Virginia

[The_Doctor]

Virginia will be a swing state. And given the near misses of the Republicans in 2013 and 2014, there is probably a majority there for a Republican candidate. Romney did not lose that badly in Virginia; he carried 47.26%.

Assuming that as your baseline, a strong Republican campaign can take 49.5% of the state. Which is pretty much what they need to do to win, assuming 1.5% goes to other candidates (as it did in 2012). It's not that far of a leap from 47.26% to 49.5%. In other words, Republicans need just 85,000 more votes to get there, from the Romney total of 1,822,522.

Republicans can compete in Virginia, and Gillespie has demonstrated how a Republican can actually win the state. Particularly the point about outreach in North Virginia. I can't forecast if Virginia will go Republican in 2016, but it is plausible, reasonably so, that it can be Republican.

[The_Doctor]

The point is, however, consistently, statewide Republican candidates have polled in a fashion within the last 3 years to be competitive in Virginia, across all political stripes. Gillespie finished with 48%, Cucinelli 45% (to McAuliffe's 48%), and Romney (47.26%).

Re: the Arlington remark, there is some evidence in fact, that Republicans can make significant inroads into Loudon, Prince William, and Fairfax Counties (less so than the other counties, but still), while dominating Southwest Virginia, that could compose a electoral coalition enough to win the state's 13 electoral votes.

Losing the Presidential race by 4, governorship by 3, and a U.S. Senate seat by less than 1 suggests, when added up, that Republicans still are electorally viable. It does not mean that they will win, but that they do have, in fact, a route to victory.

Re: the latest post. I don't know about the government jobs situation and while that's a possibility, I dispute that demographic drift is going to accelerate enough from 2012 to 2016 to render Virginia unwinnable. In fact, exit polls in 2014 and 2012 show the same amount of demographics at play (70% white, 30% others).