The Washington Post collects exit polling results from the Virginia governor's race here. It's all interesting to a junkie but for me one item stands above the rest. Among white Virginians with a college education, the Democrat, Northam, defeated the Republican, Gillespie, by 51-48. But get this: among white Virginians without a college degree, Gillespie won by 72-26, which is about the same as Trump's margin with this group (71-24) in last year's presidential result. A 25-point difference based on whether or not you're a college graduate!
John Edwards had enough blood circulating north of his waistline to be on to something about "two Americas." If you grow up in rural Virginia, and have a chance to go to college, where you do well enough to graduate and then don't leave the state, you're apt to end up in the D.C. suburbs, or Richmond, with a Netflix account, a Starbucks habit, and a preference for the Democrats. If you don't go to college, you probably remain within easy driving distance of mom and dad, and vote as they do.
Democrats had a good night in Virginia, but, being a glass-half-empty sort of liberal, I think they've got to find a way to do better with noncollege whites--either that, or make sure that more and more kids are the first in their family to go to college. The Republicans would really be sunk if more than a few hillbillies were to conclude that their kids' interest is pretty much in line with those of the striving immigrants and brown-skinned ones.
Also, on the glass-half-empty theme, I have to report from the back of my hobby horse that Democrats' sweeping victories at the polls probably won't put Virginia's House of Delegates into their hands: for that to happen, recounts in a couple close races would have to flip the result. This despite the fact that across Virginia voters favored Democratic candidates for the state house by a margin that mirrored very closely the gubernatorial result--nine points. In other words Republicans, when the recounts are done, likely will find that they are still the majority party in the House of Delegates even though their candidates won about nine percent fewer votes across the state. This is a familiar pattern. In last year's congressional elections in Virginia, the statewide vote was very evenly divided between the two parties--Democratic candidates got around 15,000 more votes than Republicans. Yet Republicans won seven out of Virginia's eleven seats in the U.S. House. Do you know who draws the boundaries that so clearly favor Republicans? The Virginia General Assembly, one body of which is of course the House of Delegates, where, despite having received fewer votes, it appears Republicans will continue in the majority! There have been in the very recent past (shall we say) shenanigans:
The redistricting of congressional districts prepared by the Virginia legislature, the Virginia General Assembly, in 2012 was used in the 2014 elections. The redistricting was found unconstitutional and replaced with a court-ordered redistricting on January 16, 2016, before the 2016 elections. Gloria Personhuballah and James Farkas claimed that Virginia’s 3rd Congressional District violated the Voting Rights Act by packing black voters into the district for the political purpose of making surrounding areas better for Republican candidates. Following Supreme Court precedent, the Eastern Virginia Circuit Court found that U.S. Congressional Districts cannot be gerrymandered by race for partisan gain. In this case, the twisting non-contiguous 3rd District hopped the James River in several places and divided multiple locality boundaries, resulting in 89% majorities for Representative Bobby Scott (D) while surrounding Republican incumbents enjoyed majorities of 16-24%.
Happily for Virginia Republicans, gerrymandering is legal so long as it is not done by race--and, as anyone can see from the exit polling, black/white is not the only demographic category that can function as a pretty reliable stand-in for Democrat/Republican.
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