So, in a decade, VA has swung from a lean R state to a strong lean D state? Interesting... Fair or not, with the Pentagon in the North and the Norfolk Naval base in the SE, I always thought of VA as a big time military state. Now that Obama is a "strong leader" who got bin Laden, can the Dems erode the longtime GOP lock on the military vote?
It is one state -- one that the Republicans haven't won without since 1924. Hoover won it by a big margin in 1928. Eisenhower won it twice by 10%+ margins. Nixon won it against Kennedy.
I think that President Obama has just achieved what Republicans wish that they could do themselves. President Obama has solved several problems at once at practically no cost by military standards and without harm to any of his objectives of foreign policy.
Virginia is a huge military state, but it also has lots of liberal-leaning minorities and government employees. Virginia has also endured more than its share of the effects of terrorism on American soil. One of the doomed flights on September 9, 2001 originated in Virginia and one hit the Pentagon. Virginia had the Langley shooter and the Beltway snipers.
Polls for some Southern states would be interesting. Those are the states in which white people are more likely to join the Armed Forces than the national average. Southern white people pay attention to military matters and foreign policy to an extent that Northern whites don't; they will be the ones in harm's way. In 2008, the South had some of the states that voted most decisively for John McCain, a war hero. In 2012 the Republicans have no war hero.
