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Virginia Capitol C onnections, Spring 2016
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Virginia may be for lovers, but with
significant elections every autumn and its
increasingly important place in national
politics, Virginia is certainly also for those
who study elections and politics.
And right now, the Commonwealth
finds itself in an interesting counter-
intuitive electoral cycle.
On the one hand, since 2008, Democrats
have a won-loss record in statewide races
of 7-3, with the 2009 races being their one
bad year. The presidential elections of 2008
were historic in that it was the first time a Democratic presidential
candidate won Virginia in 40 years, but it was also a watershed
election in that it marked the emergence of a new coalition of
Democratic voters.
On the other hand, since 2008 Republicans have consolidated
their hold on the General Assembly, taking the House of Delegates
from a 55-43 majority to a 66-34 majority, and taking the Senate from
a 19-21 minority to a 21-19 majority.
How do we understand these countervailing trends in Virginia
electoral politics?
There are at least three broad explanations. The first is what we
might call the Northern Virginia effect, that is the massive growth of
Northern Virginia, and how different Northern Virginia is politically
from the rest of the Commonwealth. In this way of understanding
things, the rest of Virginia has largely remained the same, while
Northern Virginia has grown and come to dominate all political
change in the Commonwealth.
Another explanation is what we might call the differential turnout
effect, that is, the much higher turnout in presidential election years
and other statewide elections than during “off” or “off-off” year
elections.
There are several ways to calculate voter turnout, but the State
Board of Elections uses the formula total voting / total registered .
Using State Board of Election data since 1976, we can see the highest
turnout is during presidential elections, followed by U.S. Senate
and Gubernatorial elections (off years), and then trailing badly are
General Assembly elections (off-off years).
Average turnout from 1976 to present during presidential
elections years has been 77.5%, dropping to an average of 54.5%
during non-presidential U.S. Senate years and Gubernatorial years,
and dropping further during General Assembly elections to 42%.
However, while turnout has been trending up for presidential
election years, it has been trending down for General Assembly-only
elections from a high of 59% in 1987 (the year the lottery question
was on the ballot) to lows of 28% in the 2011 and 29% in 2015.
Overall, over the last 40 years or so there is an average 35.5%
difference in turnout between presidential elections and General
Assembly elections, and an average difference of 11-12% between U.S.
Senate and Gubernatorial elections and General Assembly elections.
Everyone recognizes that there is also a structural effect as well.
Virginia has a very unique cycle of elections resulting in some years
where federal elections for president, U.S. Senate, and congressional
seats attract maximum voter attention, and elections in other years
where only House of Delegates seats are up.
But, there are things that exaggerate the effects of this unique
cycle of elections.
For one, electoral districts at the state senate and House of
Delegates level are heavily gerrymandered, resulting in a dichotomy
where most of the state has little electoral activity and a smaller part
of the state has almost manic electoral activity. For instance, in the
2015 election cycle, two-thirds of Virginia geographically did not
have a competitive race, so if you lived in two-thirds of Virginia there
were really no incentives to go vote. On the other hand, a few select
districts, including the 10th senate district in suburban Richmond,
the 29th senate district in suburban Northern Virginia, the 7th senate
district in Norfolk and Virginia Beach, had hyper-competitive races.
Going forward, the big question relates to how the two parties
respond to this electoral environment.While the parties have different
theories of the electorate, Democrats appear to be unified around a
basic theory while Republicans appear to be debating the merits of
two different theories.
The Democratic theory of the Virginia electorate is conceptually
easy to understand, if not difficult to consistently put into practice. It
is that Democrats need to effectively mobilize the coalition of voters
that then candidate Barack Obama created during his 2008 run to
the White House. This coalition includes blacks, urban and inner-
suburban whites (especially white women), voters under 40 (the bulk
of which are the elusive Millennials), and ethnic minorities (including
the increasingly important Hispanic vote).
This modern Democratic coalition is built upon the coalition that
emerged out of the political transformation of the 1960s and early
1970s, which included blacks, labor voters, and urban whites. The
problem is, the new Democratic coalition contains elements that are
very difficult to mobilize, including Millennials and ethnic minorities.
Republicans have conflicting theories of the Virginia electorate.
On the one hand, the social conservative base argues that Republican
voters show up in big numbers when the party runs sufficiently
conservative candidates. All the party needs to do is run the right
kind of candidate and the “silent majority” of conservative voters will
show up in big numbers and win elections.
On the other hand, moderates say that Republicans need to move
beyond the social conservative base and attract voters drawn to the
fiscal conservative policies of Republicans, and to do so Republicans
need to back off the focus on social issues.
The difficulty for Republicans has been that both sides can see their
theories being demonstrated at times, with moderates pointing to the
McDonnell/Cuccinelli/Bolling sweep in 2009 and social conservatives
pointing to the strengthened General Assembly majorities and the very
narrow losses of Cuccinelli and Gillespie in 2013 and 2014.
The 2016 election cycle will give Democrats another opportunity
to better learn how to mobilize its diverse coalition of voters, but if
Donald Trump is the eventual Republican nominee for president it is
not clear that 2016 will do much to help settle the Republican debate.
Dr. Quentin Kidd, Vice Provost and director of the Judy Ford Wason
Center for Public Policy
The State of Virginia Politics in 2016 By Quentin Kidd
Hugh A. Joyce
President
cell: (804) 305-9595
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Richmond, VA 23230
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