How Democrats Overwhelmed Rural Virginia
Don’t let anyone tell you Virginia Republicans didn’t go down swinging. Though the commonwealth used to be a Republican redoubt — it was the only part of the old Confederacy to support Gerald Ford over Jimmy Carter in 1976 — it’s become increasingly blue on the federal level. No Republican has carried it for president in over two decades, though Donald Trump kept the Democratic margin within single digits in both 2016 and 2024.
While Republicans had found more success at the state level, most recently with former Gov. Glenn Youngkin in 2021, 2025 seemed to unravel everything. Gov. Abigail Spanberger romped to a 15-percentage-point victory over ex-Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears. Democrats hugely expanded their majority in the state House of Delegates. Most dispiriting was the defeat of Jason Miyares, the uncontroversial Republican attorney general who ran a competent, well-funded campaign. Miyares was ousted by Democrat Jay Jones by a seven-percentage-point margin, even after violent text messages sent by Jones were made public. If the Virginia GOP couldn’t win that race, what was the point of it?
It is perhaps understandable, then, that national Republicans largely considered Virginia Democrats’ gerrymandering referendum to be a lost cause. Having romped to power last year, Virginia Democrats have worked to get around the independent redistricting commission that voters approved in 2020. Their goal was to redraw Virginia’s U.S. House districts in a way that would dilute Republican voting power. Under their proposed map, 10 of Virginia’s 11 congressional districts would at least lean blue, and would likely cause four of the commonwealth’s five Republican districts to flip.
To get final approval for their map, voters needed to approve it in a referendum. For nearly two months, liberal groups advertising a “Yes” vote essentially had the airwaves to themselves. However, polls began to show a closer race than expected. At the 11th hour, a surge of spending for “No” began. Democrats began worrying that the outcome was not a done deal.
And it wasn’t: “Yes” looks to have prevailed by between 3 and 4 percentage points. Close, as they say, but no cigar. It’s possible that a low-key, localized campaign was the best shot for “No,” and that intervention from national Republicans would have been unhelpful. However, it seems hard to fathom that having more resources earlier would not have been a major asset for team “No.” If more and earlier spending would have been enough to change the outcome is, of course, something we’ll never know.
Was this a straightforward case of the rich men north of Richmond imposing their rule over what they viewed as a bunch of backwards rural yokels? It’s complicated. For Republicans to win in Virginia, something close to a perfect storm is needed. You need the Trump base engaged and motivated, and you need anti-Trump moderates to flip. Youngkin was famously able to do both.
The benchmarks for a “No” victory were fairly straightforward. In 2024, Trump had lost the state by 6 percentage points. Therefore, if “No” was able to exceed Trump’s numbers by that much in a given county, that would be a good sign that the referendum was on the path to failure.
And in rural Virginia, “No” was able to do just that. The Republican base was clearly engaged in a way that it hasn’t been in years. Across most of the state, “No” significantly outperformed Trump. In parts of Appalachian and Southside Virginia, “No” actually did even better than Youngkin in his successful 2021 campaign.
The problem was that urban and suburban Virginia was unwilling to play ball. In the dark blue city of Richmond, “No” was able to match Trump’s 2024 numbers, but not significantly exceed them. It was the same story in the Richmond suburbs of Henrico and Chesterfield, formerly Republican areas that last voted GOP for president in 2004 and 2016 respectively.
The biggest problem, however, was the D.C. suburbs in Northern Virginia. “Yes” actually did better than 2024 Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in the massive counties of Loudoun, Prince William, and Fairfax, the last of which stands to elect five of Virginia’s 11 House members under the new districts. Combined with Richmond standing its ground, this was enough for “Yes” to win.
The reason why “No” fared worse than Trump in Northern Virginia, however, doesn’t appear to be educated professionals mad at being laid off by DOGE swinging still-further left. In the rich, white parts of Northern Virginia, “No” actually held up alright: In those areas, it did about 6 percentage points better than Trump, according to one analysis. While these areas still voted strongly “Yes” overall, there was a real contingent of anti-Trump voters who were unwilling to stomach what Virginia Democrats were offering. Had that been the story of Northern Virginia as a whole, “No” may well have prevailed.
The problem was that Trump’s 2024 gains with nonwhite voters did not carry over at all to the referendum. “Yes” massively overperformed in the same areas that swung hard to Trump two years ago. Whether these voters have exited the Republican coalition out of frustration with the president, if they’re Trump loyalists who can only be convinced to show up when he himself is on the ballot, or some combination of the two, remains open to discussion. What is beyond clear, though, is that they were the death knell for “No.”
Demographics tell the story. While in 2000 Loudoun County was 80 percent white, in 2020 that figure had fallen to just 52 percent. Prince William County shows the same trajectory: It was 65 percent white in 2000, but only 38 percent white in 2020. The rest of suburban Virginia is similarly diversifying. When Trump surged with minority voters in 2024, it showed up disproportionately in these counties. Now that the GOP is losing their support, the vote-rich Northern Virginia metro swung back, hard.
Unless and until Republicans figure out a way to either get these voters back or replace them in the coalition, the Virginia GOP is going to have a tough time finding its way back from the wilderness. In the meantime, Northern Virginia liberals look set to keep running wild.
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