To win in 2025, Virginia Republicans may need to rev up the rural vote even more than they did in 2021. How will they do that?

Sometime soon Gov. Glenn Youngkin will reach for his veto pen and hope that it has enough ink.

Last year Youngkin set a record for vetoes with 201, more than four times the record set by Gov. Terry McAuliffe in 2017. He has somewhat fewer bills to deal with this year overall (917 vs. 1,046 last year) so he may not exceed his own record, but he’ll do something else.

With each veto written in dark ink, he’ll be drawing another bright line that will further define the outlines of this year’s governor’s race to succeed him.

For Democrats, each of Youngkin’s vetoes will be an argument for why Virginia should elect a Democratic governor: See all the good things we could have?

For Republicans, each one will be a warning the other way, about why we need a Republican governor to stand in the way of such bills (and, ideally, a Republican House of Delegates to prevent their passage in the first place): See all the bad things Democrats want to do?

How many of those vetoes actually energize the electorate on either side is a different question — some bills are more hot-button than others — and we may not really know until the votes are counted in November.

We know one thing already, though: Democrats are counting on President Donald Trump, and the furious pace of his government downsizing, to energize their voters. There’s a historical precedent for this: In 2017, the voter backlash to Trump spurred big Democratic gains in the House of Delegates and a Democratic sweep statewide. Once Trump was out of office, Democratic enthusiasm was muted while Republican enthusiasm peaked, and Youngkin won in 2021, bringing in a Republican House of Delegates with him.

I’ve seen some Republicans comment that the impact of government cuts in Northern Virginia won’t really matter politically, because that region consistently votes Democratic anyway. That’s true, but misses the point: What matters is the size of that Democratic vote and what matters even more is the margin.

Let’s walk through the details. 

First, let’s look at how the Democratic share of the vote has changed in the three biggest localities in Northern Virginia. We’ll start with percentages:

You’ll see the sharp spike in Democratic percentages in 2017, then a slight decline in 2021 (along with corresponding changes in Republican percentages; it’s just easier to show one set of numbers instead of two).

Just as they say in the military that amateurs talk strategy and professionals talk logistics, in politics, amateurs talk percentages while professionals talk margins, so let’s look at how the Democratic margins changed over that time.

Notice how much the Democratic margin surged in each of those counties in 2017, the first election with Trump in the White House. Now notice how in 2021 it shrank — but was still much higher than in 2013. That says two things: Much of that 2017 surge stuck, a sign of realignment. However, we can also measure how much (or, if you prefer, how little) Youngkin was able to claw back for Republicans. This brings us to one of the big questions looming over the 2025 elections: Can Democrats increase their margins in Northern Virginia even more? And, if so, by how much? And what, if anything, can Republicans do to mitigate that?

You’ll also notice that even though the somewhat reduced Democratic margins in 2021 were still much higher than the 2013 margins when they won, Democrats lost anyway. How did this happen? The answer is simple: Republicans generated larger turnout, and larger margins, from lots of small rural counties, especially those in Southwest Virginia. Most Republican counties that year saw double-digit increases in turnout, on a percentage basis, from 2017. Only one Democratic county — Charles City County — did. Some Democratic localities saw turnout decline, in percentage terms. That’s how Youngkin was able to win. The individual numbers generated by all those rural counties are small, but they added up to a bigger Republican victory in 2021 than what Democrats had in 2013.

Let’s look at a few of those counties to put all this in perspective. We’ll start with Goochland County, the eastern part of which is certainly not rural anymore — it’s part of the Richmond suburbs. Goochland, though, had the highest turnout of any locality in the state, 71%. Here’s how the Republican margin in Goochland has changed over the same three-election cycle:

You’ll see that in this solid Republican county, Trump did not depress the Republican margin in 2017 because it actually grew over the previous election — but Youngkin dramatically expanded it four years later. That’s a combination of both population growth and higher turnout (up 10 percentage points from the previous gubernatorial election), with, perhaps, some pro-Republican realignment in the county stirred in.

Now let’s look at a sampling of counties where the 2021 turnout rose the most, on a percentage basis. Appomattox, Powhatan and Russell counties saw their turnout go up by 15 percentage points, Amelia saw it go up 14 points, the others 13 points. (There were many other counties that saw similar jumps, but 10 seemed quite sufficient here to make the point.)

We see the same pattern here as we did in Goochland: The Republican margin went up in the first post-Trump election, but it really jumped with Youngkin. Here’s another way to visualize things. In 2021, Youngkin lost Loudoun by 17,923 votes. But thanks to the big surge in voting (plus population growth), he carried Bedford by 22,911. Bedford is a smaller county, but its big Republican margin wiped out the Democratic margin in Loudoun, with votes to spare. The other thing of interest is that the counties in bold (Carroll, Dickenson, Grayson, Russell and Tazewell) are all losing population — so Republicans in 2021 managed to produce bigger margins out of counties that are getting smaller.

It’s an article of faith that turnout in 2017 went up, and that was true: Virginia’s overall turnout went from 43% in 2013 to 47.6% in 2017. However, turnout went up even more in 2021 — to 54.9% — and that was driven largely by increased turnout in rural, Republican-voting areas. Turnout in Fairfax County went up 5 percentage points to 56%; but turnout in Republican counties typically went up by double digits — and to higher percentages. Fairfax remains huge, but eventually those larger Republican margins from smaller counties made the difference.

Here’s the point I’ve been driving to with all these numbers: Let’s assume that Democrats in 2025 are able to replicate what they did in 2017 by generating bigger-than-usual margins out of Northern Virginia. In light of Trump’s government cuts, that seems a perfectly reasonable thing to expect. To counter that, Republicans need to sustain that higher 2021-level turnout in rural Virginia and, if possible, increase it even more. The question is how they will do that. In 2021, they had the pent-up demand that a party out of power often has. Republicans are no longer the party out of power, not in Washington and not in the governor’s office. They are the party out of power in the General Assembly. There are no General Assembly seats for Republicans to win in rural Virginia; they already have them all. So what can Republicans do to whip up even more enthusiasm among rural voters? That’s a question I’m sure they’re working on now. Somewhere, somehow, Republicans need a set of issues that will energize rural voters as much as Trump’s government cuts appear to be energizing Democrats. Will they find it in some of Youngkin’s coming vetoes?

Want more politics and analysis? Sign up for West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter: