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Virginia took on new life Tuesday as a Democratic stronghold, with Abigail Spanberger, Jay Jones and Ghazala Hashmi sweeping statewide races and marking the party’s largest power shift in more than a decade as Republicans lost at least a dozen legislative seats.
BEACH VIBES
The Virginia Beach and Greater Hampton Roads area appeared to be the biggest boon for hometown son Jones, who represented Norfolk in the state legislature and whose namesake father did for years prior.
Several Tidewater counties that backed Glenn Youngkin in 2021 flipped blue this time, helping boost Jones and the Democratic ticket.
The densely populated independent cities of Virginia Beach and Chesapeake joined typically Democratic Suffolk, Norfolk and Newport News to help propel Jones to victory, according to postmortem maps.
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James City County, which surrounds Williamsburg, and Surry County, an otherwise right-leaning area across the river from Jamestown, also landed in Jones’ lap on election night.
New Kent County, where Jones was previously cited for driving 116 mph, remained in outgoing Attorney General Jason Miyares’ favor.
But across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel on the Eastern Shore, rural Northampton County also went for Jones, while its adjacent counterpart Accomack stayed in Miyares’ hands.
The overall trend in that region depicted Jones’ neighbors as a big part of his victory Tuesday.
D.C.’S BLUE FOOTPRINT EXPANDS
Meanwhile, in Democrat-friendly northern Virginia, turnout margins for Republicans appeared anemic compared to 2021, when Youngkin and Miyares won their upsets.
Ticket-splitting in the Washington exurbs appeared to help Jones as well as the increasing population density fed by federal workers and others creating ever-distant bedroom communities of Washington, D.C.
As Washington, D.C.’s population expands south and west, nearby counties like Stafford and Spotsylvania — as well as Loudoun, Fauquier and Clarke — have trended sharply toward Democrats.
Spotsylvania County went for Spanberger but eschewed Jones in favor of Miyares. To the north, Stafford County, once more rural but now overtaken by subdivisions and enlarged I-95 interchanges to deal with the population increase, was lost to Democrats up and down the ballot after Youngkin won it in 2021.
In Stafford, Republican Del. Paul Milde lost his seat to Democratic Del-elect. Stacey Carroll, who had successfully weathered a residency dispute during her tough race that was eventually ruled in her favor.
In Loudoun, Prince William and Fauquier counties, west of Washington, Democrats unseated otherwise popular incumbent Republicans Geary Higgins and Ian Lovejoy, foreshadowing Spanberger and Jones victories.
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The reverberations from the election were also felt across the mountain in West Virginia’s eastern panhandle, where, by Wednesday morning, social media was buzzing with commentary and memes similar to how Floridians have been addressing New Yorkers. They suggested Virginians either stay where they are and deal with their newfound leftward bent or not bring their politics if they move into Jefferson and Berkeley counties.
The two states originally split in 1863 over political differences after a convention of Virginia delegates upset over Richmond’s plans to secede from the Union met in Wheeling to ultimately agree to the “Restored Government of Virginia,” which became West Virginia.
Jefferson County of West Virginia, neighboring Loudoun, has become the second-most Democratic county in the all-Republican state besides Monongalia, which houses West Virginia University, as the blue footprint from Washington expands even beyond what was seen Tuesday.
The margin increases Youngkin saw in Loudoun and the vicinity in 2021 were muted Tuesday, helping Spanberger, Jones and Hashmi all claim victory.
The same was evident for increasingly populated counties around Richmond, as Chesterfield, Hashmi’s home county, flipped blue and Henrico saw increased margins for hometown favorite Spanberger.
SOUTHWEST STAYS RED, BUT FEWER TURN OUT
Elsewhere, the more rural, otherwise Republican-friendly New River Valley swung leftward as well on Tuesday, with Montgomery County landing in Democratic hands, according to postmortem percentages in multiple outlets.
Del. Chris Obenshain, part of a prominent Virginia Republican political family, was unseated as part of the blue wave, and Spanberger and Jones took the Youngkin-won county that features Virginia Tech and Christiansburg.
In 2021, Youngkin “ran up the score,” as pundits said, in deep red southwestern Virginia.
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This year, Republicans still held their state legislative seats there and voted for Miyares and Winsome Earle-Sears, but the contests were closer and with smaller numbers.
In far-flung Lee County — longitudinally west of Detroit and closer to Mississippi than Washington, D.C. — 1,000 fewer Republicans turned out for Earle-Sears than Youngkin.
That trend continued up the mountainous, diagonal border with Kentucky as Wise, Dickenson, Buchanan, Tazewell, Bland and Giles counties all turned out in much lesser numbers for the regionally-favored GOP candidates.
CROOKED ROAD; BRIGHT SPOT
One small bright spot remained on the map for Republicans as of Wednesday.
The area comprising Virginia’s famous “Crooked Road,” considered the birthplace of country music and bluegrass along today’s U.S. 58 in the Appalachian hills, provided similar figures for Earle-Sears and Miyares as it did for Youngkin and Miyares four years ago.
Just as NASCAR fans packed Martinsville days earlier, Republicans in the surrounding counties showed up in only slightly smaller numbers than four years ago.
LOOKING AHEAD
A Republican official told Fox News Digital after the results came in Tuesday that Virginia politics can often be a “rubber band” that stretches one way and releases another as time passes.
Ever since the “Byrd Machine’s” 70-year Democrat grip on Virginia politics that subsided in the late 20th century after the death of ex-Gov. Harry Byrd, there has been an ebb and flow of partisan power in Richmond often contingent on who is in the White House.
Youngkin’s 2021 victory was seen by political observers as an indictment of the Biden administration, as much as Spanberger’s and Jones’ was to that of President Donald Trump.
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Previously, Gov. Ralph Northam won in the second year of Trump’s first term.
But Virginia had not seen such a drastic tidal shift until Tuesday.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., is up for re-election in 2026, and already one conservative, state Sen. Bryce Reeves, R-Orange, has announced his run against the entrenched incumbent.
In her concession speech, Earle-Sears said she’s “not going anywhere.” But it remains to be seen if she, Youngkin or another Republican may make Reeves some company and try to use Warner’s race as the same type of response to any shortcomings of the Spanberger-Jones era.
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