Virginia's Inreased Blue Hue

With the 2008 elections behind us, Virginia will soon be looking toward the statewide elections in 2009 when a new Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, and most of the General Assembly will be up for election. Given the dramatic loss of Virginia by the McCain/Palin ticket, it will be interesting to see whether or not the GOP can come up with a new game plan and candidates that do not seem like Kool-Aid drinkers who escaped Jonestown in terms of their Christianist fanaticism. Despite claims that the GOP will rethink it's message, personally, I doubt it will happen. Bob "Taliban Bob" McDonnell is the likely GOP candidate for governor and he has thrust his nose so far up the butts of the Pat Robertson/Jerry Falwell crowd that it's a wonder he has not suffocated. Meanwhile, unless a primary is used to select the party candidates, the increasingly unhinged base of the Virginia GOP (the Virginia GOP makes the national GOP look liberal) will do the selecting which almost guaranties extremist candidates will get the nod. If this happens, it will help the Democrats significantly. Here are some highlights from the Washington Post that look at the changing nature of Virginia:

*

Virginia Democrats have rapidly expanded their political base over the past eight years, taking nearly full advantage of demographic shifts in the suburbs, and they enter future statewide races with an advantage over the GOP, according to a review of recent election results and census data. After an election in which Virginia was one of the most hotly contested states in the presidential race, the results show Virginia Democrats amassing a formidable coalition as the state's suburban communities grow more diverse, white voters in Northern Virginia shun the GOP, young voters align with Democrats and black voters prove they continue to have clout downstate.

*

Obama won Virginia with 52.6 percent of the vote, racking up a higher share than he did in Florida and Ohio, more traditional swing states. Senator-elect Mark R. Warner (D) also won his race with a record number of votes, and Democrats picked up three congressional seats in Virginia.

*
Many Virginia Republicans argue that their party's poor showing on Election Day can largely be traced to President Bush's low approval ratings, the economic collapse on Wall Street and Obama's decision to flood the state with paid media and staffers. But an analysis of the results suggests that a more fundamental change is occurring, perhaps accelerated by Obama's success in registering hundred of thousands of new voters this year. "There is no question Republicans cannot run the same type of campaigns they have run in the past and expect to win," said GOP strategist Phil Cox, an adviser to Attorney General Robert F. McDonnell, the likely GOP nominee for governor next year. "It is a different Virginia than it was a decade ago."

*

Cox maintains that McDonnell will make an aggressive appeal for minority support next year, saying, "We are not going to cede any vote." Next year "is clearly going to be very different than 2008," Cox said. "You got different candidates, and you are going to have a different political and economic impact."

*

But Virginia's electorate has undergone a fundamental demographic shift in recent cycles. In 1996, when Republican Bob Dole carried Virginia, white voters made up 81 percent of the electorate. Those same voters made up 70 percent of the electorate this year, with the decrease mostly coming from people without college degrees, a solidly Republican bloc. Robert Lang, a demographer at the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, said affluent whites in Northern Virginia, like other heavily populated areas in the Northeast and Midwest, "now seem to trust the Democrats with the economy and don't trust the Republicans with civil liberties."

*

Downstate counties and cities boasting the largest increases in turnout this year were almost all college towns or home to large black populations. In Charlottesville, home of the University of Virginia, voter turnout increased by 49 percent this year compared with eight years ago, even though the city's population declined by 10 percent during the same period. Similar trends played out in Williamsburg (home of the College of William and Mary), Montgomery County (Virginia Tech), Harrisonburg (James Madison University) and Fredericksburg (Mary Washington). Voters younger than 30 comprised 21 percent of voters in 2008, up from 17 percent in 2004. Half of these young voters now identify themselves as Democrats, up from 38 percent in 2000.