Leo Tolstoy began his novel “Anna Karenina” with the famous line: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
All the winners won the same way; they got more votes than the other side. But the losers lost in different ways. In the 5th District, Democrat Tom Perriello couldn’t overcome rural areas in Southside that had shifted to the right over the years. In the 6th District, Democrat Beth Macy couldn’t overcome the red wall of the Shenandoah Valley and the lack of a bright blue base like Perriello had in Charlottesville-Albemarle. In the 9th, Democrat Joy Powers faced counties that are often more than 70% Republican. In the 1st, Republican Rob Wittman had to battle both Democrats and demographic change. In the 2nd, Republican Jen Kiggans had to contend with both Democrats and an actual loss of support.
I deal with Virginia’s closest congressional race, the 5th, in a separate column. Here I’ll look at the other two districts on the western side of the state that stayed Republican in an otherwise Democratic year, the 6th and the 9th, as well as the two districts on the other side of the state that flipped from red to blue, the 1st and the 2nd.
6th District: Cline lost support in most cities but gained back more voters in rural areas
In the 6th District, Democrat Beth Macy outspent Republican Ben Cline but still lost by double-digit margins. On the one hand, Macy was able to reduce Cline’s vote share. He took 64.4% in the 2022 midterms and 63.12% in the 2024 presidential year. This time, he was held to 55.52%. That’s the lowest Republican percentage in the district since 1988, when the 6th was held by Democrat Jim Olin (and the district was shaped differently and didn’t include as much of the Republican-voting Shenandoah Valley as it does now). If you skip over the Jim Olin years, it’s the lowest percentage by a winning Republican candidate in the 6th since Caldwell Butler in the Watergate year of 1974, when he was reelected with 45.1% in a four-candidate race. However, the district then didn’t extend north of Augusta County. Redistricting over the years has made the 6th more Republican.
Despite that lower percentage, the vote totals this year do not represent any loss of support for Cline. He won more votes this year (175,816) than he did in the last midterms (173,252), even though this was a worse year for his party nationally. Cline’s percentage went down because Macy generated more votes than previous Democratic candidates did. Mathematically, either she energized voters who previously didn’t vote, or she won the support of voters who were energized by other factors (Trump, the economy, you name it). This was a district where the higher turnout brought out more Democratic voters. Despite all that, Cline still grew his number of voters. In political terms, this seems akin to a farmer walking through a field and a nest of yellow jackets swarm out of the ground. As long as they don’t sting him, the farmer doesn’t feel any pain. Macy stirred up the yellow jackets, but Cline did not get stung in ways that hurt.
When we look more closely at the numbers, what we see is that Cline lost support in the Democratic parts of the district. His 2026 numbers were lower than his 2022 numbers in Roanoke, Lexington, Staunton and Winchester — all cities — but grew in rural areas. In Roanoke, Cline ran 1,115 votes below what he did two years ago. However, in Rockingham County, he ran 1,381 votes ahead of two years ago. In the aggregate, Macy won over new voters but did not persuade any Republican voters that they’ve been wrong.
Her most impressive showing was in her hometown of Roanoke. While Cline’s numbers fell from the last midterms by 1,115 votes, Macy increased the Democratic vote by 7,325. That swelled the Democratic margin in the city from 4,702 to 13,125. That may have had some implications on Roanoke’s city council races, which were swept by three Democrats. The fourth place finisher, independent David Bowers, polled 10,317. Four years ago, that would have been good enough for third, and a winning spot. This year, with higher turnout, it wasn’t. Of course, without higher turnout, Bowers may not have gotten that many votes, so we really don’t know. What we do know is that Macy wasn’t able to replicate that Democratic vote surge in the Republican parts of the district. She grew the vote on her side, but Cline grew the vote on his side, too. While his margins fell, they were still wide enough for him to pile up large victories. The Macy margin out of Roanoke was erased by Cline’s margin out of Augusta County: 13,814 votes. If you call that even, the problem for Macy was she had few other places to go for Democratic votes and Cline had lots of places to go for Republican ones.
I see a lot of Macy supporters in the Roanoke Valley posting on social media that they can’t believe she lost: Their view is through the prism of one of the bluest parts of the district. Keep in mind that the population center of the 6th District is somewhere in northern Augusta County, where Cline won 811 more votes than he did four years ago. Macy improved the Democratic side of the ledger in Augusta County by 3,266 votes, which is darned impressive, but what she needed district-wide was 35,549 more Democratic votes. Those are just hard to find in a rural-dominated district. Remember that this was a district that Winsome Earle-Sears, who proved to be a weak Republican nominee for governor, still carried last year.
If you’re looking to compare the double-digit margin in the 6th and the squeaker in the 5th, remember this: Democrat Tom Perriello had a bigger Democratic base to start with in Charlottesville and Albemarle County, augmented by ones in Lynchburg and Danville. He just couldn’t find many Democrats beyond there. Macy had Roanoke but the Democratic cities outside Roanoke were all relatively small. Consider this: Perriello came out of his base in Charlottesville-Albemarle with a margin of 41,049 votes that Republican John McGuire was still able to make up in rural areas. Macy came out of her base in the Roanoke Valley with a margin of 10,481 votes. Even with Macy bringing out new Democratic voters, Cline took a margin of 11,659 votes out of Rockingham County alone.
9th District: Griffith won with just a different shade of bright red
There’s not much analysis necessary for the 9th District, where Republican Morgan Griffith won reelection over Democrat Joy Powers by 65.9% to 33.9%. Powers was able to shave a few percentage points off Griffith’s usual vote share, but it’s so high in this bright-red district that he still took almost two-thirds of the vote. With a higher turnout, he also won more votes than he did in the midterms four years ago. I examined the voting history of this district in a separate column. Over the years, there have been six Democrats to challenge Griffith. Of those, Powers has the third-highest vote share, so she put in a strong performance for a Democrat in that district, but it was not historically high. Close, but not the record. By any fair reckoning, Griffith won by a landslide margin.
Let’s look at some specific localities. Griffith’s best county this year was Lee County, where he still took 80.6% of the vote, down from 84.9% in the 2022 midterms. With counties like that, the 9th is a hard district for Democrats, absent some profound realignment.
The bright spot for Democrats was Montgomery County, where turnout spiked. Four years ago, the Democratic candidate carried Montgomery by 14,239 to 13,563. This year, Powers carried it 20,993 to 14,900. That higher Democratic turnout doomed the interim sheriff, Republican Robert Page, who lost to Democrat Tim Brown 21,426 to 12,764. Page was always going to be in a tough fight given Montgomery’s tendencies to swing back and forth; the backdrop of these midterms made it even tougher.
The problem for Powers was that outside of Montgomery County, Radford and Martinsville, there are no realistic places to get a lot of Democratic votes. Most of the localities in this district start at 60%-plus Republican and work their way up from there. Here’s another figure to remember about the 9th: More than 85% of voters live in localities that this year, a weak Republican year, went 60% or more Republican. More than 56% of them live in localities that went 70% or more Republican.
1st District: Taylor benefited from population change in the Richmond suburbs
So how was Democrat Shannon Taylor able to win the 1st District, where she ousted Republican incumbent Rob Wittman? A large part of the answer there is the population growth around Richmond, which has beefed up the voter rolls in Henrico County and Chesterfield County (both of which are split between the 1st and the 4th districts).
In the past four years, Henrico’s population has grown by 10,493 people; Chesterfield’s has grown by 24,314. It’s unclear how many of those are in the 1st District and obviously not all those are adults and not even all the adults are likely registered to vote. Nonetheless, this illustrates the scale of the population changes in the 1st that have worked against Republicans. Wittman didn’t lose support; he got more votes this year than he did in the last midterms, even in Chesterfield County. The problem is that Taylor received a lot more votes — votes that previously weren’t cast there. Her case was certainly helped by being able to trim Wittman’s margins in Republican-voting counties, but what really made the difference were those suburbs. In the last midterms, Wittman won Chesterfield County by 39,886 to 35,601. This year he expanded his vote in Chesterfield to 41,004. However, Taylor received 52,448 votes out of Chesterfield.
She has won by what appears to be 10,046 votes. A big factor, beyond the political dynamics of this year, are simply moving vans.
2nd District: Kiggans lost support
The 2nd District had a different dynamic than other districts around the state. Other Republican incumbents saw their percentages decline with stronger Democratic challengers than in the past, but their vote totals still increased over the 2022 midterms with higher turnout. In the 2nd, though, Republican incumbent Jen Kiggans saw her vote totals decrease. She lost support from the previous midterms and, ultimately, lost the election to Democrat Elaine Luria.
In 2022, Kiggans outsted Luria by a vote of 153,328 to 143,219.
This year, Kiggans’ vote total slipped to 150,456 while Luria’s surged to 179,126.
We see this most clearly in Virginia Beach, which constitutes more than half the district’s voters.
In 2022, Luria and Kiggans battled to almost a tie at Virginia Beach. Luria eked out a margin of 81,121 to 81,016 but then couldn’t withstand Kiggans’ margins in other parts of the district.
This year, Luria pumped 100,661 votes out of Virgnia Beach while Kiggans’ support fell to 79,534.
There are eight localities in the 2nd District. Kiggans saw her vote totals fall in six of them. The only exceptions were Isle of Wight (where they increased by just 138 votes) and Suffolk (where her vote totals went up by just 191).
It’s impossible to know whether those former Kiggans supporters switched to Luria or just didn’t vote, but one way or another, Kiggans lost support. Her vote decline wasn’t enough to cost her reelection, but it obviously didn’t help. Luria benefited from the much larger turnout this year.
We see that in the Virginia Beach numbers above, but they’re replicated elsewhere. Four years ago, Kiggans carried Chesapeake by 7,730 votes. This year, between her losing support and Luria producing additional voters, Kiggans carried Chesapeake by only 605 votes.
Four years ago, Suffolk was a bright spot for Luria. She won the city then by 4,210 votes, although that couldn’t counter Kiggans’ margins elsewhere. This year, Luria won Suffolk by 11,022 votes.
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