Early voting in Virginia begins Friday. You can find out what’s on your ballot and where the candidates stand in our Voter Guide.
In 2008, when Democrats carried Virginia for the first time in a presidential election since the Lyndon Johnson landslide 44 years earlier, Barack Obama polled 1.95 million votes in the Old Dominion — a record for the party.
In 2020, when Democrats carried Virginia for the fourth time in a row, Joe Biden polled 2.41 million votes, another record in the state.
That represented a gain of 454,036 votes in the Democratic column over a dozen years, a growth rate of 23.17%.
Democrats gained more votes over that time than Republicans did.
Even though he lost the state, John McCain in 2008 polled more votes in Virginia than any previous Republican had — a sign of both higher turnout that year and a growing population. McCain polled 1.725 million votes. By 2020, Trump raised that to 1.962 million, an increase of 237,425 votes, or 13.76%.
Put another way, the Democratic vote from 2008 to 2020 grew almost twice as fast as the Republican vote, a sign of a once-red state turning first purple and then light blue, at least that particular year.
That growth in the Democratic vote hasn’t been evenly distributed. Nearly one-quarter of the new Democratic votes have come in a single county: populous Fairfax County. That’s where 24.1% of the “new” Democratic votes have come from. In all, 60.3% of the “new” Democratic votes have come from Northern Virginia.
That may not seem all that surprising given how blue Northern Virginia has become, and how fast it's been growing (until lately), but it does highlight how much Virginia Democrats have come to rely on a single metro area to win statewide elections.
That figure also obscures some other shifts in the state's electorate over that time period. Here's the big one: While the growth in the Democratic vote has been concentrated in just one part of the state, the Republican vote has been growing almost everywhere, with the notable exception of Northern Virginia.
Put another way, while Northern Virginia has shifted sharply toward Democrats, and other Democratic-voting urban areas have become slightly more Democratic, the rest of the state has generally become more Republican.
In many ways, we already knew all this. What is new (at least to me) is the math that looks not simply at percentages (the way we typically look at election returns) but the raw vote and how that's changed. For instance:
The collapse of the Democratic Party in rural Virginia is, in some ways, a myth. In many parts of rural Virginia (particularly parts of Southside), Biden in 2020 polled only slightly behind what Obama polled in 2008. In Accomack County, for instance, the Democratic vote fell by just 0.38%. In Buckingham County, by just 0.52%. The only place where the Democratic vote has truly collapsed is in the westernmost part of the state. This is an Appalachian phenomenon, not purely a rural one.
What has happened is that Republicans under Trump have increased turnout in rural areas, even in rural areas where population is declining. The 2020 census found that Buchanan County had lost population at a faster rate than any other place in the state — down 15.53% over the previous decade. However, over that same time, the voter turnout in Buchanan County increased by 13.9%, and, statistically speaking, all those new voters were Trump voters. In a county hemorrhaging population, the Republican vote in Buchanan County grew from 4,541 votes for McCain in 2008 to 8,311 votes for Trump in 2020, an increase of 83.02%. That's an extreme example, but the trend is replicated across rural Virginia in lesser numbers. Rural turnout increased, even in places that were losing population, and virtually all that extra vote was for Trump. It has long been a truism in politics that an expanded electorate benefits Democrats, but in rural Virginia, the opposite is true: An expanded electorate has benefited Republicans.
You know what could expand it further? Early voting. Republicans have been reluctant to embrace that innovation with the same fervor as Democrats, yet, at this point, early voting holds more potential opportunity for Republicans than it does for Democrats. If Republicans pushed early voting, and if rural voters in particular took advantage of it, that could help increase turnout in many of these low-voting but intensely Republican rural counties.
I pointed out in a recent column that's part of the reason Trump is competitive in Virginia: He's winning independents — and maximizing support among rural voters, not simply running up landslide margins but increasing turnout beyond what anyone thought was possible in some of those communities.
That raises some immediate questions for this election:
How many more votes can Trump tap out of rural Virginia?
In 2020, 17 of the 20 localities with the biggest increases in turnout voted Republican — led by Dickenson County, which saw an 11.5% increase in turnout from four years before. With that big voter surge, Dickenson County saw a voter turnout of 70.7%. However, Falls Church, a community of nearly the same size but very different politics, saw a voter turnout of 79.1%. Meanwhile, Republican-voting Buchanan County had a turnout of just 64.9%, and Lee County had 64.1%. This means Republicans are still leaving some votes uncast. Rural areas typically have lower turnout for lots of cultural reasons — voter turnout is often tied to education and income. However, these figures show that Trump does have more potential votes in rural areas if he can only mobilize them. How big is that “if”?
How much are pollsters underestimating the Trump vote?
All polls are based on certain models of what the pollster thinks the electorate will look like. I am not a polling skeptic the way some are. However, I do wonder how well some pollsters are measuring the rural turnout. If rural turnout exceeds expectations, that adds “unexpected” votes for Trump. Let's take the example we just cited. If pollsters expect a 64% turnout in Lee County because that's what it was last time, but something elevates that turnout to the same levels as the Democratic stronghold of Falls Church, then the polling model is off, and there are “hidden” Trump votes that the polls won't capture. (I'm certainly not trying to be a Trump cheerleader here; I'm just doing math. The same principle applies to any other voting bloc. If Harris can increase voter turnout among certain Democratic constituencies beyond what they're expected to be, then there are “hidden” Harris voters.)
These figures also have some implications beyond this year's election. Among them:
These voter shifts make some congressional districts less competitive than ever.
The blue shows where the Democratic vote has grown the most in percentage terms; the red shows where it's shrunk in percentage terms.
The red shows where the Republican vote has grown the most in percentage terms; the blue shows where it's shrunk in percentage terms.
In another recent column, I looked at how the 5th District has become more Republican over time. Some of that is a result of redistricting, but much of it is also due to how much bigger the Republican vote is in many places. Conversely, the 10th District in Northern Virginia has become more Democratic, primarily because the Democratic vote in already Democratic Loudoun County has gone up by 63,527 while the Republican vote there has only gone up by 18,752. That's a Democratic gain of 44,775 votes. The Republican gain of 2,930 in Fauquier County next door won't begin to counteract that.
The blue shows where the Democratic vote has grown in raw numbers; the red where it has declined.
The red shows where the raw Republican vote has grown in raw numbers, the blue where it has declined.
These voter shifts make it hard for either party to win a majority in the General Assembly.
Obviously, somebody will win a majority. However, the big drop in the Republican vote in Northern Virginia makes it much harder for Republicans to win in places where they once did. Meanwhile, the growth of the Republican vote in other places makes it harder for Democrats to win there. For instance, one of the closest House of Delegates races last year was in the Petersburg area, where Republican Kim Taylor won by just 53 votes. That's obviously a very competitive district. However, the voter trend in each locality in that district (Dinwiddie County, Petersburg, Prince George County, Surry County) has been in favor of Republicans. Taken together, these trends may have the effect of making it hard for either party to win a large majority.
At some point, Republicans are going to run out of voters.
Trump may have fed Republicans an electoral form of opium. Yes, Republicans may well have more votes they can squeeze out of rural Virginia (see examples above about how turnout lags in some rural counties). However, there is a ceiling somewhere, and Trump may prove to be a unique vote-generator whose success is difficult for future Republicans to replicate. Trump's success in expanding the rural vote also has yet to produce a victory for him in Virginia. He hasn't won the state in two previous tries and may not succeed in his third try, either. Meanwhile, the Democratic vote is increasing statewide, and increasing specifically in some places that used to be Republican strongholds.
Danger signs for both parties.
In recent elections, we've seen Chesterfield County flip from red to blue. Since 2008, Chesterfield has added 6,913 Republican voters, but 32,625 Democratic ones. Keep your eyes on Chesapeake, a city that once trended red and now is up for grabs. Since 2008, it's added 5,555 Republican voters — but 12,383 Democratic ones. Stafford County and Suffolk have also added Democratic voters at a faster rate than Republican ones. In Hanover County, a bastion of conservatism, the Democratic vote is rising at almost the same rate as the Republican vote, which raises questions whether at some point Hanover will start adding more Democrats than Republicans. Since 2008, Hanover has picked up 6,860 Democrats and 6,974 Republicans. York County, which voted for Trump over Biden by 20,421 to 17,683, has seen a big surge in Democrats. Since 2008, York has added 3,983 Democratic voters to just 408 Republican ones.
Let’s look at this another way: The biggest net gains for Republicans are in rural areas where population growth is slow or negative — their biggest gains from 2008 to 2020 were in Bedford County, which saw the addition of 9,732 Republican voters. The biggest net gains for Democrats are in more populous areas, led by 142,477 in Fairfax County.
Republicans risk making short-term gains in rural areas at the expense of long-term gains in the exurbs. Those “extra” Republican votes in rural areas won't help them elect any more legislators there, but those “extra” Democratic votes in exurbs could potentially help their party by tilting some swing districts their way, assuming these trends continue.
That's the danger for Republicans in these trends. The danger for Democrats is that Trump isn't so unique, that other Republicans will be able to maximize the rural vote. Glenn Youngkin is Exhibit A. He's not Trump, but he won thanks to an outsized rural vote. We don't know yet how easy that will be for future Republicans to replicate.
Ultimately, Republicans have a losing hand here in statewide elections — Democrats are adding more voters in Virginia than they are. However, that doesn’t mean they have a losing hand this year or even next year. And while Democrats may be adding more voters in some exurban localities, they may not be adding them in enough places to guarantee themselves a majority in the General Assembly. Republicans need more voters statewide, while both parties need more voters in specific localities.
Which candidate are voters most curious about?
We have more than 500 candidates running for local offices across Southwest and Southside. We've sent questionnaires to all of them and have posted their answers in our Voter Guide. Readers are more interested in some of those candidates than others. In this week's West of the Capital, my weekly political newsletter, I'll tell you which candidates readers are searching for most often. I'll also evaluate the latest presidential poll from Virginia. You can sign up for any of our free newsletters below: