Virginia governor’s race: electoral history

Ralph Northam has defeated Ed Gillespie in the Nov. 7 Virginia gubernatorial election. Democrats were hoping that the purple-turning-blue state would continue to trend in their direction, and the large margin of victory for Northam seems to point in this direction.

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Of course, Virginia wasn’t always so blue. See how we got here, through 73 years of electoral history.

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The ’40s: Democrats dominate in “a one-party state”

Like much of the South, Virginia was solidly Democratic through the 1940s. At this time, parties in the U.S. were much more geographically than ideologically based, according to Geoffrey Skelley, associate editor of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. Between the South’s Democratic bent and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s soaring popularity — he fought World War II and crafted the New Deal, which brought the country out of the Great Depression — Virginia was “a one-party state,” Skelley says.

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The ’50s: National Democrats falter, but the state party stays strong

In the late 1940s through the early 1960s, the national Democratic Party started moving left, creating a rift between it and the more conservative Virginia state party. As a result, Virginia went Republican for the presidential election and Democratic for state-level positions. Given the tight control the Democratic Party leadership held over the state — colloquially called the “Byrd Machine” in reference to the governor and then senator Harry Byrd — this pattern lasted for over a decade.

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The ’60s: Civil rights delivers a serious blow to Democratic control

Civil rights, championed by national Democrats, drove Virginia and much of the South into the open arms of the Republican Party, no big surprise in a state where every congressperson signed the Southern Manifesto opposing the movement and many school systems shut down rather than integrate. Vocal civil rights opponent Barry Goldwater saw some success in Southern Virginia in his 1964 presidential campaign. Even third-party candidates such as segregationist George Wallace won some counties down south. In 1969, a Republican won the Virginia governorship for the first time in a century.

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The ’70s: Republicans continue to gain steam

In the ’70s, Republicans started to really dominate Virginia politics. Nixon’s Southern strategy aimed at bringing conservative Democrats to the Republican Party found a lot of success. In 1973, partially on Nixon’s coattails, Mills Godwin — a conservative Democrat whom the Republicans persuaded to run on their ticket — defeated Henry Howell, the lieutenant governor who ran as an independent but was the de facto Democrat in the race.

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The ’80s: The Democrats see a resurgence

In the 1980s, “two-party competition started really happening” in Virginia, according to Skelley. Like much of the country, Ronald Reagan won Virginia in a landslide in 1980 and 1984. But his popularity didn’t translate to the state party. A Democrat held the governorship from 1982 until 1994, including a resounding 11-point win by Gerald Baliles in 1985.

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The ’90s: Republicans come back fighting

The intense two-party faceoffs of the 1980s flipped to favor Republicans in the 1990s. With Democratic President Bill Clinton in the White House, Republican George Allen won the 1993 governor’s race handily, as did his successor, Republican Jim Gilmore in 1997.

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The ’00s: Virginia’s modern political split starts to take shape

Virginia’s urban-rural divide really started to take shape in the early 2000s. The population of Northern Virginia continued to grow and turn deeper and deeper blue, producing huge margins for Democrats such as President Barack Obama and Gov. Tim Kaine, who is now a senator. The more rural southern and southwestern Virginia started leaning right more consistently, except in college towns.

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The most recent elections

The trend from the 2000s has largely kept up and even intensified. On Nov. 7, 2017 margins in the D.C. suburbs were easily enough to give Ralph Northam the victory over Republican Ed Gillespie.

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About this story

Election results from the Virginia Board of Elections. Historical Virginia county borders from the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries.

Originally published Nov. 6, 2017.

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