Virginia’s Changing Politics Mean No More True Bellwethers

Steve Burns
WMAL.com

WASHINGTON – (WMAL) With Election Day coming tomorrow in Virginia, poll watchers may be inclined to try to find those reliably purple counties that could indicate where the Commonwealth as a whole is leaning. But Virginia’s changing politics mean those places are few and far between, according to one political scientist.

“At the end of the day, you can’t really say that there’s such a thing as a true bellwether county, in the sense that what really matters is the margins in all these places,” University of Virginia political scientist Geoffrey Skelley told WMAL.

Places like Loudoun and Prince William County had previously been pointed to as bellwethers, thanks to their status as Washington’s farthest-out, more rural suburbs. But as the cost of living gets higher in the city’s inner suburbs, the two counties have seen an influx of people turning the counties more Democratic.

“Northern Virginia went for (Hillary Clinton) by 27 points in the two-party vote. Massive margins,” Skelley said. “A lot of that came from the inner D.C. suburbs, but Loudoun County and Prince William County went very comfortably for Clinton, by about 21-22 points in Prince William, and by about 17 in Loudoun. So they weren’t close.”

The true bellwether tomorrow, Skelley said, is likely how high Democratic nominee Ralph Northam’s numbers are in Northern Virginia as a whole.

“For (Republican nominee Ed) Gillespie, if he can hold down the margins in Northern Virginia, he’s going to give himself a chance to win. And if Northam can run them up in Northern Virginia, that might make up for really bad margins downstate.”