Will Virginia Become A Swing State in 2008?
The short answer, I would say is yes, but only barely. Even without considering the long-term demographic trends in Virginia, after the 2004 electionVirginia slipped into swing state status according to the partisan index. The partisan index, for those not familiar, measures the difference in how an individual state voted and how the rest of the nation voted. This is done both to provide a rough estimate of how much a candidate would have to win the popular vote by in order to win a given state, and to estimate which states will be the most important swing states in the next election cycle. Over the past six election cycles, outside of candidate home states, I have noticed a maximum partisan index shift of around 7.0 points in a single election cycle. This means that I consider any state that comes in under 7.0 in favor of either party to be a "swing state." Right now, Virginia is at RNC +5.7, which makes it a swing state, if only slightly so. In an even election, it would take nearly the maximum shift in order for Virginia to go blue. Long term, say 2012, things are more promising, as Virginia has been trending blue since it reached a Republican apex in 1988 at RNC +12.8.
Apart from my amateur analysis, Robert Lang and Dawn Dhavale have produced an interesting report entitled The 2005 Governor's Race: A Geogrphaic Analysis of the Four Virginias that provides far more in depth analysis into the voting and demographic trends in the state. The paper looks at four regions of Virginia--"Northern Virginia," "Tidewater," "The Capital Region," and "Shenandoah"--and even at smaller subregions within these four areas. One important finding by the authors was that Kaine improved on Kerry across the state, rather than in just a few areas:
Still, like other papers, Land and Dhavale do spend a lot of time trying to figure out if Kaine's success in exurban areas of Northern Virginia in 2005 signals an important shift for 2006 and 2008. I think their answer is a good one:
As with all comparisons, these are not exact matches. But that is not the point. This exercise shows instead the complicated sectional nature of Virginia. Of course, the commonwealth is hardly the only divided state. There is an upstate/ downstate split in New York and Illinois, and an east/west divide in Oregon and Washington, and so on. But the dynamics of these combined states varies. In Virginia's case, its red state/blue state split is interesting because the blue state portion lacks a big city. Instead Virginia is a blue state in its suburbs only, which has a moderating effect on its politics. Were Virginia to have a blue state section that contained a solidly Democratic big city on the order of say Baltimore, it is likely that the commonwealth would be a hotly contested swing state in presidential races. However, while the blue Washington, DC suburbs lift the Virginia's profile into the mid-range of an affluent blue state, the weight of its rural and largely conservative south and west make the commonwealth a solidly red state overall for now. Given Northern Virginia's fast growth and the changing nature of suburban politics, that could change by 2008. (p. 10)
As a final note on this piece, I should note that a "top tier" swing state is defined as a state that favors one party over the other by 4.0 points or less, or close enough for a fairly common one cycle swing to change control. Right now, the "top tier" swing states are New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Iowa, New Mexico, Ohio, Nevada, Colorado and Florida. Barring a major change, if 2008 is another tight election, those eight state will determine the winner. While our over-emphasis on swing states in 2004 has been much criticized, it should be noted that our massive voter registration efforts in those states provide Democrats with a healthy 238-213 electoral vote edge outside of the "top tier." That is one very real glimmer of hope to come out of the failures of 2004.
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