If there’s one state that’s embodied the gains made by Barack Obama’s Democratic Party, it’s probably Virginia, a one time Republican stronghold that Democratic candidates have won by fairly convincing margins in every presidential election since 2008 (even Hillary Clinton’s 49.7% in 2016 marked a roughly five point statewide victory over Donald Trump). But Democratic dominance in the Old Dominion has not been total – since Obama flipped the state 16 years ago, Republicans have won two gubernatorial elections and held onto the state’s House of Delegates before losing it in 2019, only to win it again in 2021 and then lose it again in 2023. Democrats have held strong in the state’s Senate since 2019, but only after two decades in which control of the chamber seesawed between the parties, with Republicans coming out on top more often than not.

The story of Virginia’s blue shift is a familiar one: growing and diversifying suburban counties like Henrico, Loudon, Prince William, and Fairfax counties started to abandon the Republican Party after the Bush years and have only gotten more Democratic since Trump took control of the party, with each providing Joe Biden over 60% of the vote in 2020. Biden was additionally able to flip traditionally Republican cities like Stafford, Lynchburg (home, ironically, to the evangelical Liberty University), and Virginia Beach, offsetting his losses in whiter, more rural counties like Caroline and Nelson – ultimately winning the state by double digits. He more or less replicated this same template across swing states like Georgia, Arizona, and Minnesota, but Virginia’s already Democratic-leaning population allowed him to obviate any serious campaigning in the state.

And yet, 2021 seemed like it may have offered Republicans a bit of a strategy to defeat the Biden-era Democrats. Running in opposition to COVID-19-related lockdowns and “critical race theory,” former Carlyle Group CEO Glenn Youngkin upset former governor Terry McAuliffe for the state’s executive office, flipping the House of Delegates and offices of lieutenant governor and attorney general along with it. But Republicans’ 2021 success belied what has been an at times fractured and dysfunctional state party, whose positions on the validity of the 2020 presidential election and abortion have not only turned off moderate voters but caused some degree of internal strife, as well. Considering the relatively high floor Harris will be starting with in Virginia, it’ll take a significant amount of effort from the state’s Republican Party to flip it for Trump, something it’s not entirely clear they have the ability to do. 

Further complicating Trump’s campaign in the state is his particular brand of right wing populism. “Project 2025,”  The Heritage Foundation’s suggested course of action for a second Trump term, calls for the termination of up to 50,000 federal federal employees in an attempt to replace members of the so-called “deep state” with conservative loyalists. Considering that 14% of Virginia’s 2020 electorate was either a federal employee or lived with one, that could mean a significant amount of the state’s population would be out of work following a Republican victory in 2024 (to say nothing of the swath of Virginia-based contractors and consultants who count the federal government and its many employees as clients). The upshot of all these factors is that, in the 20 years since it last cast its electoral votes for the GOP, Virginia has become more similar to a purplish-blue state like New Hampshire or convincingly blue Colorado than swing states like Michingan or Wisconsin. Its swing voters are more than willing to vote for Republicans in gubernatorial and state legislative elections, but a Republican presidential victory would likely only come amidst a Trump landslide.