The last time that a Republican presidential candidate carried the commonwealth of Virginia was in 2004.
It was a year after the invasion of Iraq, George W. Bush was running for reelection as the incumbent president, the memory of 9/11 was fresh, and Republicans were on a 40-year win streak in the state’s presidential elections. No Democratic presidential nominee had carried Virginia since Lyndon Johnson’s landslide victory over Barry Goldwater in 1964.
And in 2004, the election was not close. Bush carried Virginia over then-Sen. John Kerry by a margin of 8 percentage points, in line with his victory in 2000 over then-Vice President Al Gore. The only measure of success that Democrats had shown in Virginia was in gubernatorial races, where the party consistently won if a Republican occupied the White House. The GOP also controlled both of the commonwealth’s Senate seats.
But in 2006, incumbent Republican senator George Allen was defeated by Jim Webb in one of the closest elections of the year, handing control of the Senate to the Democratic Party for the first time in 12 years. Two years later, in 2008, Barack Obama would carry Virginia by 6 points, and Democrat Mark Warner would secure the party’s control of the commonwealth’s other Senate seat. And since 2004, no Republican candidate has won a statewide federal election in Virginia.
Obama again won the commonwealth in 2012 over Mitt Romney by a 4-point margin, and Hillary Clinton carried the state in her 2016 loss by 5 points as Donald Trump became the first Republican to win the presidency since Calvin Coolidge in 1924 without winning Virginia. And in 2020, President Joe Biden won the state by a decisive 10-point margin, the largest margin for a Democratic candidate since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944.
But in 2024, the Trump presidential campaign and the Senate campaign of Navy veteran Hung Cao see a path to victory in Virginia that has eluded Republicans for the past 20 years. And they have a blueprint to follow.
The Youngkin model
For all of the Republican Party’s failures to win statewide in federal elections since Bush’s reelection in 2004, the party has shown a glimmer of life in other statewide races. In 2009, the year after Obama broke Virginia’s 40-year Republican streak in presidential elections, Republican Bob McDonnell defeated Democratic candidate Creigh Deeds in the state’s gubernatorial election in a 17-point landslide. But four years later, Democrat Terry McAuliffe narrowly defeated Republican Ken Cuccinelli, and it seemed that the Democratic Party’s takeover of Virginia was back in full swing.
In 2017, with Trump in the White House, Democratic candidate Ralph Northam handily defeated Republican nominee Ed Gillespie by a 9-point margin in a race Democrats were largely expected to win. Two years later, the party secured unified control of the General Assembly and the governor’s mansion for the first time since 1993. As the next gubernatorial election loomed in 2021, Republicans had been summarily swept out of any office in state government, and Virginia had become a one-party state.
But on election night in 2021, Virginia shocked the nation and elected a Republican to be its governor for the next four years in a race that saw the most votes ever cast in a gubernatorial race in the state’s history. Voters also elected a Republican lieutenant governor and a Republican attorney general. In January 2022, political newcomer Glenn Youngkin became the first Republican governor of Virginia since McDonnell’s landslide victory in 2009. The Republicans even wrestled back control of the House of Delegates.
But how did Youngkin win a Virginia that had been moving so quickly toward the Democratic Party as the affluent and population-rich Washington, D.C., suburbs in northern Virginia enabled the party to easily overcome the rest of the commonwealth’s more rural Republican lean? The answer is all about margins.
In his 2021 victory, Youngkin managed to equalize or exceed Trump’s margins from 2020 in rural Virginia while slightly slimming down Biden’s enormous margins in the counties of Fairfax and Loudoun — large, suburban population centers that are full of highly educated and politically engaged voters that make up the Democratic base.
Two years later, Republicans followed the exact same model and won every single state legislative district that Biden had carried by 10 points or less, even as new district boundary lines meant that Democrats secured one-seat majorities in both chambers of the General Assembly.
But securing those favorable margins to ensure statewide success was a project that started long before Election Day.
Secure Your Vote Virginia
During the 2023 legislative elections, Youngkin’s political action committee, Spirit of Virginia, dedicated substantial efforts to encourage would-be Republican voters to vote early, either in person or by mail. It was a model that Youngkin used during his successful 2021 campaign, and it had proven successful. The effect was that the usually large Democratic lead prior to Election Day was drastically reduced. And since Republicans generally win Election Day turnout rather handily, the initiative dubbed “Secure Your Vote Virginia” led to a much better result for the party than otherwise would have been expected.
In a memo following the 2023 legislative elections, Spirit of Virginia noted that the Republicans cut their Election Day deficit by nearly 50% when compared to the midterm elections of 2022, which saw the GOP underperform expectations significantly.
A spokesperson for Spirit of Virginia said that the more favorable results were largely due to the fact that the party no longer treated the election as a single day but as 45 days.
“Republicans cannot go into Election Day down thousands of votes,” the spokesperson said. “That is a recipe for a loss. We need to treat every single day, all 45 days of early voting that Virginia has, as Election Day. And you need to get out every single one of those days, starting on Sept. 20.”
An uphill climb
No matter the enduring success that Youngkin and his political operation have shown over the past three years, it is an uphill climb for any Republican to win a statewide federal election in the commonwealth of Virginia. But if Trump and Cao prove competitive on election night, it will likely be indicative of a far more problematic night for the Democratic Party and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Despite reports surfacing that the Trump campaign was pulling investments from Virginia, the operation is continually expanding.
Jeff Ryer, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, touted the campaign’s 19 field offices and 30 staffers working with “thousands of volunteers” all over the commonwealth.
“As evidenced by the tens of thousands of yard signs dotting neighborhoods across the commonwealth, our support on the ground is strong and engaged,” Ryer said. “While Democrats insist the state isn’t a battleground, their actions tell a very different story. They’re claiming 132 staffers and 25 offices, and they sent Tim Walz, Doug Emhoff, and Gwen Walz to campaign at separate events in northern Virginia and Hampton Roads over Labor Day weekend. Since Virginia wasn’t the only state hosting backyard barbecues, we’re pretty sure they were here to campaign.”
Zack Roday, a political strategist in Virginia, said in an interview that this version of the Trump campaign is among the most professional and effective he has seen when compared to the 2016 and 2020 iterations.
“[The Trump campaign] has a really solid shot,” he said. “There’s not a lot of waste. I think everyone knows their mission … and they are ruthlessly going to execute on it.”
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For all of the campaign’s efforts, the likelihood remains high that Trump is going to fall short in Virginia even if he wins the presidential election. While Trump was within striking distance of Biden prior to his exit from the race, Harris has held a consistent lead. A recent poll from the Washington Post has her up in Virginia by 8 points. But an August Roanoke College poll only gave her a 3-point lead, indicating that perhaps the commonwealth could be competitive after all.
So will Virginia go red? The odds are not in its favor. But in campaign politics, nothing is certain until the votes are counted on election night. One thing is certain, though. In 2024, the Republican Party has its best shot in 20 years at pulling the Old Dominion back into the GOP column and putting to rest any doubt that Virginia is a true swing state.