December 9, 2009
Virginia: Fiscally and Socially Republican, but an Independent State?
Historically, Virginia has never been considered a swing state when it comes to presidential elections. Prior to the 2008 presidential election, the Commonwealth of Virginia has voted for the Republican candidate in every election since 1968. However, that changed in the 2008 election when the state overwhelmingly voted for Democratic candidate, Barack Obama.
Virginia has shown to be a strongly republican state in the past, but in the 2008 election, 52.62 percent of the vote went to the Democratic candidate. What attributes to this significant change?
“Virginia is a socially and fiscally conservative state, but not a Republican nor Democrat state,” said Robert Denton, professor of communication at Virginia Tech.
In the last four major elections, both federal and state, of the 134 counties and independent cities in Virginia, 67 have consistently voted for the Republican. Only 19 of those counties and cities have consistently voted for the Democratic candidate. This leaves 48 counties that are considered to be ‘swing counties,’ or counties that can be won by either candidate.
“Swing counties can either have a high number of independents or the staunch partisans may feel different amounts of motivation in a particular election,” said Isaac Wood from the Center of Politics at the University of Virginia.
According to Denton, for the last 20 years, at least 33 percent of Virginia voters considered themselves to be independent. Independent voters are those who vote based on individual candidates and issues rather than political party ideology. In the 2009 gubernatorial race, of the 30 percent of independents that came out to vote, 66 percent of them voted for Bob McDonnell.
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Click here to view an interactive map and see how Va. counties vote.
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Campaigning is key for candidates trying to win the votes of swing and independent voters. Candidates focus not only on geography but on demographics as well.
“Swing voters are more about demographics (age, sex, income, race, religion, etc.),” said Denton.
Geographically, many of the swing areas are located near Northern Va., Tidewater and Central Virginia. Candidates who campaign in these areas try to develop their message strategies based on the demographics of these areas in order to appeal to the greatest number of voters.
“Message strategies are developed through polling, focus groups, etc.,” said Denton. “One starts with the core constituency, then moves to talking about issues in away to garner support,” he said.
Denton said that message topics can be on the same, but candidates learn to talk about the issue in a way that would appeal to the particular voter or groups of voters they are addressing.
“Campaigns will have specific message points related to a series of issues,” Denton said. “However, regional appeals may be different in terms of issue emphasis (transportation in NOVA vs. jobs and education in Southside Virginia).”
The way a candidate talks, dresses or location where he/she campaigns all play a role in garnering support from constituents.
“Candidates try to stress local connections and attributes as well as personal attributes,” said Wood.
Personal attributes of a candidate are what Denton says many swing voters will base their vote on rather than the issues.
“Genuinely undecided voters will likely decide on candidate qualities such as trust, competence, likeability, etc.” he said.
Not only do candidates try to win the votes of the swing voters, candidates also try to win the as many votes as they can in the areas that are strongly leaning towards the other candidate.
“When campaigning in an unfriendly area for a party, candidates try to cite his or her ‘independence’ and ‘common sense’ as a way to sidestep the partisan disadvantage,” said Wood.
Another interesting trend that has been seen in Virginia, not only in the last four major elections, but in the last 20 years, is the year after a presidential election, Virginians tend to elect a governor of the party opposite of the party in control of the White House. The only time this did not hold true was during the presidencies of Richard Nixon and Ronald Regan.
In 2004, George W. Bush was elected by both Virginia and the United States in to the White House for a second term, and the following year, Tim Kaine, a Democrat, was elected to office in Virginia. This trend began after the 1977 presidential election when Democrat Jimmy Carter was elected. The following year, Virginians elected Republican John Dalton to be the new governor.
The trend held true again this year when Republican Bob McDonnell was voted into office the year after Democrat Barack Obama was elected president.
In an article by Dr. Larry Sabato, Director of the Virginia Center of Politics at the University of Virginia, he calls this “the presidential jinx.” Sabato also points out that this trend has happened in New Jersey as well, and this November’s election makes it the sixth consecutive time that the winner of the gubernatorial election has been of the political party opposite the president.
Election trends tend to be short term. Candidates will continue to campaign and win over the swing counties as well as some of the counties that are staunchly Republican or Democrat. Obama did it in 2009, winning over 16 counties and independent cities that had previously voted for Republican candidates and continued to vote Republican in the 2009 Virginia governor’s race.
So while Virginia is population remains fiscally and socially conservative, the last two elections illustrate that the state’s voters base their decisions on the merits of the candidate, rather than voting along party lines. With this knowledge, candidates will have to campaign strategically in order to win over swing areas around the state.
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Information for this project was gathered from the Virginia State Board of Elections website. Results from the last four major elections in the Commonwealth of Virginia (2004 Presidential election, the 2005 Gubernatorial election, the 2008 Presidential election and the 2009 Gubernatorial election) was gathered for analysis. I used Microsoft Excel to clean up the files so they could be analyzed. I then used a formula to determine the percent of votes each of the major candidates got for each election. I then used excel to compare the counties that voted for democratic or republican candidates to see how each of Virginia’s 134 counites voted in each of the gubernatorial and presidential elections. I then took the data for each county and lined it up in a spreadsheet to determine if there were any trends. I then made a map with Many-Eyes to show the counties in Virginia that consistantly vote Republican, Democrat or are swing counties.
Click below for links to my spreadsheets:
2004 Presidential election spreadsheet
2005 Gubernatorial election spreadsheet
2008 Presidential election spreadsheet
2009 Gubernatorial election spreadsheet
2004-2009 Election trends spreadsheet
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