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You keep hearing it, and yet, after 10 straight presidential elections in which Virginia has been a given for Republicans, it’s hard to believe that a state which hasn’t gone for a Democrat since Lyndon Johnson is really “in play.”

I’ve looked at the numbers, and I’m beginning to understand why some people do believe it.

There’s plenty of evidence that both Democrats and Republicans believe it – at least for now. When was the last time a Democratic candidate for president made more than an obligatory pass through Virginia? Not in my memory. Yet Barack Obama has made at least a half-dozen stops in the state since he secured the Democratic nomination this summer. And this week John McCain and Sarah Palin came through, too.

A recent Time/CNN poll puts McCain ahead in Virginia.

But do history and the numbers bear out the candidates' sudden interest?

Knowing the Obama camp is banking a lot on a powerful ground-game and registering voters in droves, I decided to look at voter registration in Virginia. A recent Time article reported that, “Since January alone more than 3.5 million new voters have been registered in 17 of the 23 states tracked closely by the Obama campaign where information is available.”

In Virginia, an additional 229,567 voters have registered since the last presidential election, according to data from the Virginia State Board of Elections. But 55,947, or about a quarter of those, came in the last eight weeks, between July 14 and Sept. 8.

And the mass of them came in localities that, for the most part, would seem to favor Obama.

I looked at 25 cities and counties that had the highest gains in voter registration since July. Combined, they account for 148,172 new registrations since 2004 (64.5 percent), and 44,330 since July (79.4 percent).

An interactive graph of the registration gains in the last eight weeks. The bigger the bubble, the bigger the gains.

Of those 25, Democrat John Kerry won 11 of them in the 2004 presidential race. Democract Jim Webb won 14 of them on his way to the U.S. Senate in 2006, and Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine took 19 of them on his way to the mansion 2005.

Of the top 10 Kaine won them all, and Webb won 8.

A few specifics:

Since 2004, Richmond had a net loss of 950 registered voters, but since July has picked up 6,241. Richmond is also reliably Democratic, so Obama can feel comfortable that a lot of those voters will go his way.

Virginia Beach (#2) and Loudon County (#7) are also among the big gainers. Both had been reliably Republican for years, but Loudon went for both Webb and Kaine, and Kaine took Virginia Beach, though by a slim 649 votes. Both localities have also flipped to Democrats in recent state Senate and House of Delegates races.

But that’s only a few of the 134 cities and counties in Virginia. What about other parts of the state, like the southwest? Obama’s poor performance in Appalachia is well-documented – Hillary Clinton absolutely crushed him there in Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky. And even popular state Democrats haven’t run especially well there. Moreover, there's anecdotal evidence that voters there don't care for Obama, as reported in The Roanoke Times.

My friends who cover politics like to say it’s all about margins. You have to run so well in places where you win, that you overcome the votes you don’t get in places where you lose.

So, what’s the potential margin in Southwest? In the 13 localities that make up the narrow western tip of the state, George W. Bush beat Kerry by a total of 32,574 votes. George Allen beat Webb there by 15,286 votes, and Jerry Kilgore, who is from one of those counties (Scott) beat Kaine there by 22,056 votes.

Those are margins easily overcome by big wins elsewhere. Kaine won Richmond – his hometown – by 27,000 votes. He and Webb both won Fairfax County by more than 60,000 votes. There just aren't that many people living in Southwest Virginia, compared to the state capital, Northern Virginia, or Tidewater.

Of course, there’s lots, lots more to consider – and it’s not nearly all favorable to Obama.

Voters came out in huge numbers in the Virginia Democratic primary, indicating the swell of Democratic enthusiasm across the country was at work here, too. In 2004, 396,223 people voted in the Democratic primary. This year, 986,203 voted – compared to 489,252 in the Republican primary.

On the other hand, McCain seems to have closed the so-called “enthusiasm gap” with the addition of Palin to his ticket. Nationwide polls have the race a dead-heat or have McCain slightly ahead now.

Some of these apparent gains for Obama through voter registration are negated by substantial registration gains in Republican friendly spots like Chesterfield and Stafford counties.

There’s also McCain’s military experience and how that will play in Tidewater, where large numbers of voters are connected to the military. That edge for McCain could be countered by Obama’s popularity among blacks. Obama’s largest margins over Clinton in the primary were in localities with substantial black populations. Places like Hampton and Newport News are especially interesting. Both have strong military ties and substantial black populations.

Finally, Virginians don’t vote the same way in presidential elections as they do in, say, a race for governor. We’ve had several Democratic governors through those years when we still turned red in presidential elections. In that regard, Virginia has to swing a long way to reach Obama. Kerry lost here by about 260,000 votes.

Can a state the size of Virginia even matter that much? Well, consider this. If Obama can hold onto the states John Kerry won in 2004 (which, of course, is no guarantee, but it’s a starting point for discussion), and he can pick up Virginia and its 13 electoral college votes, and one other battleground state, say, Colorado and its 9, or Ohio and its 20, he’s won the presidency.