In yesterday’s special election for chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, Republican Pat Herrity lost by about 1,200 votes to Democrat Sharon Bulova, out of 107,713 votes cast.

Republicans were hoping for the win, and the circumstances were unique–special election, snow in the morning, etc.–but a loss by 1.22 percent in a county where Obama carried more than 60 percent of the vote is nothing to sneeze at. As mentioned yesterday, last month in a special election for a state delegate seat in Alexandria–where Obama carried 70 percent of the vote–the Democrat won by 16 votes out of about 2,700 cast. So the Republicans may be getting a little better at getting out the vote in deep-blue Northern Virginia, and Democrats may be slacking off a bit . . .

In other Virginia news, the blogger Not Larry Sabato notices that in Terry McAuliffe’s radio ads for his gubernatorial run, “The one airing in Norfolk ends with the tag line: ’Not all good ideas come from Richmond,’ while the one airing in Richmond ends with ’Bring new ideas and new energy to Richmond.’”