Virginia was a Republican state for a generation, and is no longer. It last gave a Republican a presidential majority in 2004, at R+8.2, then went Democratic in 2008 and has stayed there through 2024, when it voted Democratic by 5.8 points — down from 10.1 in 2020, a 4.3-point move toward Trump. The engine of the change sits in the suburbs of Washington. Loudoun County voted Republican by 12.1 points in 2004 and Democratic by 16.2 in 2024; Prince William ran R+6.4 in 2004 and D+17.9 in 2024; Fairfax, the largest county, went from R+1.4 in 2000 to D+34.7.
The Democratic vote is concentrated, affluent, and educated. Virginia ranks 11th of the fifty states in median household income, at $93,170, and 7th in the share of adults holding a bachelor’s degree, at 42.3 percent — the Northern Virginia wealth around the capital. Arlington voted Democratic by 58.1 points and Alexandria, an independent city, by 57.1. The Richmond suburbs followed: Henrico went D+28.7 and Chesterfield, Republican by 28.2 points in 2000, flipped Democratic in 2020 and ran D+8.9 in 2024. Virginia counts independent cities as county-equivalents, and the bluest unit is one of them — Petersburg, D+72.5.
The Republican vote keeps to the rural map. The reddest unit is Lee County, in the far-southwest coalfields against the Kentucky and Tennessee lines, at R+72.0, beside Scott at R+70.3 and Buchanan at R+70.5; the Shenandoah Valley runs Republican from Rockingham at R+36.8 to Augusta at R+47.3. The 2024 slip showed even in the suburbs that drove the realignment — Loudoun fell from D+25.0 in 2020, Fairfax from D+41.9, Prince William from D+27.0 — tracking the national move toward Trump. In 2026, Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat first elected in 2008, seeks a fourth term.