What were the first signs that Virginia was trending leftward?

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The state has a lot of colleges and young people in the state are very Democratic so its a generational shift.  There's so many government workers in Northern Virginia and even if they are wealthy, their fortunes are tied to the government and so they became Democratic because the Republicans were cutting their jobs and salaries.  The state has a large African-American minority and that is the base of the party so when they come out in droves, they combine with the liberal whites and give the Democrat enough votes to win.  Virginia was also one of the first Southern states to become Republican so that cycle is now ending while other Southern states are still in it.  Virginia's days as a bastion of right-wing conservatism are over.  The young people in the state are going to turn it into a deep blue state, more blue than probably any in the Midwest.  A similar trend is happening one state to the south in North Carolina where the young voters have consistently backed the Democrats since 2004.

People forget that young people were not a Democratic constituency before 2004.  Most young voters went with Nixon in '72.  Young voters in the 80s became Republican because of the extremely weak Democratic candidates and the popularity of Ronald Reagan.  Even in the 90s and 2000 election, there was not a dramatic difference across generations.

In 2004, you saw a clear movement of the millennials towards Democrats.  That grew deeper in the late 2000s, with the Obama campaign's outreach to them.  They remained Democratic leaning in 2010 and helped Obama win re-election in 2012 (he would have not won without them).  In 2016, Hillary was unpopular and millennials favored her, but in some states Donald Trump did much better with them.