2008.11.05
Analysis: A changing Virginia
It's morning in America, and everywhere else in this hemisphere, and the morning after a historic election brings some clarity to the numbers we were looking at with bleary eyes last night.
First, to state the obvious: Virginia is changing.
It's not just that the state cast its ballots for an African-American candidate. It did that twice before -- Doug Wilder for lieutenant governor in 1985 and Wilder again for governor in 1989.
It's not just that Virginia went Democratic, though that switch is even more historic than many of the pundits have been saying. The typical formulation is to say that this is the first time Virginia has gone Democratic since 1964. That's certainly true, but misses a larger point. That 1964 election was an aberration -- the Lyndon Johnson landslide over Barry Goldwater in the wake of John F. Kennedy's death. Before that, you have to go back to 1948 and Harry Truman to find another Democratic winner, and even he was a minority winner that year. Truman took 47.9 percent of the vote in a four-way race.
Let's put that another way: Virginia has been a reliable Republican state in presidential elections since the first Eisenhower election in 1952.
And to find a Democratic presidential candidate who has won a majority of the state's votes? Well, other than that Johnson landslide in an abnormal election year, you have to go back to 1944, when Franklin D. Roosevelt won his third term with 62 percent of the vote in the Old Dominion.
The real change is more forward-looking, and foreshadows other elections to come in the state.
I have to eat a little bit of crow because some of the rural bellwether counties I had identified in my "five places to watch" didn't ring true this year. I'm thinking of Henry County, Alleghany County and some of the counties down in the coalfields, such as Buchanan and Dickenson. In previous years, they've been swing areas. This year, they all went for McCain, and it didn't matter. Obama won the state anyway.
The reason for that, of course, is Northern Virginia, which not only continues to grow, but evolve. My two ultimate belwether counties did ring true -- Loudoun and Prince William counties. Those used to be solid GOP counties. They first flipped Democratic in the 2005 governor's race, when Tim Kaine took both. Jim Webb pulled the same trick again in the 2006 Senate race. And now Obama carried them, as well. There's an old saying that when something happens three times, it's a trend. Well, are those now even swing counties? Probably so, but we can definitely see how they're trending, and it's not Republican.
Of note: Obama not only duplicated the feat there, but he improved on the previous numbers. When Kaine won Prince William County, he did it by not quite 2 percentage points. Obama had a 12 percentage point margin there. Twelve! And when you compute what that means in terms of raw votes -- 16,408 -- well, let's put it this way, that's enough to wipe out McCain's margin in a whole slate of rural counties.
Here's a question for the future: Will we see Democrats even make much of an effort in rural Virginia in the future? Obama followed the Mark Warner model: Spend a lot of time here, and at least try to cut the margins. It didn't seem to work. Yes, I know you could say that if he hadn't done it, maybe he'd have lost here by even bigger margins. But still . . . . Obama lost counties in the coalfields that had stuck with Democrats in all but the very worst of times. (You have to go back to Richard Nixon in the 1972 landslide over George McGovern to find the last time Buchanan and Dickenson voted Republican in a presidential race.)
Now, number-wise, those localities obviously don't matter as much as Northern Virginia, but it's always been a nice thing symbolically for Democrats to point to the coalfields as evidence of their diverse base. Do they even need to bother with that anymore?
A final point: The latest numbers show Obama winning about 52 percent of the vote in the state. He's also winning 52 percent of the vote nationally. So you want a bellwether? Maybe we're it, and the reason lies up along Interstate 66.
-- Dwayne Yancey, senior editor
For other analysis of the 2008 returns, click here.
It's had to extrapolate. Obama was hardly the presence in SW Virginia that the statewide candidates have been. (Wilder, Warner, Kaine, Webb) Obama came late and in a token fashion. And I was less than impressed with his operatives at a meeting in Blacksburg. Since we're not Iowa on New Hampshire, why should we be surprised that a national candidate concentrates, if at all, on areas of high population away from the rural areas.
Comment by Beth Wellington — November 5, 2008 @ 6:34 pm
I'd dispute that, actually. I thought Obama put in a pretty extraordinary effort into Southwest and Southside Virginia. His first appearance after securing the nomination was in Bristol. He later made campaign stops in Lebanon, Martinsville, Lynchburg and Roanoke. And Joe Biden also put in appearances in Danville, Martinsville and down in the coalfields. The Obama campaign also had a campaign office in Castlewood -- which, notably, is also where the United Mine Workers office for Southwest Virginia is. Now, I suppose one could argue that without all that work, he'd have done even worse in Southwest Virginia, but that's a hard argument to prove -- or disprove. Meanwhile, McCain never came to the region, unless you want to count an election eve stop in Blountville, Tenn., which brought in the Bristol TV market. And, of course, Palin appeared in Salem.
So all we really can say for certain is that despite an extraordinary effort, Obama still lost counties in Southwest Virginia that no Democrat had lost since George McGovern in 1972. The question is -- was this a particular reaction to Obama, for any number of possible reasons, or is this part of a larger trend that has seen Democrats weaken in rural areas, particuarly Appalachia. For instance, take West Virginia. Once that was a Democratic stronghold. But then Gore couldn't carry it in 2000, Bush won it again in 2004 and it was never really in play this year, either.
Comment by dwayneyancey — November 6, 2008 @ 9:40 am
Dwayne, I too take exception with some of Beth's comments - particularly the comment about the campaign staff in Blacksburg. As Chair of the Montgomery County Democratic Committee, I have never seen a presidential campaign put this kind of emphasis on Southwest Virginia, and it was unheard of in Montgomery County. Could it have been run better? Perhaps. Was it effective? Unquestionably! I have never been prouder of my county. THANK YOU to the hundreds of volunteers who worked in Montgomery County to elect our new President. You have truly helped make history!
Comment by Steve Cochran — November 12, 2008 @ 7:28 pm