Between 2004 and 2008, Virginia flipped from red to blue without even passing through a purple phase. Have you seen anything like it?
In November 2006, I was volunteering with Equality Virginia campaigning against the anti-marriage equality amendment that Virginia was subjected to that year. Unfortunately, it passed. But EV sent me to work a polling place in eastern Loudoun County. I overheard a Democratic campaigner say, “I’ve watched this precinct turn from red to blue over the past 4 years.” Loudoun takes up most of Congressional District 10, which had been R since 1980; District 10 flipped to D in 2018 and has been solidly blue ever since. Virginia’s 11-member Congressional delegation has been majority Democratic since then too.
The last time Virginians sent a Republican to the Senate was 2002.So ever since 2009 we’ve had 2 Democratic senators, and they easily keep their seats.
The current R governor of Virginia managed to hoodwink enough independent voters in 2023 while Democratic turnout was slack. But next year’s gubernatorial election will go Democratic, I’m confident of it.
The way all this went means that no presidential candidate has pursued swing-state votes in Virginia in a very long time (since 1948 by my reckoning). Virginia went from voting 53.73% Republican in 2004 to 52.6% Democratic in 2008. Obama’s election made a permanent change. So we’ve never been under heavy presidential ad barrage.
Why Ohio went from swing state to solid red, while Virginia completely flipped from red to blue, is easily explained: all the smart people moved out of Ohio to Virginia (witness myself). Still, the startling suddenness of the flip in 2008 means we never really tasted of the purple. The only advance warning was that conversation I had at the polls in 2006.
Virginia has a strong habit of picking a governor from the opposite party of whomever is currently in the White House. In recent decades, they’ve only bucked that trend once.
Right, and to correct my error in the OP, I should have said the current Republican gov hoodwinked the independents in 2021 (not 2023). That means we get to elect a new gov in 2025; he isn’t eligible to run for 2 consecutive terms.
It is remarkable. But, I’d say Virginia was truly purple, for about one year: 2016, hence Clinton’s pick of Tim Kaine for running mate. I recall the state then as being characterized as purple leaning slightly blue – like Michigan right now. Certainly it was more purple (that is, had less of a blue lean) than Minnesota right now (no one complained that Clinton missed an opportunity to pick a swing state running mate, the way some complained about Harris’ choice of Walz this year).
I don’t know that I’d characterize Virginia as “never having a purple phase.” Republican Bob McDonnel was elected governor in 2009. The Congressional delegation was majority Republican as recently as 2018. The political evolution of Virginia is remarkable, but it didn’t happen overnight.
At the Presidential level, New Hampshire took a similar switch from voting exclusively for Republican candidates from 1968-1988 to voting for Democrats since then (with the exception of voting for W in 2000). New Mexico has the same pattern except that they voted for Gore but then barely voted for W’s reelection in 2004.
Re the governor election: in 2021 Virginia Republicans did not hold a traditional primary but instead used a convention of party delegates to select a candidate via ranked choice voting. The result was the relatively moderate Glenn Youngkin winning the nomination instead of one of the numerous right wing whackos who might have fared much worse in the general.
The VA legislature continues to balance on razor sharp margins. The commonwealth is pretty anti-Trump but it appears to be still a very purple state.
California underwent a similar process. From 1952 to 1988, California voted Republican in every presidential election, except in 1964. Since 1992 it has always voted Democratic. Why this happened is a matter for political scientists to discuss, and many articles have been written about it. But this might be another example of going from red to blue without going through purple.
West Virginia is a better example of a place that flipped without going through a swing-state phase.
It was a pretty reliable blue state from the New Deal era until almost the turn of the millennium, going red only during the Republican landslides of '56, '72 and '84. From 2000 onwards, though, it’s been a solidly red state in presidential elections.
Local Democrats continued having success for a while after, with Joe Manchin getting elected as recently as 2018. But the party’s fortunes in the state plummeted hard and swift during the 2010s. The Democrats went from controlling the governorship and both houses of the state legislature in 2014, to now only having only four seats (out of 34 total) in the state Senate and 11 (out of 100 total) in the House of Delegates. And the only way a Democrat stands a chance of succeeding Manchin in the U.S. Senate is if the Republican candidate Jim Justice gets caught with a live boy or dead girl. And even then, it wouldn’t be a surefire thing.
But I’ll make the overall comment as it relates to “states flipping from red (to maybe purple) to blue” or vice versa.
The names of the two parties and the red/blue color code we now use for them (albeit anachronistically vs earlier elections) is the same as it was in e.g. 1960. But the grab bag of ideas that represent Republicanism in e.g. 2024, 2004,1984, and 1964 are each very different grab bags. Likewise the Ds, although not currently to the same extreme degree.
Some of the cause of states switching color is migration, as @Johanna said. Some is social and generational change in the populace. And another big dollop is the party(ies) change what they stand for and suddenly that sells well locally. Or doesn’t.
I’ll argue that Republicanism under MAGA has changed a lot more than the electorate has in the same time interval. This novel product is finding novel adherents in unexpected places. And a big change in “policy” or platform, or at least bandwagon, can produce a big swing in voter allegiance.
Changed my mind … I will make a poorly informed surmise about VA:
Imagine it was illegal to reside in VA if you work in / around DC for the Federal government or any of the many corporations clustered around DC to serve that government. Or if you’d retired from such a job. And none of those corps put their facilities or HQs in VA. VA didn’t want 'em and would not have 'em, period.
In that counterfactual, what color do you think VA would be voting right now? My vote is it’d be so hard-red pig ignorant it’d make West Virginia look enlightened by comparison.
Blue states electing GOP governors and red states electing Dem governors is a thing that routinely happens. Here on the other side of the Potomac, we had eight years of Larry Hogan.
But when a blue state elects a GOP Senator or a red state elects a Dem Senator, that’s a much bigger deal, and is more of an indication of either the state being more purple, or a Senator from a different era in that state’s political history hanging on.
Why this difference exists, I’m not knowledgeable on. Better minds than mine have written about it, though.
One big thing that you left out was urban/rural balance. More urban states are more blue; more rural states are more red. This wasn’t always the case, but it’s increasingly been that way during the 2000s. As the DC 'burbs and Hampton Roads areas have gotten more populous, it’s changed Virginia into a more urban state; more of its population is there and in the Richmond area, compared to Southside and the Shenendoah Valley and the parts of Tidewater away from places like Hampton and Newport News. It used to be much more the other way around.
Missouri is a state that’s gone in the opposite direction: St. Louis and KC have lost a lot of population, so Missouri’s gone from purple to red.
ETA: And Maryland, with a population that’s dominated by the triangle of Baltimore, the DC burbs, and Annapolis, is solidly blue.
My take is from my experience in Mass. I grew up here, moved away in my 20s-40s, and now I’m back.
It’s very liberal, and virtually all the state and federal electees are Democrats. But we have a long history of electing Republican governors, including Romney, Weld, and Baker.
I think Mass recognizes that one party rule is dumb, even if it’s the party you generally support. So moderate Republicans provide a nice check at the executive.
I’m puzzled how it comes about that both candidates for governor are running unopposed. That’s kind of… unusual. Meanwhile in the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor there are like 6 candidates.