Race Analysis

10/30/2012 -- Kaine put together a nice string of polling leads in Virginia from mid-September through early October, but that seems to have ended. Whether this is real movement or simply better pollsters coming into the picture is hard to say. We think the race has tightened, but that Kaine probably still leads.

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Unlike many southern states, Virginia has always had a vigorous Republican Party. At first it was based in the mountains and hills east of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where there were few blacks and little historical support for slavery (there was an additional ancient base among blacks that, when combined with western Virginia, made Republicans competitive statewide into the late 1800s; this was wiped out by the poll tax in 1902). They also began carrying Arlington County in the northeast as early as the 1920s, establishing a second toehold in the soon-to-be-growing northern Virginia suburbs. The addition of the third base made Republicans a majority when conservative Byrd Democrats finally exited the Democratic Party and began voting Republican.

But during the 1990s and 2000s, Bill Clinton's socially moderate, fiscally conservative message allowed him to become the first Democrat since LBJ to run even in northern Virginia. As the Democratic Party continued to embrace a relatively fiscally conservative stance, the northern suburbs continued to gravitate toward the Party of Jackson.  This trend was epitomized in 2006, when former Republican Gov. George Allen lost to Jim Webb, a relatively obscure Democratic opponent, largely on the basis of Webb's strong performance in northern Virginia.  While Allen's fateful utterance of the word "macaca" is remembered as the incident that began his decline, in truth he was below 50 percent in the polls before that event, and Webb's fundraising was already picking up.

Webb decided to retire in 2012, and Allen is back to try again to reclaim his seat.  Democrats set up a true clash of the titans by selecting Tim Kaine, a former DNC chairman and governor, as their nominee.  Both candidates have decent favorability scores, and both are very well funded.  So perhaps it isn't that surprising that the pair have been deadlocked for several months.