Despite the last decade of support for Democrats in Virginia, Tuesday’s election serves as an important reminder.
Despite the last decade of support for Democrats in the state, Tuesday’s election serves as an important reminder.
A couple years back, I did a deep dive for the NR print magazine on the Republican Party of Virginia and its intensifying struggle to win elections over the past decade. Though it might be hard to imagine after witnessing the GOP wins in Virginia earlier this week, the state Republican Party was in something of a freefall during Donald Trump’s presidency, culminating in the nomination of far-right local politician Corey Stewart to challenge Democratic senator Tim Kaine in 2018. (It will be unsurprising to anyone who has followed Stewart’s career to learn that he lost to Kaine by 16 points.)
At the time, the sources I spoke with for the piece mostly agreed that it made little sense to think of Virginia as a true swing state. Nearly every expert with whom I spoke said that the Trump phenomenon and its slow creep into the state Republican Party had only accelerated what was already a problem for conservatives in Virginia.
Thanks in large part to shifting demographics, they assured me, the state was steadily turning blue, and it didn’t matter much what type of conservative candidate the GOP presented to Virginia voters. A Republican effort to bring suburban voters back into the fold was unlikely to work, even if Trump were no longer on the top of the ticket.
But one experienced Republican activist told me something at the time that made sense in light of what I uncovered in my reporting, and it makes even more sense today: “Virginia is more like a purple state with a roller-coaster pattern than it is a red state turning blue.”
What my source meant was that the state has a history of flipping between political parties, but it flips less often than we might expect to see from a traditional swing state. Virginia, in other words, should be considered a swing state, but it tends to swing toward one party and stay that way for a longer period of time, so it might not be up for grabs in any given election. Instead, its support for one party or another comes in waves of several elections at a time, a tendency that makes it appear as if it has turned red or blue for good.
As the saying goes, no victory — and no defeat — is permanent in politics. That reality seems to be especially pertinent when it comes to Virginia. As election results have rolled in over the last decade, pundits have insisted fervently that we’d be foolish to consider the state anything but a Democratic stronghold. Anyone who bought into this theory was probably blindsided by the returns from Virginia on Tuesday evening.
At the top of the ticket, Republican businessman Glenn Youngkin defeated long-time Democratic politician and Clinton ally Terry McAuliffe, finishing with a two-point lead despite McAuliffe’s built-in advantage as a former governor. Republicans likewise secured both the lieutenant-governor and attorney-general positions, with the AG winner ousting an incumbent Democrat. The GOP also flipped several seats in Virginia’s House of Delegates to take back control of the chamber.
Such an outcome would’ve been impossible to imagine just one year ago, when Biden defeated Trump in Virginia by ten points — not a swing-state margin. In 2020, every major group or news outlet that makes election predictions ranked Virginia either as “likely Democratic” or “solid Democratic.” Though some Trump supporters made noises about attempting to swing the state back to the GOP, the president’s campaign made relatively little effort to that end compared with most swing states.
It isn’t hard to understand why. In 2017, Democrat Ralph Northam beat Republican Ed Gillespie in the gubernatorial race by close to ten points. No one studying these races would’ve thought Virginia looked anything like a swing state. Just two years back, Democrats won majorities in both the House of Delegates and the state senate, taking control of both chambers and the governor’s mansion for the first time since 1994.
Yet here we are. This week’s outcome vindicated my source’s suggestion that Virginia is a purple state after all, and smart students would be wise to watch for that roller-coaster pattern.