Virginia’s presidential primary reveals weaknesses for both Biden and Trump

The big winners Tuesday night were Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

The big losers Tuesday night were also Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

Both rolled to easy victories over what little primary opposition they had. But the way both won also highlighted the weaknesses each candidate has as they look toward the general election.

For Trump, the problem is that the Republican Party is not united behind him. There remains substantial resistance to Trump, although it’s confined mostly among suburban voters. Those don’t matter much in a Republican primary; they will in a general election.

For Biden, the problem is lack of enthusiasm. In a primary with only token opposition, that didn’t matter, but if it carries over into the fall, it will. 

Let’s take a closer look at what the runaway results in Virginia told us beneath the surface.

Biden has an enthusiasm problem

Four years ago, more than 1.3 million Virginians voted in the Democratic primary, the most ever in any Virginia presidential primary for either party. 

This year, the Democratic vote total stands at 344,469 with 95% of the vote reporting. That means Virginia Democrats could wind up with their lowest vote total in a presidential primary ever. The lowest on record is 364,899 in 1988, the first year Democrats held a presidential primary in the Old Dominion.

There are completely understandable reasons for that drop-off: In 2020, Biden was still competing for the nomination against Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Michael Bloomberg. This time, he had the next best thing to an uncontested nomination. Still, it would have been better for Biden to have had a bigger turnout on the Democratic side. 

Enthusiasm isn’t like a faucet that you can turn on and off. It’s more like a pan of water heating on the stove — it builds gradually. Biden needs to be building that enthusiasm now; he can’t just snap his fingers in the fall and have people get excited.

We have lots of evidence, besides Tuesday’s vote totals, that Democrats are lukewarm about their standard-bearer. The latest Roanoke College poll found that only 41% of Democrats surveyed felt the country was headed in the right direction. You’d think that with a Democratic president, Democrats would feel better. They don’t. Only 63% of Democrats in that survey approve of the job Biden is doing. That’s almost two-thirds but, by contrast, 80% of Republicans approve of the job that Gov. Glenn Youngkin is doing. Republicans in that survey gave much higher favorability ratings to their likely nominee (81% for Trump) than Democrats did theirs (69%). 

These should all be warning signs for Democrats. If Biden loses in November, they will look back on all these figures and realize they were in trouble all along. Then again, many Democrats weren’t rah-rah about Biden in 2020, but he wasn’t Trump and that was enough to get them fired up. We’ll see if that works again. 

Trump might have an enthusiasm problem, too

With 95% of the precincts reporting, the Republican vote tally was 689,327. That will rise some, of course, as those remaining precincts come in. But we’re still looking at a turnout that’s well below the 1,025,617 Virginians who voted in the last Republican presidential primary in 2016. 

As with Democrats in 2020, that primary was more in doubt so there were more reasons to vote. Still, the numbers are down. When we look deeper into the numbers, we can find reasons for Republicans to be concerned just as we can find reasons for Democrats to worry. Before we get to those, let’s look at some other trends.

Trump remakes party in his image, but faces resistance in the suburbs

Over eight years, Trump has remade the Republican Party in his image. Eight years ago, he eked out a primary win in Virginia with 34.8% of the vote to Marco Rubio’s 32.0%. This time Trump rolled up 63.2% of the vote while Nikki Haley came in at 34.7% of the vote. Roughly speaking, that Rubio/Haley faction of the party — whatever you want to call it — hasn’t changed, but Trump has commandeered everything else. 

We can see that on the local level, too. Trump won some localities in 2024 that he didn’t in 2016. For instance, then he lost Goochland County, taking just 33.6% of the vote to Rubio’s 35.1%. This time around, Trump took 60.8% of the vote in Goochland, to Haley’s 37.8%. 

What used to be the Party of Reagan is now the Party of Trump — at least in some places. It’s those geographical divisions, which are really demographic divisions, where Trump’s weaknesses are exposed.

Trump has always been weakest with college-educated voters and suburban voters, two groups that often overlap. He was weak again Tuesday. Haley defeated him by landslide margins in Northern Virginia — she took 75.1% in Falls Church, 73.7% of the vote in Arlington, 71.4% in Alexandria, 57.7% in Fairfax County. She also won by wide margins in a few other places with similar demographics, at least on the Republican side — she took 73.6% of the vote in Charlottesville, 66.5% in Richmond, 54.6% in Albemarle County.

But Trump thrashed her across the rest of the state, nowhere more soundly than in rural Southwest and Southside. In some Southwest Virginia counties, he topped 90% of the vote — hitting 91.8% in Wise County, 92.5% in Dickenson County and 95.5% of the vote in Buchanan County. In other parts of Southwest and across Southside, Trump polled just shy of 90% of the vote in one locality after another. The vote tallies there may be small, but the margins are so wide that after a while they add up to more than enough to wipe out Haley’s margins elsewhere. 

In effect, Tuesday’s primary revealed two different Republican parties. It also showed the power of rural voters. Rural voters may be a declining share of the population but they still exert a  powerful influence on the outcome because they vote as a bloc by such overwhelming margins. At a time when the nation is becoming more urban, rural voters have become more important, not less so — at least within the Republican Party. Both Republicans who hope to rid themselves of Trump, and Democrats who hope to defeat Trump, must come to grips with this key electoral fact. For them, the danger is their inability to make any inroads whatsoever with rural voters. For Trump Republicans, the danger is their candidate’s inability to sell himself to suburban voters. 

The mystery of the ‘missing Republicans’

Loudoun County has become something of a Rorschach test for Virginia elections. What’s it telling us this time? Eight years ago, Trump lost the county in the Republican primary, polling 14,427 votes, or just 27.9%. This time, Trump expanded his vote tally in Loudoun County to 16,473 votes — and this time carried the county with 51.8% of the vote. Sharp-eyed vote counters have already spotted what’s going on: While Trump’s base expanded by about 2,000 votes, his winning percentage jumped bigly, as Trump himself might say, but only because there were fewer voters overall. The total Republican vote tally in Loudoun fell from 51,750 to 31,834. 

This fits the overall pattern. Trump polled more votes than any Republican ever has in a Virginia presidential primary (topping his own record in 2016), but he did it in an environment where there were fewer Republican primary voters overall. Trump may be expanding his base but is he shrinking the Republican Party overall? That’s the big question.

So who were these “missing Republicans” — and do they matter? Here’s what to pay attention to: Eight years ago, Loudoun had 20,854 Rubio voters. This year, it had 14,606 Haley voters. Some of those “missing Republicans” may simply be Republicans who didn’t see much reason to vote this time but will dutifully cast a Republican vote this fall. Trump supporters need not worry much about them. However, 6,248 of those “missing” Republican voters are Rubio voters who weren’t around to back Haley this time. Trump supporters ought to worry about them. If those voters grudgingly back Trump, then all is well from a Trump perspective. But if those are voters who have simply quit identifying as Republicans, at least as long as Trump is on the ballot, then it is a problem.

We can see the same thing, in smaller numbers, elsewhere. 

Let’s look at Trump’s best locality, both then and now: Buchanan County. Eight years ago, Trump took 1,588 votes there in the primary. This time, he took 1,390. Maybe that decline doesn’t matter that much — a combination, perhaps, of a less exciting election and population loss. However, eight years ago, Buchanan County had 313 Rubio voters. This time it had just 60 Haley voters. 

For those who’d like a Roanoke example, here it is. Eight years ago, Trump won 147 votes in the Raleigh Court precinct. This time, he won 145 — almost no change whatsoever. What really changed over that time is that eight years ago Rubio polled 197 votes in Raleigh Court; this time Haley polled 156. That’s a modest decline, but still a decline — and we see that over and over across the state.  

Where have those voters gone? More importantly, what will they do in November? That’s what ought to worry Republicans — and give some hope to Democrats who otherwise may be dispirited by Biden’s performance. Even if Biden isn’t exciting Democrats, he might be able to once again persuade some old-line Republicans that he’s a better choice than Trump. That’s one of the things November’s election will hinge on.