By Stephen J. Farnsworth, Stephen P. Hanna and Benjamin Hermerding
U.S. Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) sure is lucky that northern Virginia is still growing – and that rural southwest Virginia is not.
For more than a decade, at least until November 4, Warner dominated the politics of the Old Dominion, his “radical centrist” vision of politics creating a more geographically diverse political coalition than other Democrats created for their statewide elections.
Thirteen years ago, Mark Warner (D) was elected governor of a very different state than the one that divided roughly 50/50 on his re-election this year. Warner’s moderate politics and his aggressive 2001 outreach efforts in rural corners of the state – including sponsoring a race car and a bluegrass campaign song — were hailed at the time as political savvy ways to connect with the state’s rural voters.
That approach paid off, back then.
Warner’s 2001 wooing of rural voters won him the support of more than a dozen counties in southwest and southside Virginia that normally rejected Democrats. Warner, of course, picked up the usual Democratic victories in urban and suburban jurisdictions around northern Virginia, Richmond and Hampton Roads but not in the outer rim suburbs like Loudoun and Prince William.
Warner’s moderate politics, together with the antipathy towards President Obama, almost cost him his re-election this year. The sea of rural blue that Warner enjoyed in 2001 has been replaced by deep red Republican sentiments. Rural voters who once backed him are now far less likely to split their tickets.
Wise County, a poor enclave in the state’s southwestern corner, gave Warner 58 percent of its votes in 2001 but only 28 percent of its votes this time around. Support likewise dropped by double-digits between those two elections in nearby Lee, Dickenson, Tazewell, Buchanan, and Russell counties, among others.
Fortunately for Warner, northern Virginia is both much larger and more inclined to support a Democrat than it was in 2001. We show these differences through a cartogram, which sizes the state’s political jurisdictions by the total number of voters in the 2014 election to more accurately reflect its political dynamics. After all, people vote, acres do not.
Looking at the state through this map demonstrates how northern Virginia saved Warner, whose appears to have been re-elected by a margin of less than 20,000 votes. Warner’s share of the vote in fast-growing Loudoun increased only from 46 percent to 49 percent, but that three percentage point gain represented an additional 24,000 votes above his 2001 totals. The same goes for Prince William County, where another three point gain, from 47 percent to 50 percent, translates to 21,000 more votes when we compare 2001 and 2014.
Warner also gained about 30,000 additional votes in Fairfax County, where his share increased from 54 percent to nearly 58 percent.
In contrast, the total votes cast in Wise County this year were less than 8,000, taking the sting out of Warner’s 30 percentage point decline there. Those dark red counties, which show the worst percentage declines for Warner in the state over the 13 year period, shrink to reflect their relative importance in statewide elections.
Ed Gillespie, Warner’s Republican opponent, frequently derided Warner’s self-proclaimed centrist credentials, noting that Warner almost always voted in accordance with President Obama’s preferences. That critique, poorly funded as it was, was nearly enough to unseat one of the most popular Virginia politicians of the last quarter century.
Without the population growth of Northern Virginia, Obama’s general unpopularity and Warner’s moderate temperament would have claimed another Democratic incumbent this year.
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Stephen J. Farnsworth is professor of political science and international affairs and director of the Center for Leadership and Media Studies at the University of Mary Washington. Stephen P. Hanna is professor of geography at UMW. Benjamin Hermerding is an Alvey Scholar at UMW and a research associate at the center.
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