Today is Election Day in a wide variety of states, and the marquee event is the governor’s race in Virginia between Democrat Ralph Northam and Republican Ed Gillespie. Tonight, we’ll be looking at several key counties for early clues to whether Northam or Gillespie are meeting the benchmarks they’d need to win. The principle behind these benchmarks is that they show the targets, percentage-wise, that the Democratic candidate needs to hit in each major county (or independent city) in order to hit at least 50 percent overall statewide.
Below is our table of the state’s most populous counties and independent cities, the ones that, individually, contribute at least 2 percent of the state’s total votes. We’re basing these benchmarks off of Hillary Clinton’s performance in 2016, when she carried Virginia by 5.3 percent (due to rounding, her margin looks like 6 percent in the table below). The first column lists the important jurisdictions, while the second shows how much each contributed to the overall vote total in the state last year.
The third shows the Clinton-Trump breakdown in each county or city, so for instance, in Fairfax, Clinton won 64 percent while Trump took just 29 percent. Finally, the fourth column shows what Northam would theoretically need in each jurisdiction in order to reach 50 percent of the vote statewide. Note that because Clinton won by over 5 percent, Northam wouldn’t need to do as well as she did in each county or city in order to eke out a narrow victory. For instance, he could afford a slightly narrowed 64-33 margin in Fairfax and still win. Of course, Northam could perform below these benchmarks in Fairfax but better elsewhere to make up for it and still win.
County |
% of 2016 VOTE |
2016 Results
(D/R)
|
what
northam needs
|
Statewide |
100.0 |
50/44 |
50/48 |
Fairfax co. |
13.8 |
64/29 |
64/33 |
Virginia beach |
5.1 |
45/48 |
45/52 |
prince william |
4.9 |
58/37 |
58/41 |
loudoun |
4.6 |
55/38 |
55/42 |
chesterfield |
4.4 |
46/48 |
46/52 |
henrico |
4.1 |
57/37 |
57/41 |
arlington |
3.0 |
76/17 |
76/21 |
chesapeake |
2.8 |
47/48 |
47/52 |
Richmond city |
2.6 |
79/15 |
79/19 |
norfolk |
2.1 |
68/26 |
68/30 |
(Note: Keep in mind that Virginia also has a Fairfax City and a Richmond County that report separately, both of which are very small and don’t merit the same level of attention as the jurisdictions listed below.)
There’s one other tool we’re adding this year that will hopefully make these benchmarks more useful. In 2016, Hillary Clinton managed to hit her county-level benchmarks in the states where she narrowly lost (such as Pennsylvania), because the real damage happened in the rural—and heavily white and non-college—counties that, individually, were too small to make a list like this but where collectively she fell way short of what she needed.
That didn’t wind up happening in Virginia, but it could, so we’re throwing in a few counties that are much smaller but are typical, in terms of vote share, of their particular rural corners of the state. Individually they don’t matter much, but if Gillespie runs up the score in a lot of small places like these, it could mean a repeat of what we saw elsewhere in 2016.
county |
% of 2016 vote |
2016 vote share
(D/R)
|
what
northam needs
|
sussex |
0.1 |
57/41 |
56/44 |
halifax |
0.4 |
41/57 |
40/60 |
amherst |
0.4 |
33/63 |
33/67 |
spotsylvania |
1.6 |
39/55 |
39/59 |
floyd |
0.2 |
29/66 |
29/70 |
Finally, please bear this in mind as you watch the results come in: In Virginia, small conservative counties often report much sooner than larger, more Democratic areas, giving the GOP what looks like a huge early lead that diminishes as the night goes on. Republican Ken Cuccinelli, for instance, led most of the evening on his way to losing by 2.5 points in 2013’s gubernatorial race.
And remember to join us when polls close at 7 PM ET for our liveblog at Daily Kos Elections.