Thanks to the tireless efforts of the fine folks down in the DKE basement, we already have our first 2016 presidential results by legislative district: Virginia's State House of Delegates. As the map above demonstrates, there are seventeen HDs in Virginia where Democrat Hillary Clinton carried a district held by a Republican incumbent.
However, the simple pairing of incumbent legislative party with presidential results does not always tell the whole story. Buried in what was a relatively small shift in the statewide partisan preferences in Virginia was a seismic shift in more than a third of the state’s legislative districts.
Statewide, Hillary Clinton did slightly better (against the margin) in Virginia versus Donald Trump than Barack Obama did in his re-election bid against Mitt Romney. In 2016, the margin statewide was 5.32 percentage points, a slight increase over the 3.88 margin enjoyed by the Democrats in 2012.
But a total of 36 Virginia legislative districts saw shifts of ten points or more in either the Republican or Democratic direction. This suggests that the relatively modest shift statewide was the result of more pronounced shifts locally that, to an extent, cancelled each other out.
That said, it was not a complete offset. The local shifts clearly benefitted Democrats, and in a way that could yield tangible benefits come November, when the critically important legislative elections in Virginia take place.
Let’s explore two reasons why these localized shifts would, on paper, look to benefit the Democratic effort to blunt what is presently a huge majority for the GOP in the Virginia House of Delegates (the Republicans, at present, hold a 66-34 majority).
For one thing, there were far more districts where Clinton hugely outperformed Obama (26) than there were districts where Donald Trump outpaced Romney by double digits (10).
What’s more: none of the districts where Trump stretched out the GOP advantage were districts that Democrats would ever hope to target. Indeed, all ten of the GOP districts in question did not even see a Democratic challenger in 2015. So, in essence, Trump just took reliably Republican territory and made it unattainable. Unfortunate, sure, but not a game changer.
Democrats, meanwhile, can see real opportunity in a number of their districts where Hillary Clinton strongly outpaced the Obama margin. Eight of the 26 districts that lurched hard left in 2016 are districts that are held by Republican incumbents:
District (INCUMBENT) |
|
2012 vs 2016 presidential performance |
percent improvement |
HD-10 (Minchew) |
|
51-47 Romney to 50-44 Clinton |
Democrats +10 |
HD-32 (Greason) |
|
52-47 Obama to 58-37 Clinton |
Democrats +16 |
HD-40 (Hugo) |
|
51-48 Romney to 53-42 Clinton |
Democrats +14 |
HD-42 (Albo) |
|
53-46 Obama to 59-36 Clinton |
Democrats +16 |
HD-67 (LeMunyon) |
|
54-45 Obama to 60-34 Clinton |
Democrats +17 |
HD-68 (Loupassi) |
|
55-44 Romney to 52-41 Clinton |
Democrats +22 |
HD-72 (Massie) |
|
54-45 Romney to 49-44 Clinton |
Democrats +14 |
HD-73 (O’Bannon) |
|
52-46 Romney to 51-43 Clinton |
Democrats +14 |
Now, it is worth noting that just because these eight districts saw huge movement, it doesn’t mean that they are all necessarily destined to turn blue. Only one of these districts (Greason’s seat in the 32nd district) was even targeted in 2015—Greason held on for a 53-47 victory.
Three of these incumbents, in fact, didn’t even draw Democratic opponents in 2015.
However, it is impossible not to take note of such substantial shifts and not think that some of these incumbents might be worth a second look. For example, in Northern Virginia, Manoli Loupassi hasn’t had a close race since 2007. But with a substantial drift like the one we’ve seen here, the temptation may well be great to take a flyer on a district Democrats have not seriously challenged in a decade.
A handful of the Republicans that have been traditionally targeted also saw their districts drift towards the Democrats between 2012-2016. The shifts might not have been quite so outsized (typically between 1-4 points more Democratic), but these are shifts in districts where the GOP incumbent won by modest margins in 2015. Among these incumbents are Mark Dudenhefer (HD-02), Bob Marshall (HD-13), and Scott Lingamfelter (HD-31).
The final bit of good news in the data is that some of the other substantial Democratic shifts occurred in the relatively small handful of Democratic-held seats that would be considered GOP targets. This includes the two seats Democrats picked up in the 2015 cycle: HD-86 (Boysko) and HD-87 (Bell), both of which saw Hillary Clinton win with over 60 percent of the vote. The other likely vulnerable Democrat saw one of the biggest jumps: Kathleen Murphy in HD-34 saw her district jump from 50-49 Obama to 58-37 Clinton. This means that, to the relief of the Democrats, all of their seats look likely to be hard targets for the GOP.
The bad news for the Democrats, however, is that they are sitting on a 66-34 deficit. So they have a lot of ground to make up. The good news is that they may have a more fertile climate in which to make up ground than it appeared before November.