OK, so I just read VirginiaBelle's entry, and I thought I'd give my analysis. Some of this may be a retread, but I think she was on to a few things that I'd like to expand upon (by the way, if you haven't read VirginiaBelle's diary on the Kaine win, do so quickly, it's quite good).
anyhow, the main interesting thing to not is how much better Kaine did in the suburbs than previous statewide candidates. Warner's win in 2001 was largely on the strength of rural southside VA voters, while in NoVA, Richmond, and Hampton Roads Warner did pretty much as well (or only slightly better) than Kerry did in the general election. But in 2005, Kaine blew Kilgore out of the water in the suburbs.
Many have made much of the lower turnout in Arlington and Alexandria. I won't deny that (although Kilgore's pathetic performance there seems to suggest that low turnout or not, we had little to fear even if the turnout was unexpectedly low, which frankly I'm skeptikal about anyhow). But the real story is in the other suburban areas.
In Fairfax County, Kaine got 61% to Kilgore's rather sad 38%. While my native county is indeed tinted blue (it picked Kerry over Bush 54-45 in '04), it was never expected to be tinted THAT blue. A GOP candidate hasn't fared that badly in Fairfax County since Barry Goldwater. Even more stunning, Kaine won in the supposedly conservative exurb counties of Loudoun and Prince William. It is true that they've been trending Democrat, but the last time a Democrat was competitve in either locality was in 1976, and even Carter failed to win either.
In Richmond, there's a similar pattern. Kaine won his native Richmond City by a huge margin, as expected, but also rolled up an even bigger victory in Henrico County than Warner had done in 2001. He also got the highest percentage in heavily-GOP Chesterfield County of any Democrat since Adlai Stevenson in 1952.
There were more suburban shocks in Hampton Roads. Famously conservative cities Chesapeake and Virginia Beach both picked Kaine, after rejecting Warner four years ago. Kaine also improved on Warner's margins in the cities of Newport News, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Hampton, and won exurban James City County, which hasn't gone Democrat since LBJ.
There were even two shockers in the Republican-heavy Shenandoah Valley. The cities of Staunton and Harrisonburg, which had both voted Republican since the days of Eisenhower, both punched the button for Kaine after rejecting Warner 4 years ago.
With the cities locked up and the suburbs getting more Democrat every year, the GOP might be in bigger trouble in the Old Dominion than it thinks. Let's hope this is a harbinger of a national trend, since it makes overcoming the GOP rural advantage that much easier to achieve.