Before we move onto the general election, let’s take another look at why Tuesday’s primaries turned out the way they did.
1. Hashmi was consistent
The lesson of the tortoise and the hare seems to apply to the Democratic lieutenant governor’s race, where Chesterfield County state Sen. Ghazala Hashmi won a narrow victory by a margin of 0.75%, the smallest in a statewide primary in Virginia since 1945.
There are lots of ways this happened — Levar Stoney’ collapse in the city he governed for eight years as mayor is a big one — but here’s an important one: Her vote was pretty consistent.
Stoney won big some places (79.29% in Greensville County, for instance) but then lost badly elsewhere (10.55% in Virginia Beach and, of course, just 20.73% in Richmond).
Virginia Beach state Sen. Aaron Rouse swept every locality in and around Hampton Roads (taking 68.79% in his home city) but then didn’t fare particularly well elsewhere.
Hashmi’s vote was remarkably even. She won parts of Northern Virginia, the Charlottesville area and a string of counties along the Interstate 81 corridor down to Wythe County. In most places, her winning percentage was in the high 20s or low 30s. Even in massive Fairfax County, she won with just 25.93%.
Even in many places where she lost, she still polled in that range. Obviously the vote totals are different; she took a higher percentage (27.13%) in Prince Edward County, a county where she lost to Stoney, than she did in Fairfax, where she won.
That gave her a foundation to build on; which she did in the Richmond area, where she ran strongest. She topped 40% in most suburban counties — and then took 58.15% in Richmond. Rouse ran stronger in his home area than Hashmi did in hers, but he was inconsistent beyond that; she wasn’t and that’s why she’s now the nominee.
The only exception for Hashmi was in the state’s westernmost corner, which doesn’t supply many Democratic votes anyway. If you want to see election maps, the best ones are from the Virginia Public Access Project.
2. Hashmi peaked at the right time
There was no public polling in the primary, so we have to look for other clues.
University of Virginia political analysts Kyle Kondik and J. Miles Coleman write in the Sabato’s Crystal Ball report that Stoney and Rouse appear to have tied in the early voting with about 30% each, with Hashmi third at 24%. However, she won the day-of voting and pulled ahead.
We did have some signs that this might happen. Fundraising was one. Stoney raised the most overall, but Hashmi raised the most in the last reporting period, which suggests that momentum was on her side. Here’s another: In the Cardinal News Voter Guide, we saw searches for Hashmi surge in the final week before voting. That’s not conclusive — in last year’s U.S. Senate race, more readers searched for Republican challenger Hung Cao than Democratic incumbent Tim Kaine and Kaine still won easily. I suspect readers were simply curious about Cao. However, here the candidate who drew all those late-campaign searches won, so it appears that a lot of late deciders broke Hashmi’s way.
3. When there are two candidates competing for the same base, it’s hard for either to win
In the four-way 2001 Democratic primary for attorney general, there were two candidates competing for the vote in Southwest and Southside, which was then a bigger share of the Democratic electorate. The rival candidates then were John Edwards of Roanoke and Whitt Clement of Danville. Neither won — Edwards and Clement split the vote, allowing Donald McEachin to win with 33.6% of the vote. If either Edwards or Clement had sat out the race, the other would have surely won that nomination.
On Tuesday, both Rouse and Stoney were competing for the support of Black voters. Stoney, as we saw, won big in the predominantly Black counties of eastern Southside, but Rouse won across Hampton Roads. The result: Hashmi was able to win with just 27.39% statewide.
We can see this on a micro-level in some of the predominantly Black precincts in Roanoke: Rouse won Lincoln Terrace with 33.72% while Stoney took 27.91% and Hashmi 22.09%. Without Rouse in the race, Stoney might well have won, even with his poor showing in Richmond. Without Stoney in the race, Rouse might well have won.
4. Democratic turnout was high for a statewide primary without a governor’s race
I always caution against adjectives such as “high” and “low” when describing turnout unless there’s some context, so here it is. The last time Democrats held a statewide primary without a governor’s race being involved was 2013, when Ralph Northam and Mark Herring won the right to run (and eventually win) with Terry McAuliffe.
That year Democrats cast 141,856 votes in the LG race and 141,611 in the AG race.
This year Democrats cast 451,866 votes in the LG race and 476,311 in the AG race, so we’re talking turnout that’s more than three times as high.
Obviously the state’s population is bigger now, but it’s not three times bigger (Virginia has seen only 5% population growth in that time). We’re also a bluer state than we were then, but we’re not three times bluer. The only logical explanation is one we’ve seen in polls, such as the recent Roanoke College poll: Democrats are very excited about this year’s elections. The polls suggest they’re more excited than Republicans. These returns can’t verify that, but they do seem to verify that Democrats are excited. Can Republicans match that enthusiasm?
More context: Democrats cast almost as many votes in this year’s LG and AG primaries as they did in their gubernatorial primary four years ago (494,932).
5. This is the first time in 40 years there won’t be a candidate from Northern Virginia on the statewide ballot
The last time this happened was 1985, when Democrats nominated Gerald Baliles of Richmond (by way of Patrick County), Douglas Wilder of Richmond and Mary Sue Terry of Patrick County while Republicans nominated Wyatt Durrette of Richmond, John Chichester of Fredericksburg and Buster O’Brien of Virginia Beach.
Even then, Durrette had once been a state legislator from Northern Virginia, so he could claim some affinity to the state’s most populous region.
To find a year where both parties nominated a ticket with zero connections to Northern Virginia, we have to go back to 1969, which is almost prehistoric in political terms.
Will this be a problem for Democrats, who now rely heavily on Northern Virginia votes? We’ll see. Voters probably aren’t as moved by geography as they once were. Still, Northern Virginia is shut out this year. We in Southwest and Southside feel your pain.
6. Rouse failed to score on Virginia Tech’s home turf
Rouse, as noted, won big in Hampton Roads and then won a clutch of counties in Southwest Virginia, topping out at 33.61% in Scott County. However, he could have done better. One of Rouse’s claims to fame is that he played football at Virginia Tech. That would have given him a connection to the region that no other candidate had. However, he ran second in most of the New River and Roanoke valleys behind Hashmi. In Montgomery County, Rouse took 24.37% of the vote for second place. In Pulaski County, he dropped down to third place with 21.88% of the vote. It feels as if he wound up getting a field goal when he could have scored a touchdown. If Rouse runs again, I’d bet he spends more time there.
7. Democrats nominated two candidates perceived as the most liberal options
For our purposes here, I’m excluding two little-known LG candidates — Alex Bastani and Victor Salgado. Bastani, who wanted to raise the minimum wage to $20 per hour, might have been the most liberal, but he wasn’t really in serious contention. Hashmi was perceived as being to the left of the remaining Democratic field, Jones to the left of Shannon Taylor. “Perceived” is the key word there because it was hard to find many policy differences between the candidates. However, in politics, perception is often what rules. Will this matter? Republicans would have criticized the Democrats as liberal anyway, just as Democrats will criticize the Republicans as “MAGA.” I’m obviously not your typical voter but the more I hear those words, the less they mean.
8. The candidates with the most money did not always win
This is a point I harp on every time I write about campaign finance reports: Money is important but it’s not the deciding factor. The key is whether a candidate has enough money to get his or her message out, not whether there’s more than the other side.
Our latest examples: Stoney had the most money in the lieutenant governor’s race. He lost. Hashmi had the third most, but she finished first.
In House District 46 in Southwest Virginia, Adam Tolbert had more money than Mitchell Cornett but Cornett won the Republican primary.
In House District 49 in the Danville area, Democrat Gary Miller had more than three times as much money as Jasmine Lipscomb, but only won by 7.5 percentage points.
9. The Woody Allen principle holds true: Showing up counts for a lot, especially in Southwest Virginia
The most curious — but entirely explainable — results in the lieutenant governor’s race came in two Southwest Virginia counties. Bastani came in fifth statewide, with just 5.69% of the vote, but he carried Dickenson and Russell counties. Why? He visited both counties just before the election. In Southwest Virginia, which feels ignored by the rest of the state, that kind of attention pays dividends. The votes are small, but the points his two victories make are large. Woody Allen once said that 80% of success in life is simply showing up. Here’s another example.
I’ll point out again that statewide candidates should visit the region, not because there are a lot of votes (especially for Democrats) but because there are policy lessons in the region that future state officeholders will have to deal with. You can read my column on 25 places in Southwest that candidates should visit. Next week I’ll have another column on 25 other places across all of Southwest and Southside that candidates should visit. If you’d like to offer some advice, here’s your chance. Just fill out this form.
I’ll have even more to say about the primary results in this week’s edition of West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that goes out Friday afternoons. Sign up here:
