2008.11.04
Analysis: Some historical notes on a historical night
* We've said repeatedly that one of the big keys to winning Virginia is winning the Northern Virginia exurbs in Loudoun County and Prince William County. Obama did that tonight, big time. He took 53 percent of the vote in Loudoun and is taking 55 percent in Prince William with some votes still out. When was the last time a Democrat carried those two counties in a presidential race? You have to go all the way back to 1964, when Lyndon Johnson took Virginia, and the nation, in a landslide over Barry Goldwater. Those two counties were probably still big dairy-farming counties then.
* We previously noted that Buchanan County and Dickenson County down in the coalfields, which went for John McCain, hadn't voted for a Republican in a presidential race since Richard Nixon in his 1972 landslide over George McGovern.
Those flips raise a question: Why didn't Obama run well in the coalfields? Was it his lack of enthusiasm for the coal industry? His well-publicized troubles connecting with blue-collar voters? Was it race? Or is this just part of a larger historical trend in the state that has seen Republicans gain ground in rural areas and Democrats start winning in the suburbs?
Democrats would probably gladly trade Buchanan and Dickenson for Loudoun and Prince William any day. There were 8,593 votes cast for the two major-party candidates in Buchanan, 6,535 in Dickenson. By contrast, there were 117,988 cast in Loudoun County.
I previously noted that Obama's win in Virginia more closely resembles the way Jim Webb won the Senate race in 2006 than the way Tim Kaine won the governorship in 2005. For previous posts through the evening, click here.
-- Dwayne Yancey, senior editor
