Perhaps the most important quote I’ve seen explaining the 2024 election results came from Republican pollster Whitt Ayres:
“Donald Trump has recast the Republican Party into a multiethnic, working-class party that appeals more to those on the lower than the upper end of the income scale. A traditional Republican coalition was more upscale, educated, wealthier — not wealthy, but more middle-class — as opposed to more downscale, blue-collar, working-class. That used to be the Democratic Party, and it’s not anymore.”
I’ll come back to this quote in a future column that will look at the stresses this new alignment of voters will put on Republicans. Today, though, I want to look at how this alignment has played out in Virginia.
The trick is finding a starting point because parties are always realigning. It’s just that sometimes they realign faster than others.
If we go back too far in time in Virginia, we run into a time when Republicans were to the left of many Democrats because back then the segregationist Byrd Machine ran the Democratic Party and Republicans were dominated by the centrist mountain-valley Republicans. That’s historically fascinating but not particularly useful for our purposes here. The 1968 presidential race was a three-way affair and predates Linwood Holton’s breakthrough 1969 win as the first Republican governor in Virginia since Reconstruction; that’s where I date the modern era of Virginia politics from. The 1972 presidential race was a blowout for Richard Nixon so doesn’t make for good comparisons. Instead, let’s go back in time to the 1976 presidential election between Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford. The political parties in Virginia then were starting to resemble the ones we know now: Democrats on the left, Republicans on the right.
Ford carried Virginia that year, but barely. He took 49.3% of the vote to 48.0% for Carter.
Here’s what the election map that year looked like:
Here’s what the election map this year looked like:
No need to study them closely unless you want to. I’ve done the work for you. Here’s a map of the localities that haven’t changed between then and now.
The red ones were Republican in 1976 and still Republican in 2024. Same for the Democrats in blue. However, that doesn’t mean they’ve consistently voted one way or another throughout the years. Some have switched sides in between and this year reverted to their 1976 form. Stafford County is one example — went for Carter in 1976, switched to Ronald Reagan in 1980 and then stayed Republican until it flipped back Democratic under Joe Biden in 2020 and stayed that way this year (barely). Prince Edward County is another example, just in different directions. It went Republican then and went Republican this year but, in between, voted for some Democrats: Bill Clinton in 1996, Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, Joe Biden in 2020. There are other examples: Lynchburg voted for Biden in 2020, the first time it had voted Democratic in a presidential election since Harry Truman in 1948, but was back in the Republican column this year. Virginia Beach has often flipped back and forth between parties. Surry County was Democratic all through that period but then tipped Republican this year. Realignment is always taking place.
In any case, the main point is that all the ones not colored in have switched sides from 1976 to 2024, which gives you a sense of the scale of the political realignment since then.
Let’s start with the places that haven’t changed (or changed much), while the political world around them has been swirling around. Why?
My eye notices two things: The Republican counties on the western side of the state are all counties that were part of the Republican “mountain-valley” base; they were Republican even before there were Republicans. Many of these were counties where the Readjuster Party, a biracial post-Civil War party of small farmers and merchants who opposed the eastern gentry, were strongest. Many of the blue localities are ones with large Black populations, and Black voters have been strongly Democratic in Virginia since at least the civil rights era. (Before the civil rights era, most Black Virginians simply couldn’t vote at all.)
For the other rural counties that don’t fit into the mountain-valley Republican heritage, it’s easy to say, well, they’re conservative counties, they ought to be voting for the conservative party — the Republican Party. That may be true except there are lots of other rural counties that are also conservative counties that once voted Democratic.
If we go looking for the big changes, the obvious compare/contrast here is Northern Virginia and Southwest Virginia, specifically the coal counties.
In 1976, Fairfax County was a Republican county. Ford took almost 54% of the vote there. He carried Fairfax city and Falls Church. He almost carried Arlington County. The region was certainly competitive — it elected two Democratic House members that year — but overall, Northern Virginia was considered Republican-leaning territory. As recently as 2000, Fairfax County voted Republican in a presidential year. Now, of course, it’s a Democratic stronghold and not competitive at all. Kamala Harris took 65.45% in Fairfax County and 77.77% in Arlington County — and those were considered weak showings for a Democrat. Joe Biden had almost hit 70% in Fairfax County (he had to settle for 69.99%) and topped 80% in Arlington.
In 1976, coal country was Carter country, not because of Carter, but because he was a Democrat. He won all those counties, with Tazewell County being his best at 56.3% — this in an era when localities were far less polarized than they are now and it was unusual for a candidate to top 60% on either side. Now, do I really need to tell you what’s happened? Now all those counties are not just Republican counties, they’re the strongest Republican counties in the state, routinely giving Republicans 80%-plus. (The city of Norton is the only exception; it voted “only” 71.25% for Trump.)
That realignment is also easy to understand. Carter wanted to burn more coal. Now Democrats want to phase it out altogether. It’s hard to expect votes out of a place where you’re associated with shutting down its main industry. This realignment overlaps with lots of other things, but that’s the place to start.
Northern Virginia’s realignment from light red (before politics were color-coded) to deep blue can be explained by … well, let’s hold that thought.
Instead, let’s look at two small cities in the Shenandoah Valley: Lexington and Buena Vista, both independent cities carved out of Rockbridge County. The two cities are less than 15 minutes away from each other but politically could not be more different. They also offer an opportunity to see how the political poles have reversed.
In 1976, Lexington went for Ford, Buena Vista for Carter.
In 2024, Lexington went for Harris, Buena Vista for Trump.
It’s not just that the two cities have switched political allegiances, they’ve moved further and further apart from each other — politically, not geographically.
In 1976, both cities were relatively close. Ford won 50.5% in Lexington, Carter won 53.6% in Buena Vista. The two cities were certainly different, just not that much. They weren’t foreign to each other. But now look at what’s happened. Harris won 62.0% in Lexington — again, a weak showing relative to other recent Democrats. Meanwhile, just a few miles down U.S. 60 in Buena Vista, Trump was winning 70.73% of the vote.
What has changed politically in these two cities and moved them so far apart? This is realignment in action. In 1976, Republicans were seen as the white-collar party, the party of the well-to-do; Democrats reveled in being the party of the working class. Now, it’s Democrats who are seen as the white-collar party and Republicans who have become the more working-class party. Feel free to argue whether Republican policies truly represent those workers; I’ll take that up in a different column. The point is, this is how our parties have realigned. Lexington, a two-college town, is now your classic Democratic city. Buena Vista, with a manufacturing heritage, is your classic Republican city. (To be fair, Buena Vista has a college, too. Southern Virginia University was founded in 1992 by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Still, Buena Vista’s reputation remains that of a manufacturing hub.)
We don’t have to look at the political shifts in Northern Virginia and Southwest Virginia to understand realignment; all we need to do is look at Lexington and Buena Vista.
Buena Vista stands out in another way — and I know right now some Democrats are going to cringe at what I’m about to bring up. From about the 1970s onward, Virginia political tradition dictated that the statewide candidates from both parties spend Labor Day in Buena Vista and Covington. This was the Virginia equivalent of national candidates spending Labor Day in Detroit. All those were Democratic-voting cities. Democrats proudly went there and were in their element; some Republicans chafed at what they felt was a trick that lured them away from more politically profitable areas elsewhere.
Over the years, the Labor Day events in Covington withered away but Buena Vista’s Labor Day tradition remained — a parade through the city and then political speeches in Glen Maury Park. Some candidates walked the route. Some rode in convertibles. George Allen always rode a horse, to the delight of the crowd (and himself). The Buena Vista tradition survives — it just survives without much Democratic participation. Local Democrats still show up, but statewide Democratic candidates usually don’t. Their Labor Day tradition is now an event in Newport News. (State Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, did show up this year, even though that’s no longer in his district, but he’s the rare Democrat with rural connections.)
I can’t argue with the political math: There are a lot more people in Newport News, and certainly a lot more Democratic voters. Symbolically, though, it sure looks as if Democrats have turned their backs on either a) the western part of the state or b) working-class voters or c) both. That message may be quite unintentional, but we’ve all learned that communication isn’t what’s said, it’s what’s heard.
What working-class voters tend to hear from Democratic presidential candidates these days is … well, often not much. Trump’s manufacturing plan was based on tariffs. Those may be economically wrong-headed, but they at least deal with manufacturing. Harris’ talked about … data centers. One of the things that drove the 2024 election was that Trump, contrary to expectations, regained some electoral ground in the suburbs, while Harris lost votes in working-class precincts. Democrats will now be looking for candidates who can connect to those voters. I predict they’ll look at Democrats who have actually won among such voters — Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear come to mind. There are lots of things Democrats will need to do, policywise, to demonstrate their commitment to those voters. Stylistically, though, there’s one easy thing they can do: They can come back to Buena Vista for the Labor Day parade.
What happens next?
Besides my regular column, I write a weekly political newsletter, West of the Capital, that goes out Friday afternoon. Last week, I looked at some of the numbers coming out of this year’s election results. This week, I’ll look ahead to 2025 and beyond. Consider it a special “speculation edition.” You can sign up for West of the Capital or any of our other free newsletters below: