Virginia

[Skill and Chance]

Republicans now have a lock on 47% of the vote in VA (45% with the crazy high libertarian numbers in 2013), but while Dem landslides don't happen, that last 1-2% is incredibly hard for the GOP.  There does seem to be a hard Dem floor with white voters unlike other parts of the South.  They can try to flip Loudoun and Prince William with a culturally Northeastern campaign, but then rural turnout lags, and they seem to have a hard ceiling around 40% in Fairfax and 45% in Henrico.  They can try the rural turnout route like Cuccinelli in 2013, but then they fall to 45% in Prince William and Loudoun and get blown out worse in Fairfax and Henrico.  I also think Sarvis took more votes from the business-oriented Warner and McAuliffe than their opponents.

[Skill and Chance]

Considering Warner was personally popular and expected to win this race handily, yet came within ~20K votes of losing, this shows that Virginia is still a swing state. Yes, it has rapidly trended Democratic over the past 20 years, but trends are not eternal.

2012 was the first election where it voted more Democratic than the country as a whole (after slightly undervoting in 2008), and while that trend is likely to continue, it is not set in stone. This race was more about how a personally popular incumbent can't just take re-election for granted and not do any work to get his base to turn out. 2013 was more about Republicans nominating a bad candidate.

Can Republicans win Virginia? Of course they can. It will just it will get progressively harder over time if current trends continue, and the GOP will have to have their own 2012 to win it safely or risk narrowly losing it in a tied national election, or there will have to be some political shift in the state or the nation that redraws the map.

If Republicans won the Governor's race last year and this Senate race by even a few thousand votes, no doubt they'd be talking about how Virginia is obviously trending Republican. They'd completely miss the point that each race is unique and Virginia is still a swing state.

The Republican campaign in Virginia this year, or lack thereof, shows that the RNC has realized what everybody else already knows - Virginia is to Republicans what Georgia is to Democrats. There simply aren't enough votes for a Republican there.

So, forget about Virginia. The path to 269 runs through other states.

It does remind me a lot of Georgia, but Georgia is better for R's than Virginia is for D's.  They are guaranteed 53% in Georgia and Dems are guaranteed 45%.  In Virginia, barring something very exceptional, D's are guaranteed about 49% and R's about 47%.  The last 2-4% are very hard, but it's better than being 7% back in GA.

[Skill and Chance]

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.

Unless the Republicans make some incredible outreach to Arlington County voters, I don't see the Republicans winning Virginia in 2016.

VA should be inching closer to D+1 in 2016 due to demographic drift.  It's not unwinnable for the GOP, but the last few thousand votes are much harder than in other swing states.

The real trouble starts when the Republicans regain full control federally and start aggressively cutting government jobs.  Enacting the Walker/Ryan GOP platform would irradiate them in NOVA, and if Fairfax starts voting 70% Dem like Arlington, the state will truly become reverse Georgia and fall off the map for good.

[Skill and Chance]

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).

Re-read my post.  I don't think it's anywhere near unwinnable, any more than Florida is unwinnable for Democrats or Iowa was unwinnable for Bush in 2004.  I just think it will be a bit more left of center in 2016, but it would probably vote GOP even in only a 50/48 national victory.