt to shed light on the power that NoVA does have (the answer itself is a bit hard to quantify; with uniform swings to Republicans across the state of more than two points, the answer is no). Some quick calculations suggest that if all non-NOVA counties (south of Prince William; cities left unchanged) were close but all went for Cuccinelli (R <40%), then Cuccinelli would have won by roughly the same margin as McAuliffe:

Cuccinelli: 1,062,826 (47.96%)
McAuliffe: 1,009,782 (45.52%)
Sarvis: 145,295 (6.52%)



The above scenario is super-unrealistic - areas such as Richmond, Hampton Roads and Norfolk would never come close to going Republican. Now let's add them back in at full power, but leave the other areas as high-40 victories for Cuccinelli:

McAuliffe: 1,042,891 (47.06%)
Cuccinelli: 1,028,721 (46.42%)
Sarvis: 145,295 (6.52%)



Pretty cool - but yeah, basically. This is in an off-year, ffs. The combination of Sarvis and Cuccinelli certainly gave the race an interesting dynamic, but four more years even with a credible Republican candidate may produce similar electoral results as seen last week (2-3 point win for Dem).

[Non Swing Voter]

It will be interesting to see, what is the impact of the Silver line on the Tyson´s corner going to be. Will the population there grow, or will it just be all reverse commuting? Could it, actually, reduce the resident population?

That's going to increase the NOVA population.  DC has height restrictions on the buildings and is getting extremely built up.  NOVA is already pretty expensive but if the further out burbs become commutable that will draw more residents out of the inner city that might otherwise go to Maryland.

[Non Swing Voter]

I can't remember where from, but there was a pretty good article recently that detailed how the government shutdown and sarvis and Obamacare were all slight distractions but the turnout models and percentages ended up being exactly what McAuliffe's team was planning on (3% win).  Basically their only strategy was to mirror the voter demographics that appeared in the 2012 election that Obama won.  They knew there would be overall dropoff but they wanted the same percentage of the vote to come from the correct precincts in NOVA.  They basically did this exactly and the spike in voting in this governor's race vs. the McDonald race was almost all in NOVA. 

Basically the point was that there aren't really that many swing voters so as long as democrats can get the electorate to mirror the demographics of the state, they will slightly win the statewide vote (mostly based on NOVA).

[Adam Griffin]

This is pretty cool:

[DINGO Joe]

The AG race was actually more skewed than the Gov. race as Herring won NoVa by a slightly larger margin than McAuliffe, but obviously did worse outside of NoVa.  In Herring's case, the area that he slightly outperformed McAuliffe could be cast as greater NoVa as it included Stafford, Spotsylvania/Fredericksburg, Fauquier, Clarke and even Frederick. 

I believe Herring was outspent as money was funneled to Obenshain to try to stop a sweep so maybe Herring's performance beyond NoVa was due in part to lack of name recognition plus the usual erosion in voting in minority precincts further down the ballot.

[Non Swing Voter]

This is pretty cool:

That map perfectly illustrates the problem for Republicans, there's less red on that map than there is blue.  The only reason Republicans are making it competitive is because there is more dark red than there is dark blue.  That will hold up because there aren't that many counties where democrats will win 70% of the vote, however, the map is going to get more blue overall over the next few elections.  So the only way to compensate will be for Republicans to turn more red counties into dark red counties or win the dark red counties by even larger margins.

[old timey villain]

I read a great comment on some political site on election night. It was something like, "It looks like Cuccinelli is winning about 90% of the state but he's still losing! There must be some serious voter fraud going on in Virginia."

[IceSpear]

I read a great comment on some political site on election night. It was something like, "It looks like Cuccinelli is winning about 90% of the state but he's still losing! There must be some serious voter fraud going on in Virginia."

Cows and corn don't vote, silly Republicans.

Though I wouldn't be surprised to see one introduce a bill to try to correlate votes with acreage.

[sg0508]

I read a great comment on some political site on election night. It was something like, "It looks like Cuccinelli is winning about 90% of the state but he's still losing! There must be some serious voter fraud going on in Virginia."

Nah.  That's urban voting vs. rural voting.  Look back for example at the state of NY in presidential races from 1960-1988.  Outside of 1964, the GOP carried almost every county in the state and yet, they only carried NY in '72, '80 and '84.