Rural Virginia has trended Republican in the past two decades, and the statewide election this week underlined its political divergence from the state’s metropolitan areas, said the Daily Yonder. The Republican candidate for governor, Ed Gillespie, won 72 percent of the vote in Virginia’s most remote counties, only 2 points less than President Trump a year ago. At the same time, Democrat Ralph Northam nearly doubled Hillary Clinton’s victory margin statewide.
“This election suggests that the state’s politics may remain very polarized, with urban areas being very Democratic, suburban and exurban areas leaning Democratic, and rural areas voting heavily Republican,” said Geoffrey Skelley, associate editor of the political newsletter Sabato’s Crystal Ball.
Northam grew up on the largely rural Eastern Shore of Virginia but “struggled to connect with rural voters,” said the Yonder. He visited rural southwestern Virginia less than previous Democratic candidates for governor. All the same, he won the race with 54 percent of the vote, the highest percentage for a Democrat since 1984. “That validation of his strategy means that Democrats likely will continue the statewide approach of spending more time and energy on courting metropolitan areas, and less on rural voters,” said the Yonder.