You suffer an unexpected illness and go to the doctor. The doctor comes in with a bunch of X-rays and lab results.
The natural question is: “How bad is it?”
That’s the position Democrats are in after the presidential election. I’m no doctor, but I did portray one in a high school play at the now-defunct Montevideo High School in Rockingham County “back in the day.” I do, however, have the political equivalent of some X-rays and lab results. I have election numbers that I’ve looked at under a microscope, so to speak.
Perhaps the most worrisome result for Democrats in this year’s election results in Virginia was that they saw their vote count drop in Northern Virginia while Donald Trump’s vote count went up. Northern Virginia is where Virginia Democrats build up the margins that enable them to win statewide elections, and while they did ultimately win, the presidential election was closer than they would have liked. That raises a question: Is this a one-time blip or the start of a trend? We won’t know that until we go through another election cycle, so that’s not particularly helpful. The next question then becomes: Just how serious was this decline in the Democratic vote and the increase in the Republican vote?
Earlier I showed some charts that tracked how both parties’ raw vote has changed over the years in some of these counties, principally Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William counties:
Those charts don't capture one important dynamic: population change. For Democrats, the vote drop from Joe Biden in 2020 to Kamala Harris in 2024 ought to be worrisome. As I've written earlier, the key election statistic this year is that many Democrats simply didn't vote. How serious, though, is the threat of a rising Republican vote in these Northern Virginia counties, where even a small percentage change translates into a large number of votes? If the Republican increase doesn't keep pace with the population increase, then maybe it's not that big a deal. If it does keep pace with population growth, or exceed it, then we have a very different political scenario. To try to determine these things, I set out to compare the increase in the Republican vote to the population rate increases (or decreases) across the state. Here's what I found.
Trump expanded his vote even in places that are losing population
We knew this before, but here's a map that lays out the particulars. All the localities that are colored in are ones that have lost population between 2020 and 2023, according to the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia. Only in the ones in blue did Trump see his vote totals decrease from 2020 to 2024. In all the others, his vote totals increased, even though the localities are getting smaller.
To produce more votes out of a smaller voter pool seems a remarkable political feat. Most of these are small, rural localities (I'll come back to Fairfax County later), so the actual number of votes isn't that large. Still, every vote counts, and Republicans are turning a shrinking base into a growing one. I could spill lots of ink (or its digital equivalent) on why this is. As someone who has lived virtually all my life in rural areas, I'll offer two pretty obvious observations:
In most places that have lost population, Trump increased his vote — not simply by percentage but by actual number. These are culturally conservative areas that are turned off by the cultural liberalism of Democrats. Plus, if a community is losing population, that's equivalent to a certain degree of economic failure. Trump speaks to those concerns more clearly than many Democrats do. His economic solutions may be completely wrong — we'll see how those play out — but he's at least channeling the worries that many residents of these communities have. One of the most insightful post-election commentaries I've seen came from David Toscano, the former Democratic leader in the House of Delegates. Here's what he wrote: “For a large portion of the country, democracy was top of mind, and January 6 was the touchstone event driving our antipathy of Trump. Significant numbers of Trump voters, however, viewed the preservation of democracy as protecting a way of life that has been destroyed by decades of economic dislocation and cultural disruption. For them, the solution was a 'strong leader,' epitomized by an angry man instead of an intelligent, joyful woman.” Many of these communities simply aren't feeling very joyful.
Trump's vote grew faster than the population almost everywhere
Now we get to the most worrisome map for Democrats, and the most promising one for Republicans. These are all the places where Trump saw his vote totals increase faster than the population. The localities in orange are all the ones where the population decreased, so we've already seen that above, just in a different form. All the localities in red are ones where the population has increased — and Trump's vote totals increased at a faster rate. You'll see that between the two, this covers almost the entire state. Democrats may not worry that much about the Republican increases in population-losing rural areas; at some point Republicans will run out of opportunities there, right? However, many of these localities where the increase in the Trump vote exceeds the population increase are some of the fastest-growing in the state. If this is a one-time event, this won't matter. If this signals a trend, then it's a bad one for Democrats and a good one for Republicans.
In 22 localities, Trump posted double-digit increases in vote totals
Statewide, Virginia's population has grown just 1% since 2020. Trump's vote totals increased by 5.73% (while Harris' declined 3.26% from Biden in 2020). What may be more significant is where those increases were, because any local changes in political balance could make a difference in elections below the state level — next year's House of Delegates races or purely local contests. The biggest percentage increase was 16.93% in Manassas Park, a city that's lost 0.5% of its population since 2020. This is also a good reminder that percentages can be misleading. That whopping percentage increase turns into just a 335-vote bump. However, the 12.21% increase in Loudoun County worked out to 10,019 new votes for Trump, while the 11.06% increase in Prince William County meant 8,981 new votes. The 8.01% increase in Fairfax County became 13,494 extra Trump votes, his single biggest increase in terms of actual votes.
Lynchburg Republicans are rightfully proud of a 14.49% increase in the Republican vote — in a city where the population has only grown by 0.4%. That works out to 2,477 votes the party didn't have four years ago. However, Arlington County, one of the bluest localities in the state, saw its Republican vote go up by 13.02% — and produce 2,905 extra votes for Trump.
Nothing in these numbers changes the basic political dynamic in the state: The votes are in the urban crescent. Democrats next year will be working to restore these numbers while Republicans will be working to build on these gains.
The Democratic vote decreased in most localities
This is doubly bad news for Democrats. Not only did the Republican vote tallies rise faster than the population, but Democratic numbers declined, even against a slightly large population — the aforementioned +5.73% for Republicans and -3.26% for Democrats.
I would love to make the case why Democrats should pay more attention to rural Virginia, but the mathematical reality is the Democratic vote totals went down 9,092 in Loudoun County and 98 votes in Lee County, down 33,505 in Fairfax County and 60 in Franklin County. Please remind me of these stats when I complain next year that Democrats are ignoring Southwest and Southside Virginia.
That also brings us to this point:
In some places, the Democratic vote in rural Virginia is holding steady. In other places, it's collapsing.
With apologies to Charles Dickens, this is a tale of two counties, so to speak. Nelson County's population hasn't changed much — down 0.4%. Neither has the Democratic vote — down just 0.67%. In Washington County, the Democratic vote actually went up, by 2.34%. The vote increase was small (155), and the Republican vote went up more (776 votes, or 3.58%), but the raw Democratic vote still went up, even in a county where the population is down by 0.6%. In Carroll County, a bedrock Republican county dating back to the era of the Readjusters in the 1880s, the Democratic vote went up 2.92% — 83 votes. It's wrong to say the Democratic vote in rural Virginia is collapsing because in many places it's not. Of course, it may be holding steady because the vote there collapsed a long time ago and there's not much place to go. The overall Democratic share of the vote in rural counties remains small and, with those big Republican gains we looked at earlier, is getting smaller.
Still, in some places, the raw Democratic vote does seem to be in free fall. In Buchanan County, it was down 14.62%. In Buckingham County, it was down 13.92%. In Nottoway County, it was down 11.28%.
In 8 localities, the Democratic vote increased at a faster rate than the Republican vote did
Now for some good news for Democrats. There are some places where the Democratic vote this year grew faster than the Republican vote. Many of these are suburban or exurban localities with high population growth rates; it would seem that many of the newcomers are Democrats.
The most encouraging for Democrats is Chesterfield County, where the Republican vote grew by 0.75% while the Democratic vote grew 5.55%. In terms of actual votes, that was 704 new votes for Republicans but 5,934 new ones for Democrats. (Expect the Democratic ticket next year to spend a lot more time in Midlothian than in Martinsville.)
This could well make a difference in some legislative races next year. Harris carried seven House of Delegates districts now held by Republicans; two of those are in Chesterfield County, either wholly or in part (the ones held by Carrie Coyner and Mark Earley Jr.). She also carried the House of Delegates district on the Peninsula now held by Amanda Batten; part of that district is in James City County and Williamsburg, two more places where the Democratic growth rate exceeded the Republican growth rate. Batten had a close race last year; demographics do not seem to be in her favor. See my column on that for more details.
However, this good news for Democrats may not last long. Some of the places where the Democratic growth rate exceeded the Republican growth rate are staunchly Republican ones, and the Democratic growth isn't nearly enough to make those localities competitive.
New Kent County, with a growth rate of 11.9%, is one of the fastest-growing in the state. The Democratic vote there grew by 22.07%, the Republican vote by 13.94%. That worked out to 1,020 new Democratic votes. However, because New Kent is so overwhelmingly Republican (65.29% for Trump), that smaller increase in the Republican vote equated to 1,343 more Republican votes. New Kent County will not be realigning anytime soon. New Kent is also in Batten's district, so demographics do work in her favor here (the challenge is that New Kent only accounts for 13% of that district).
Ditto my old stomping grounds of Rockingham County. The Democratic vote grew there by 18.91%, the Republican vote by 8.84%. That meant 2,391 new Democratic votes but 2,684 Republican ones. Rockingham County voted 67.62% for Trump, so it's not going to realign anytime soon, either.
In 7 localities, the increase in Democratic votes exceeded the Republican vote increase
There were only seven localities where Democrats grew more votes than Republicans did. (In one of those, Colonial Heights, the Republican vote actually declined slightly.) Some of these are in Democratic-voting localities: Chesterfield County, which we've already looked at. Staunton, a city that once was Republican but which has realigned over the years, and Albemarle Couty. The most interesting cluster is the trio of James City, Williamsburg and York County, which might have some implications on legislative races there. York County was only slightly Republican this year (52.13% for Trump), while James City County already trends Democratic (52.15% for Harris) and Williamsburg is very solidly Democratic (71.10% for Harris). The final locality is Hanover County, but Hanover remains solidly Republican (62.08% for Trump). Republicans in Hanover do not need to worry about being outvoted anytime soon.
So, what does all this mean? Take two elections and call me in a few years. Then we'll know for sure.
What the tie-breaker in Clinchport tells us about Virginia
The tiny Scott County town of Clinchport had a tie for one of its council seats. Katie Thomason wrote about how that played out. In this week's West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter, I'll write about how this otherwise seemingly small election sheds light on some big trends that are reshaping Virginia.
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