Continued growth of D.C. has turned VA from light red to reddish purple. It fits in the same category as Florida and Ohio. Look at the last 2 elections and it's shown the exact same percentages as the popular vote. If that's not solid purple, then I don't know what is. D.C. has had a higher turnout in the last 2 elections too though, likely due to Obama being the Democratic candidate. I look for VA to be slightly to the right of the popular vote next time, but not by much. Wishful liberal thinking is what would lead someone to misconstrue statistics or believe it's a Democratic state now.
There's some merit in this argument, but Virginia has most certainly been heading left for quite a while now.
In 1988 it was an R+13 State, and it steadily trended Democratic to 2004, when it was R+9. At that point, it made a huge jump to +0, where it has stayed for the past 2 elections.
It might rubber band back a bit to, say, R+2 or something in the next few elections, but there is no particular reason to think that it will entirely reverse it's trend, especially when you consider that the Washington suburbs are continuing to grow at a rapid rate.
I expect in another 20 years of so it will become a semi-safe Democratic seat.
That's possible.
However, there is likely to be a point of diminishing returns for Democrats. And it's possible that point was just reached.
I compared Virginia's presidential vote to the nations.
In 2000, it was 8.54 % more conservative than the rest of the nation. In 2004, that number was down to 5.8%. In 2008, that number was down to 0.9%. 2012 had the smallest shift, as the number was down to 0.03%.
Virginia also has a higher percentage of African American voters, so it's likely that Obama overperformed relative to other potential Democratic candidates. And without him on the ballot, we may no longer have a situation in which African Americans have higher than average turnout. Which is likely to hurt Democrats a bit.
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