Commentary: Sorry, Democrats, but Trump can absolutely win Virginia (2024)

MARK J. ROZELL

Democrats might be tempted to consider the commonwealth friendly territory in this year’s presidential election.

They have enjoyed a streak of success since 2008, winning the four intervening presidential elections, including two over this year’s Republican nominee and former president, Donald Trump — the most recent a 10-percentage-point victory in 2020.

Democrats are energized in some spots across the state, but not by the top-of-the-ballot race. They’re waging difficult campaigns in two swing congressional districts — Virginia’s 7th and 10th — where Democratic incumbents Abigail Spanberger and Jennifer Wexton, respectively, are not seeking reelection.

Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat seeking a third term this year, has no primary opponent and does not face a formidable GOP field of candidates, so that race has generated little buzz.

On the presidential level, there is even less energy, despite polls showing the race as a dead heat in a state Democrats have owned. That should set off flashing lights and sirens for the Democrats because if they can’t hold the commonwealth, President Joe Biden likely loses in a landslide.

Republican strategists are considering a significant play for Virginia and its 13 electoral votes this fall. Trump’s campaign manager, Chris LaCivita, who cut his teeth advising GOP candidates on local and statewide races in Virginia, noted in a recent interview with NBC News that the GOP has “a real, real opportunity at expanding the map in Minnesota and Virginia” in November.

State GOP chairman Rich Anderson told USA Today recently that the state party, Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee will collaborate to carry Virginia this year.

If Trump’s campaign — now pumping resources into the known battlegrounds of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Wisconsin and, particularly, Pennsylvania — considers adding Virginia to that list, it would be because Republicans sense Democratic vulnerability in the state.

Over the course of this year, an array of independent polls show Biden and Trump in a close race. That includes a statewide survey released late last month by Roanoke College. So far, there is no independent, Virginia-specific published polling that factors in voter attitudes after Trump’s historic conviction — the first in American history for a former president — in his New York hush money trial.

In a time of shattered political norms, it is unlikely that the guilty verdicts on all 34 felony counts will dramatically shift Americans’ votes. It has galvanized Trump supporters who donated over $52 million in just two days after his conviction. For Democrats, the verdicts affirm their argument that the former president is grossly unfit for the White House and poses an existential threat to American democracy and the rule of law.

Perhaps the lone point of agreement between Biden and Trump is that voters have the ultimate decision. If there is a political consequence from the trial, it will manifest itself in a small but possibly decisive segment of the electorate — undecided and even reluctant voters who will assess which candidate least threatens their interests.

By this fall, the trial may be a distant memory, struggling to compete with deep voter concerns that include wars in Ukraine and Gaza, in which the United States appears ineffectual; the surge of migrants across the border with Mexico; women’s reproductive rights; domestic political extremism; and what polls conclusively rank as the most compelling issue: the economy and persistent, crippling inflation.

Democrats may not realize it yet, but they will be forced to fight over Virginia.

Three years ago, pundits branded the commonwealth — then with a Democratic governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general, majorities in both legislative chambers, both U.S. Senate seats, dominance of its U.S. House delegation and four consecutive presidential wins — a blue state. A year later, Republicans swept all three top elective state offices and took over the House of Delegates by mobilizing a massive rural turnout of conservative voters and narrowing Democratic margins in the state’s moderate, populous suburbs.

In truth, Virginia is a competitive, politically dynamic state whose voters are intimately attuned to affairs within the Capital Beltway. It has a history of detecting and rejecting both overreach and underperformance by state and federal elected officeholders.

A sitting president who has yet to energize his supporters in Virginia — who seems overwhelmed by most challenges voters face and for whom polls show barely more than 1 in 3 Virginia respondents approving of his performance — faces a fierce fight to win the state.