Virginia has long been one of the most purplish of the purple states. Since 1970, Virginia has had 7 Democrats and 6 Republicans in the Executive Mansion. Democrats controlled both houses of the Virginia General Assembly until the 1990s and yet went 44 years (1964-2008) between voting for a Democrat in a presidential election.
More recently, Virginia has typified the divided power often seen in purple states. Democrats have largely sat in the governor’s office since 2002, while Republicans have mostly controlled both the Senate and House of Delegates since 2000.
All of this ended on election night 2019. Virginia is now blue, in spades. Having voted for the Democrat in the last three presidential cycles, Virginia has now given Democrats the governorship and control of both houses of their legislature. When the new senators and delegates are seated in 2020, it will be the first Democratic trifecta of control in Virginia since 1993.
Virginia’s Congressional delegation also has a Democratic majority, which includes both their seats in the US Senate. There will likely be fewer and fewer Virginia Republicans in Congress as the Democratic-controlled state government redraws its districts after the 2020 census.
Speculation on the cause of the profound Democratic victory in Virginia abounds. The suburbanization of Virginia’s traditionally rural districts is the go-to culprit for many pundits. But observers shouldn’t forget that middle-class voters in mostly suburban areas have long been center-right. They are historically more likely to vote Republican.
2019 does represent an apparent culmination of a trend that started long before present political realities. However, it is a sharp and sudden crescendo of that trend. This suggests not only a population shift over time but a sudden and very recent shift of sensibilities in that population.
It’s becoming abundantly clear that Republicans in the age of Donald Trump are damaged goods to the middle-class, college-educated voters that tend to live in the suburbs. President Trump and other Republicans think they can replace these voters with those from the working class. But the reality is that the suburbs represent a foundation of support in the Republican coalition. If Republicans lose the suburbs, they lose their viability as a major political party.
The facts present an undeniable picture. The presidency of Donald Trump has dramatically accelerated a shift of light-red states to purple and purple states to light-blue. The southern bulwark is fraying at the edges, the western states have already shattered, and the progressive coastal enclaves would vote for a Mr. Potato Head with a D next to his name.
The balance of power on the presidential electoral map is at a breaking point. It’s becoming more and more likely that the Republican Party has engaged in a Faustian bargain with Donald Trump that will lead them nowhere but the hellish landscape of political irrelevance.