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History of Virginia: Ruby to Sapphire Final Paper

As a part of my major, I had to take three history courses here at Virginia Tech for a “related field” requirement, and I’m glad I chose this one as I learned about the history of the Commonwealth. The professor for this class was also great, as he lived and breathed Virginia history while donning a Southwestern Virginia accent (by far the best Virginia accent there is) with a Georgia twang. I went (well) beyond the required words for the paper, yet somehow ended up having only the second-longest paper in the class. Still, doing this research was fun as I got to look back on recent Virginia elections that I did not cover or predict. This paper was submitted on November 20th, 2023.

Assignment Directions

During the semester, you will each work on some topic in the history of Virginia—and write it up. Figure on about 3,000 words, plus the following: notes and bibliography (both of these in historians’ preferred format (Chicago), an image (e.g., a photograph), and, at the end, a paragraph or two on “how”—a reflection on how you selected your topic and how you went about accomplishing your project.

Virginia – Ruby to Sapphire

For roughly four decades after the end of the Byrd machine and Jim Crow in Virginia in the 1960s, Virginia was seen as a Republican-friendly state in federal elections with competitive tendencies in the state-level elections for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, and the General Assembly. While Virginia would vote for a Republican for President in each presidential election from 1968 to 2004, it would also elect a Governor opposite of the incumbent president’s party in every gubernatorial election from 1972 to 2005. However, in 2008 Virginia would vote for a Democratic candidate for President for the first time since Lyndon B. Johnson’s landslide victory in 1964, when Senator Barack Obama carried the state by 6.3%, voting by 0.9% more conservatively than the national popular vote. Just four years earlier, President George W. Bush carried Virginia by 8.2%, voting 5.8% more conservatively than the national popular vote, so this was a rapid shift leftward in the Commonwealth on the federal level in a short period of time. This election was a realignment in Virginia politics: in the decades since black enfranchisement in Virginia, anytime a Democrat would win a statewide election it would be by building a coalition of rural whites, African-Americans, and the urban cores of the Commonwealth. However, Obama’s winning coalition failed to draw much support from rural whites, trading their support for impressive performances in the suburbs of Northern Virginia, Richmond, and Hampton Roads. This winning formula would be replicated by Democrats in Virginia from then until the present day.

A large part of Virginia’s leftward shift has not only been Democrats becoming competitive in the suburbs of the Commonwealth but also the demographic changes Virginia has seen over the last few decades. Just three decades ago after the 1990 census, 77.4% of Virginians were white. By 2010, shortly after Barack Obama’s historic victory in Virginia, that number would drop to 68.6%. The black population in Virginia has been pretty stable during this time, with African-Americans consisting of 18-20% of the population over the past three decades. However, there’s been a growing Asian-American population: in 1990, just 2.6% of Virginians were Asian, and by 2010 that number more than doubled with Asian-Americans making up 5.5% of the population. Asian-Americans largely vote Democratic, though African-Americans vote Democratic at a higher rate. Racial demographic changes aren’t the only reason for the Commonwealth’s leftward trend, however: population shifts across the Commonwealth have also been pivotal. Rural counties in Virginia, especially in Southwest and Southside Virginia, have bled population while the suburbs of the Commonwealth have seen tremendous growth. Suburban voters tend to be more ideologically moderate than rural voters, who are oftentimes conservative. Northern Virginia in particular has seen an explosion in its population growth, thanks to tremendous suburban development in the region over the decades. This increase in housing has led more federal government employees and contractors to move into Virginia, and those who work in this job sector are also more likely to vote Democratic. There has also been a growing college-educated population in Virginia as the American workforce has seen an increased demand for a college degree while jobs that don’t require a college degree, such as manufacturing and coal mining, have seen a massive decrease. College-educated voters were a significant part of Obama’s winning coalition, and this demographic has only continued to drift leftward ever since. With a firm background on the changing landscape of the Virginia electorate and our 2008 starting point for the election analysis I’ll be providing in this paper, we can begin to examine how Virginia has continued to become a more Democratic state since Obama’s pivotal victory in the Commonwealth.

One year after Barack Obama was elected President, Virginia continued its tradition of electing a Governor opposite of the incumbent President’s party with Republican Attorney General Bob McDonnell of Virginia Beach City defeating Democratic State Senator Creigh Deeds of Bath County in a landslide victory for Republicans as McDonnell won by 17.3%. Not only did Republicans flip the Governor’s mansion back to their side, they also held the offices of Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General with incumbent Republican Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling winning re-election by 13.1% and Republican State Senator Ken Cuccinelli winning the race for Attorney General by 15.1%. In the House of Delegates, Republicans expanded their majority with a net gain of 6 seats in the lower chamber, garnering 59 out of the 100 seats and winning the popular vote by 20.6%, though this includes districts that were uncontested, many of which were Republican-held. Democratic voter complacency after electing Obama, enraged and engaged Republican voters (especially white and older ones, who are more likely to vote in off-year elections), and Obama’s dwindling approval rates were to blame for the Democrats’ failure that year. Virginia Democrats would yet again continue to find themselves having a painful election year a year after that in 2010 when Republicans flipped three seats for the United States House of Representatives elections in Virginia that year. Incumbent Democrats Tom Perriello of Charlottesville and Glenn Nye of Virginia Beach, who were first elected by riding Obama’s coattails in 2008 and flipping these previously Republican-held seats, lost re-election to their Republican challengers alongside longtime Democratic incumbent Rick Boucher of Abingdon, who was first elected to his Southwest Virginia district in 1982.

2011 would unlock a whole new world of pain for Virginia Democrats when the House Republicans passed a new gerrymander signed off by Governor McDonnell, making it even more difficult for Democrats to find their way to winning a majority of districts for the decade, though most of the House Democratic Caucus voted for the plan thanks to some of their incumbents being largely protected. Later that year with the first election being held under the new maps, Democrats lost 7 seats in the House of Delegates thanks to a Republican-friendly environment and the new gerrymander paying off for the House majority. Republicans won the popular vote by 25.4%, a number inflated similar to the 2009 elections due to many uncontested seats held by more Republicans than there were held by Democrats, and won 67 out of the 100 districts in the House, a supermajority of seats. This was a monumental victory for the Virginia Republicans as no party had won a supermajority of seats since House Democrats won 74 seats in the 1979 elections, as well as this being the first time that Republicans won a House supermajority for the first time in the Commonwealth’s history. The State Senate was also up for the first time since 2007, and while the Democratic majority did get to enact their own gerrymander for the chamber, it was a watered-down one compared to the House Republicans’ plan due to Governor McDonnell vetoing the original plan put forth by the Democratic majority after a party-line vote approving it. With the eventual McDonnell-approved plan drawn by Senate Democrats in place for the elections later that year, Democrats would essentially lose their majority by the narrowest terms possible: a 20-20 State Senate with Lieutenant Governor Bolling breaking the ties, besides on the budget which he has no authority over. Like House Republicans, Senate Republicans also won the popular vote in a 16.7% landslide due to a lopsided amount of uncontested Republican districts versus uncontested Democratic districts. Republicans had successfully created their first trifecta (where one party has control of the Governorship and state legislature) in the state government for the first time since 2000.

Virginia Republicans were ecstatic with where they were at the beginning of the legislative session in 2012 with their new majorities. They had never held so many seats in the General Assembly in the history of Virginia and held all three statewide elected offices for the state government, and they felt pretty good about flipping Virginia back to the Republican column on the presidential level later that year as a result. However, Virginia ended up once again voting for Barack Obama, and while his 3.9% margin of victory in the Commonwealth was smaller than his 2008 win, Virginia continued to drift to the left. While in 2008 Virginia voted 0.9% more conservatively than the national popular vote, it was right in line with the 3.9% national popular vote victory for Barack Obama. Despite Republican nominee and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney turning back the clock in the Virginia suburbs and continuing to improve Republican performances in rural Virginia, they weren’t high enough for him to carry the state in the electoral college. Simultaneously, Virginia Republicans also failed to flip the open US Senate seat that year even though they successfully recruited former Republican Governor and US Senator George Allen, who lost re-election by a gnat’s eyebrow in 2006 to Democratic nominee and former Secretary of the Navy Jim Webb. Allen lost to former Democratic Governor Tim Kaine by 5.9%, running behind Mitt Romney’s performance almost everywhere across the Commonwealth as tens of thousands of Virginians cast their vote for Romney and Kaine.

In 2013, the offices of Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Attorney General as well as all 100 seats in the House of Delegates were up once again. McDonnell was term-limited, and that left Virginia Republicans to decide who to nominate for Governor: Lieutenant Governor Bolling or Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. A few weeks after the November election, Bolling would drop out of the race for Governor once it was decided by the state party that the gubernatorial nominee would be decided by a party-run convention with Bolling citing the convention decision. Bolling, a center-right Republican, would have had a tough time winning a convention against Cuccinelli, who was more conservative than Bolling. Republican conventions in Virginia typically nominate candidates who are the most conservative, and this would prove to be the case in 2013 as well: Far-right pastor E.W. Jackson beat 6 other candidates for the nomination for Lieutenant Governor by running to the right of his opponents. State Senator Mark Obenshain would also best Delegate Rob Bell for the nomination of Attorney General by having a more conservative voting record in the General Assembly than Bell. Democrats would nominate their candidates by a state-run primary where anyone can vote, with former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe becoming the nominee for Governor, State Senator Ralph Northam becoming the nominee for Lieutenant Governor, and State Senator Mark Herring becoming the nominee for Attorney General. The Democratic slate was much more ideologically moderate than the Republican slate, and Republicans lost all three statewide offices as a result, including the race for Governor, breaking the 36-year tradition of Virginia electing a Governor opposite of the incumbent President’s party. McAuliffe won by 2.6%, Northam an impressive 10.6%, and Herring an extremely narrow 0.04%. Democrats would net 1 seat in the House of Delegates, but Republicans still held their 67-seat supermajority by flipping an Independent-held district. After this election, there was much speculation that Democrats would do well in the midterms nationwide the year after, as well as Virginia’s leftward trends becoming too much for the Virginia Republican Party to succeed in statewide elections.

Incumbent Democratic US Senator Mark Warner ran for re-election in 2014 against former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie. Warner was seen as a heavy favorite based on polling, however, the race ended up being a razor-thin victory for Warner has he bested Gillespie by 0.8%. Gillespie had an impressive performance in the Virginia suburbs, even better than Romney, but Warner’s popularity amongst rural white voters prevented Gillespie from hitting Romney’s 2012 performance in those areas. Virginia Republicans had at least learned their lesson from the 2013 convention and didn’t end up nominating a far-right candidate against Warner as many perceived Gillespie to be a center-right candidate, but still failed to win nonetheless. 

A year later in 2015, the State Senate and House of Delegates were up again, and there was little change in the General Assembly. In the Summer of 2014, Republicans had flipped via special election a Southwest Virginia State Senate district that was held by Democratic incumbent Phil Puckett, flipping the chamber back to them in the process (Lieutenant Governor Northam was breaking the ties up until that point) and had an outright 21-19 majority in the chamber going into the 2015 general election. The results that year yielded no change in the makeup of the State Senate as Republicans held their 21-19 majority and Republicans won the popular vote by 8.8%, with a more even makeup of uncontested districts that year for both parties compared to 2011. In the House of Delegates, Democrats did break the Republican supermajority but only by having a net gain of 1 seat in the chamber as they made gains in Northern Virginia.

Senator Kaine became the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 2016 under former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for President. Republican nominee Donald Trump would prove to be toxic for Virginia Republicans, not just in 2016 but in the years to come as well. In 2016, Virginia voted for Clinton by 5.3%, improving upon Obama’s 2012 performance despite the national environment being more Republican-friendly; as a result, Virginia voted 3 points to the left of the national popular vote, the first time that Virginia has voted more Democratic than the national popular vote since before African-American voter enfranchisement. Trump made tremendous gains in rural Virginia but lost a lot of ground from previous Republican performances in the suburbs of Richmond and Northern Virginia. This was an electoral pattern seen across the country as well, and while that helped propel Republicans to their first united government in 2017 since 2006 by controlling the Presidency, both chambers Congress, and the Supreme Court, it turned out to be a formula that would only be proven successful once as they would perform poorly in every election year since then besides 2021.

With Governor McAuliffe not able to run for a successive term, it was Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam’s time to shine as he became the Democratic nominee for Governor after besting former Representative Tom Perriello in the Democratic primary. Democrats would simultaneously nominate former Assistant United States Attorney Justin Fairfax for Lieutenant Governor and incumbent Attorney General Mark Herring for Attorney General. Herring didn’t face any opposition in his primary whereas Northam and Fairfax did: Northam beat Perriello by 12% and Fairfax beat his closest competitor, former Chief of Staff to Joe Biden and campaign veteran Susan Platt, by 10.1%. Northam performed best in eastern Virginia in the primary drawing a lot of support from black voters in the region, whereas Perriello’s base was in his old congressional district in Central and Southside Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley. Fairfax did well with black voters across the Commonwealth and drew some support in pockets of Southwest Virginia, and also carried his home of Fairfax County.

Republicans decided to use a state-run primary to let the electorate decide their nominees this time compared to 2013, and while they didn’t nominate the most conservative nominees this time they had close calls. In the Republican primary for Governor, the aforementioned Ed Gillespie only bested runner-up Prince William County Board of Supervisors Chairman Corey Stewart by 1.2% or 4,320 votes and also only won 43.7% of Republican primary voters as Virginia Beach State Senator Frank Wagner was also in the running and pulled a lot of center-right Republicans from Gillespie in the Hampton Roads area. Stewart was running as the “Donald Trump” candidate in the primary and dominated most rural areas in the western side of the Commonwealth while Gillespie did well in the suburbs in the urban crescent (with the exception of Prince William County) and rural areas in eastern Virginia. In the Republican primary for Lieutenant Governor, State Senator Jill Vogel bested runner-up State Senator Bryce Reeves by 2.8% or 9,788 votes, and similar to Gillespie also won about the same amount of the primary vote garnering 42.8% of the vote as another Virginia Beach candidate who came in third, Glenn Davis, pulled away support from Vogel in the Hampton Roads area. Vogel had a much more suburban coalition than Gillespie’s primary victory did as there were few rural localities she won outside of her State Senate district.

Republicans would end up getting swept up by an enormous “blue wave.” Northam’s margin of victory, 8.9%, was the highest margin of victory for a Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate since 1985 when Gerald Baliles won by 10.4%, and even carried the Richmond suburban Chesterfield County, which no Democratic candidate for Governor has done since 1961, which was before black voter enfranchisement. Herring would win re-election against Adams by 6.7% and Fairfax would win the race for Lieutenant Governor by 5.5%. In the House of Delegates, despite the map being heavily gerrymandered to favor Republicans, Democrats had an astonishing 15-seat pickup in the House of Delegates, the largest amount of seats a party has picked up in a single House of Delegates election year since 1897 when Democrats picked up 27 seats. They rose to 49 seats in the chamber, and control of the House came down to a game of chance when one Republican-held seat, District 94 in Newport News, had a tied result with the Republican and Democratic candidates both garnering 11,608 votes. In Richmond, the names of the candidates, Republican incumbent David Yancey and Democratic nominee Shelly Simonds, were written down and inserted into film canisters. The canisters were then mixed around in a ceramic bowl, and Yancey’s name was drawn first and was declared the winner. History was also made this year as Danica Roem became the first openly transgender candidate elected to a state legislature in the history of not only Virginia but the United States. The freshman class for the House of Delegates was the most diverse freshman class elected in Virginia history at the time. Most of them were women, much younger than the average age of the House of Delegates elected in 2015, and less caucasian (non-Hispanic) than the previous makeup as well, electing two Asian-Americans, three African-Americans, and two Hispanic-Americans, though Delegate Hala Ayala is both Hispanic and Black so she’s counted in both of those columns here.

There were many reasons why Virginia Republicans lost that year (and pretty badly I might add) besides historical precedent. Firstly, President Donald Trump, unlike previous presidents, didn’t enjoy a “honeymoon phase” at the beginning of the year when Presidents typically have a very high approval rating. Not only that, but his approvals were taking a nosedive throughout the year and by election day he had just a 38% approval rating nationwide, and given Virginia’s blue hue, it was most certainly lower than that in the Commonwealth. Secondly, despite Gillespie running as a center-right candidate during the primary, his campaign took a hard-right turn in the general election as his campaign saw themselves struggling with motivating the conservative base, particularly white, rural low-propensity voters without a college degree. Vogel’s campaign, while sharing the same issues that Gillespie had, didn’t follow suit and as a result became the best-performing Republican statewide candidate that year, with tens of thousands of Virginians voting for Northam and Vogel, especially in the suburbs. Adams had no name recognition besides those with a general knowledge of American history (and even they may not know he is a descendant of the actual Adams family) and was running against an incumbent. Democrats campaigned on Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act which the House of Delegates helped block, making it easy to go after every Republican candidate for the House on a salient issue that drew widespread bipartisan support amongst the electorate.

With the 2017 election behind them, Democrats felt good about their chances in the 2018 Congressional elections for the US Senate and US House of Representatives in Virginia (and nationwide). In 2016, the Congressional map that was used in the 2012 and 2014 elections was struck down after it was determined by the Supreme Court that it had violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by packing black voters from Richmond to Norfolk into one congressional district. A new map drawn by special master Bernard Grofman, a political science professor at the University of California Irvine, was put in place for the 2016 elections leading Democrats to gain a new seat stretching from Richmond to Chesapeake with the election of Democrat Donald McEachin, a State Senator from Richmond. In 2016 two seats that voted narrowly for Donald Trump that year had weak Democratic congressional campaigns resulting in lopsided margins for the Republican incumbents: Virginia’s 7th, a Trump +7 district that stretched from Nottoway County to Culpeper County and held the suburbs of Richmond, and Virginia’s 2nd, a Trump +3 district which contained the Eastern Shore as well as the white, affluent parts of the Peninsula and Norfolk as well as the entire city of Virginia Beach. Despite putting up a formidable fight against Republican incumbent Barbara Comstock in Virginia’s 10th, a Clinton +10 district in Northern Virginia stretching from Fairfax to Frederick, they came up short as she won re-election by 5.8%. Democrats also had an outside opportunity at flipping Virginia’s 5th, a Trump +11 district in Central Virginia whose southern and northern endpoints hugged both the North Carolina border and the exurbs of Northern Virginia in Fauquier, going into 2018. All four Democratic members of the Virginia congressional delegation were considered to be in safely Democratic districts that handily voted for Clinton.

Democrats indeed continued to ride an anti-Trump blue wave in 2018. After a crowded Democratic primary field in the 10th, State Senator Jennifer Wexton became the Democratic nominee and trounced Comstock by 12.4%. In the 7th, former CIA officer Abigail Spanberger became the Democratic nominee and beat incumbent Republican Dave Brat by 1.9%. In the 2nd, Navy veteran Elaine Luria became the Democratic nominee and beat incumbent Republican Scott Taylor, who was surrounded by controversy after it was found out that his campaign helped a third-party candidate forge signatures to get her on the ballot, by 2.3%. They fell short in the 5th as Republicans held the open seat with Republican nominee and Bigfoot enthusiast Denver Riggleman winning by 6.5% against Democratic nominee Leslie Cockburn, whose past anti-Israel writings weakened her standing in the general election. In the race for US Senate, Corey Stewart became the Republican nominee after narrowly beating Delegate Nick Freitas of Culpeper by 1.7% in a state-run primary. Stewart went on to lose the general election to Kaine by 16 points, and it was in part thanks to Kaine’s coattails and Stewart’s weak campaign fueled by far-right rhetoric that assisted Spanberger and Luria’s slim victories.

In 2018, after a federal district court ruled that about ⅓ of the Virginia House of Delegates map from Richmond to Hampton Roads violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, Grofman was called upon once again as the special master in charge of redrawing that section of the map ahead of the 2019 elections for the House of Delegates and State Senate. In February of 2019, the map was enacted and in June the United States Supreme Court denied House Republicans’ attempts to prevent the map from being used that year. The new map flipped 5 districts that voted for Donald Trump into 5 districts that voted for Hillary Clinton, including the district of House Speaker Kirk Cox while making two Clinton-carried districts more Democratic and 3 districts that voted for Clinton more Republican-friendly. Democrats were seen as moderate favorites to flip the House of Delegates that year, in part due to the new map, and they were seen as heavy favorites to flip the State Senate due to two Republican incumbents representing districts that voted for Clinton 8 points and 13 points respectively, and they only needed one for Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax to break the ties.

There was a shakeup in the conventional wisdom though on the General Assembly elections in February. After freshman Democratic Delegate Kathy Tran was caught in a firestorm once House Republicans questioned her about her abortion bill in committee at the end of January, Governor Northam chimed in on a radio interview defending Tran’s legislation shortly after, saying “I would tell you one, first thing I would say is that decisions such as this should be made by providers, physicians, and mothers and fathers that are involved. When we talk about third-trimester abortions, these are done with the consent of obviously the mother, with the consent of the physicians — more than one physician, by the way, and it’s done in cases where there may be severe deformities, there may be a fetus that’s non-viable. So in this particular example, if a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.” An angry medical school classmate of Northam’s tipped conservative media outlet Big League Politics on Northam’s yearbook page, which contained a picture of a man in blackface and a man in a Klu Klux Klan outfit. Northam initially admitted he was one of the men in the photo, and outrage ensued with both sides of the aisle calling on Northam to resign. While this was his intention initially, he changed his mind and walked back his statement, and said that he was not the man in the photo. In the week after, two women accused Lieutenant Governor Fairfax of sexual assault while he was in college in 2000 and when he attended the 2004 Democratic National Convention, leading to bipartisan demands for his resignation as well. A few days after the first allegation was made against Fairfax, Attorney General Herring issued a statement admitting that he too wore blackface in his youth as he tried to dress up as rapper Kurtis Blow, though Herring was 19 at the time whereas Northam was 25 when he wore blackface. Many Democrats in Virginia ceased their calls for resignations since if all three had resigned Republican Speaker Kirk Cox would become Governor.

By the time of the election, the salience of the series of scandals had largely faded despite Republicans’ best efforts. Democrats rode yet another anti-Trump wave flipping both chambers of the General Assembly into their column, creating the first Democratic trifecta in 30 years in the process. They flipped 6 seats in the House of Delegates, 4 of which were redrawn to become much more Democratic, and two in Northern Virginia. Both of the aforementioned seats that voted substantially for Clinton in 2016 in the State Senate flipped as well, giving Democrats a narrow 21-19 majority. 

Virginia was not seen as a battleground state in the slightest in 2020 due to its leftward trends and the losses Republicans faced since Trump entered office. Virginia continued to trend leftward relative to the nation, voting for Democratic nominee Vice President Joe Biden by 10.1%, the largest margin a Democrat has carried Virginia by since President Roosevelt’s 1944 re-election when he won the state by 25 points. Joe Biden only won the nationwide popular vote by 4.5%, so Virginia voted 5.6% left of the nation. Senator Mark Warner won re-election in a romp against Republican nominee Daniel Gade, winning by 12.1%. Warner’s rural popularity but his suburban weakness showed up yet again with Warner outrunning Biden in almost every rural corner of the Commonwealth while running behind him in suburbs in Northern Virginia and Richmond; Warner even carried three counties that simultaneously voted for Donald Trump: Nelson, Caroline, and Essex. Republicans performed poorly in the Virginia elections for the United States House of Representatives as well, with Biden flipping the 2nd and the 7th on the presidential level. Scott Taylor failed to make a comeback bid against Luria, losing by an even wider 5.8% than in 2018 despite a better environment for Republicans. Delegate Nick Freitas, the 2018 US Senate Republican primary runner-up, lost to Spanberger by 1.8%, a 0.1% improvement from Dave Brat’s performance. Wexton won re-election by 13.1% against Republican nominee Aliscia Andrews, improving on her 2018 performance. The 5th was also closer than it was in 2018 due to former Campbell County Supervisor Bob Good, who would become one of the most hard-right members of Congress, beating Riggleman for the Republican nomination at the Republican convention, as well as Good running a poor campaign against Democratic nominee lawyer-doctor (yes, he is both of those things) Cameron Webb. Webb even outran Warner’s margin in the district and won Fluvanna County, which voted for Trump and Gade. Nationwide, Democrats found themselves in control of not only the presidency but also both chambers of Congress, which last happened in the 2008 election. This would turn out to be a gift for the national Democratic Party, but what would prove to be a curse for the Virginia Democratic Party: the fickle American electorate, especially in Virginia the year after the presidential election, can be hostile to too much power resting with one party in the federal government.

President Biden, like President Obama and unlike President Trump, enjoyed a honeymoon phase at the beginning of 2021 with the majority of Americans approving of his job performance. The 2021 elections for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, and the House of Delegates were in full swing during this time. Republicans decided to have a party-run statewide convention in early May with 37 different voting locations for registered convention voters across the Commonwealth to decide their nominees and used ranked-choice voting to ensure the winner of each contest got a majority of convention votes. Seven Republican candidates would make the ballot for Governor, the most prominent of which were the ones who would end up placing in the top four: House Speaker Kirk Cox, State Senator Amanda Chase, entrepreneur Pete Snyder, and former Carlyle Group CEO Glenn Youngkin. 6 candidates would make the ballot for Lieutenant Governor, the most prominent being Delegate Glenn Davis and former Delegates Tim Hugo and Winsome Sears, all of whom would place in the top 3. Four candidates would make the ballot for Attorney General, two of which were noteworthy: Delegate Jason Miyares and Attorney Chuck Smith.

Glenn Youngkin would end up becoming the Republican nominee for Governor thanks to his business experience and self-labeling as a political outsider and particularly his appeal to evangelical convention voters. Winsome Sears, who was elected to one term in the House of Delegates in 2001, was also an outsider who won the nomination for Lieutenant Governor as a black woman long out of politics running to the right of two center-right white men who are recent names in Virginia politics. Miyares was the only “insider” who won a statewide Republican nomination (albeit narrowly), simply because he ran a much stronger campaign than his opponents. This Republican slate was pretty strong: Youngkin possessed the ability to use some of his fortune to fund Republican campaigns across the Commonwealth, Sears would be a history-maker as the first black woman to win a statewide election in Virginia and also gave the far-right a reason to not sit out the election like they did in 2017, and Miyares brought legislative experience to the ticket. It was also pretty regionally diverse: Youngkin is from Alexandria but his roots are in Virginia Beach, Sears is from Winchester but was elected to the House in a Norfolk-based district, and Miyares is from Virginia Beach. With all three having roots in Hampton Roads, this was a boon in their quest to flip the House of Delegates back as many of what people saw as the deciding seats for the majority ran through the region.

Former Governor McAuliffe ran for another non-consecutive term in the Governor’s mansion and was the overwhelming favorite against his opponents in the June Democratic primary: Lieutenant Governor Fairfax, former Delegates Lee Carter and Jennifer Carroll Foy, and State Senator Jennifer McClellan. Six candidates were in the race for Lieutenant Governor, though the contest was largely seen as a battle between Delegates Hala Ayala and Sam Rasoul. Mark Herring ran for re-election once again but faced a credible challenge from Delegate Jay Jones. McAuliffe would go on to handily win the nomination for Lieutenant Governor, as would Ayala and Herring, though their margin of victory over their runner-ups was smaller than McAuliffe’s: McAuliffe won by 42 points over Carroll Foy while Ayala won by 13 points over Rasoul and Herring won by 13 points over Jones. Unlike the Virginia Republican slate, this ticket was pretty weak: for the first time in Virginia history, Democrats had a statewide ticket entirely from the Northern Virginia area, and all of them were the most moderate option in their respective primaries, bringing no ideological diversity to the ticket either. This would prove to be a liability in the general election later on, especially in Hampton Roads, which took a hard right compared to Northern Virginia and Richmond.

After the primary, experts still saw Democrats as favorites to hold the statewide offices and their House majority. However, Biden’s honeymoon phase would soon end, followed by a dwindling approval rating. In early September, for the first time during his presidency, polling aggregates showed that more Americans disapproved of Biden’s job performance than they approved. The US withdrawal from Afghanistan weeks prior has largely been seen as the driving factor for this, though inflation was also an issue for Biden and his party as many Americans were frustrated with the rising inflation rate throughout 2021. Polls started to show the advantage Democrats enjoyed in Virginia over the Summer was disappearing, and Virginia Republicans were hammering Democrats on the issues: parental rights and critical race theory in education, Joe Biden, COVID-19 lockdowns and vaccination mandates, and the economy, especially the sky-high inflation due to the post-COVID economy. The best Democrats could come up with was trying to tie Republicans to Donald Trump and the January 6th insurrection as well as telling voters Republicans would restrict abortion access in Virginia, issues that weren’t salient to the Virginia electorate by Election Day 2021. It was because of Virginia Republicans hammering Democrats on the most relevant issues, Republicans having a more diverse statewide ticket, and Joe Biden’s dismal approval ratings that Republicans narrowly won all three statewide offices and flipped 7 seats in the House of Delegates, winning control of the majority.

Doom seemed to loom over national Democrats when looking forward to the 2022 midterms after Virginia voted Republican in a statewide election for the first time since 2009. But in June 2022, the Supreme Court changed the direction of the midterms by overturning Roe v. Wade, leaving abortion up to the states. Most conservative states enacted sweeping abortion bans, which were deeply unpopular with the American electorate. Democrats annihilated Republicans across the country on abortion, with Republicans hopelessly trying to characterize the opposition as the “real” extreme ones on abortion. With abortion being the most important issue in the midterms and inflation decreasing, Biden’s approval rating rising and Republicans nominating hard-right candidates in many competitive races, Democrats had their best midterm performance for a party out of power since President Roosevelt’s first midterm election in 1934.

Despite this though, redistricting in Virginia led to Republicans flipping the 2nd as the new version of the district became several points more Republican than its 2016-2020 iteration. Spanberger won re-election in the new 7th Congressional district however despite losing a lot of territory during redistricting as the new district was anchored in Northern Virginia rather than the Richmond suburbs, which is where she hails from. Wexton won re-election by a surprisingly small margin compared to the partisan lean of her district due to a strong Republican challenge but won nonetheless. Democrats would win the popular vote by a narrow 3.4% with all 11 districts having a candidate from both major parties.

The new House of Delegates and State Senate maps that would be used for the 2023 elections were drastically different than the ones in place during the 2010s due to the dismantling of Republican gerrymandering in the House of Delegates and Democratic gerrymandering in the State Senate, with the Supreme Court of Virginia choosing one Democratic nominee and one Republican nominee after the citizen-led redistricting commission failed to do its duty in producing a map. Grofman was one of the names the Democrats put forth to help draw the map, who the Supreme Court picked alongside RealClearPolitics analyst Sean Trende, who was one of the nominees by the Republicans. Because the maps not only undid partisan gerrymandering but also were drawn without consideration of where incumbents live, the 2023 elections would result in massive turnover in the General Assembly: there would end up being 33 new members in the House, about ⅓ of the chamber, and 18 new members in the State Senate, about ½ of the chamber. The maps are pretty fair on a partisan level with 52/100 House seats and 20/40 Senate seats voting for Youngkin in 2021 and 53/100 House seats and 24 Senate seats voting for Democrats in 2022. Both parties wanted to turn back the clock to their most recent successful election year: for Democrats, it was 2022, and for Republicans, it was 2021.

To do this, both sides tried drumming up the issues that were the most important to their reasons for winning in each of those election years. Republicans tried bringing parental rights back up to win on education particularly, but Democrats were successfully attacking Republicans on book bans that school boards across the Commonwealth have enacted. Democrats tried keeping the 2022 momentum by hammering Republicans on abortion, while Republicans fought back on this issue as well by promising to ban abortion after 15 weeks only. Republicans tried to make the economy a more salient issue in the election despite a steadied inflation rate, especially compared to 2021. Republicans campaigned on Joe Biden’s unpopularity despite almost every election after Roe v. Wade being overturned showing Democrats improving on Biden’s 2020 electoral margins.

Abortion ended up being the dominant issue in the election not only due to Democrats’ messaging to voters on preventing abortion restrictions coming to Virginia but also the Republicans, particularly the allies of Governor Youngkin, spending millions of dollars attacking Democrats in direct mail and TV ads as the ones who are extreme on abortion despite this strategy not working for Republicans nationwide in 2022. Youngkin and his allies believed that the 15-week restriction was a good middle ground that the swing voters in the suburbs, who would decide the majority in both chambers, could get behind, especially since Youngkin held that stance on abortion during 2021. However, abortion wasn’t a relevant issue that year whereas it was in 2023, and this is a large part of why Republicans would end up losing not only their House majority but also failing to flip the State Senate, which was a massive failure for the Virginia Republican Party as they saw a chance at creating the first Republican trifecta in 10 years vanish before their eyes on election night. Republicans would net one seat in the State Senate, resulting in a 21-19 Democratic majority, and lose 3 seats in the House of Delegates, resulting in a 51-49 majority. Democrats would thus win majorities by the smallest possible margins. Republicans would come 4,414 votes short in the three races they would have needed to win to create a Republican trifecta in Virginia, but Democrats were closer to a blowout than Republicans were to a trifecta: had Democrats got an additional 4,099 votes in the five closest House of Delegates and two closest State Senate seats that Republicans won, they would’ve won a 55-45 majority in the House and a 23-17 majority in the Senate.

I chose this topic for my research paper because I live and breathe Virginia elections. I specialize in state legislative elections across the country, but I know Virginia’s most recent election results in particular like the back of my hand. When I realized the book for this semester was published nearly 10 years ago, it was an easy pick: I remember half of these elections vividly, from 2016 to 2023, so I was able to use my own recollections here to support my work as well. The research was pretty easy after simple searches for the appropriate databases and news articles on key events. Should there be an updated version of Cradle of America, I hope that it will consist of some of this analysis in this paper.

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