AN63093
63093
Jr. Member
Posts: 871
Political Matrix
E: 0.06, S: 2.17
|
 |
« on: September 05, 2019, 02:50:08 PM » |
|
Nice work on compiling a list OP- but I think there are better choices for VA than Prince Edward. That county has historically always been more D leaning than the state as whole.. it was really only close to the state margin in 2016, but that is because it trended R and it's been losing population. It's actually a candidate to flip R in the future, if not in 2020, then in 2024.
My suggestion would be Montgomery County. It was a little more R than the state-wide margin in '16, and Romney won it (barely) in '12, but other than that, if you go back cycle by cycle, it tends to vote very close to the state margin.. going all the way back to the 60s (before that, it was generally much more Republican than the state as a whole.. also, one other exception would be the 90s, when Clinton outperformed the rest of the state there, but even then, he just barely won it).
It is also trending D, so I suspect the Dems will win it again in '20 and it could end up being pretty close to the eventual state margin.
A good former bellwether was Loudoun, which almost exactly tracked the state-wide margin until recently. A couple potential new ones are Chesterfield and VA Beach, which are potential flips for '20 and are trending D, but the demographics are such that I don't expect the bottom to completely fall out for the GOP like it did in e.g., Fairfax. So they could potentially end up similar to the state wide margin for at least a few cycles, if not more.
|
