NC is simply a toss-up right now and Hillary got a pretty big announcement bounce. However, Could you imagine if Virginia somehow went to the Republicans and NC to the Democrats and the GOP therefore lost the election? LOL, it would be an epic fail, as epic as ME-02 voting Republican but NE-02 voting Democratic and therefore handing the Dems the election.
If you think about 1992 and the 2008 primary, it's not as farfetched as it sounds. The remaining Clinton Coalition Democrats are a much larger share of the population in NC. And while Clinton can probably get Obama numbers in NOVA, there is a major question of turnout in the other Democratic strongholds. And if coal country didn't come back for Warner, it won't come back for her. In short, it's possible to imagine VA and NC being within 1-2% of each other in 2016.
Yeah, if I were the Democrats, I'd be pretty nervous about Virginia and not take anything for granted. Even if she absorbs some of his staffers, she's not Obama and I don't think she could expect a 5+ point win there.
Maybe I'm overreacting to the midterm election there, but it seems like as the Democrats gain in NoVa, they lose other parts of the state; it doesn't seem like Virginia was as easily realigned as people thought---certainly not as much so as Nevada and New Mexico in the General.
