Category: Virginia Election 2013 (Page 3 of 31)

RICHMOND — DPVA Chair Charniele Herring released this statement following the results in today’s Sixth Senate District Democratic nominating caucus:

“I want to congratulate my colleague Delegate Lynwood Lewis on his victory in today’s Sixth Senate District Democratic nominating caucus. Lynwood and his staff should be proud of the campaign they ran. I also want to thank former Delegate Paula Miller and Andria McClellan for their unwavering commitment to the 6th District and this Commonwealth. With the nominations behind us, we’re ready to work hard, together as Democrats, to ensure victory on Election Day.

I firmly believe Delegate Lewis will represent the 6th District and work tirelessly for his constituents, as did Lieutenant Governor-elect Ralph Northam.”

From Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest

Some comical conservative misunderstandings over the population density of Virginia counties have yielded a positive result: a new spate of attention to cartograms, a type of map that, by deliberately deforming geographic features, can more accurately show the relative populations of each component jurisdiction. Analyst Mark Newman has produced some well-known examples for recent presidential elections, which combat the distorting effect of sparsely populated states that, at a glance, show a sea of red every four years.

Cartographers have now also created such maps for the recently concluded Virginia gubernatorial election, which help illustrate the growing influence of the state’s blue-trending northern reaches and explain why Democrat Terry McAuliffe was able to keep Republican Ken Cuccinelli at bay. Here, for instance, is a very helpful cartogram from University of Mary Washington professors Stephen Farnsworth and Stephen Hanna:

In particular, Farnsworth and Hanna point out that while McAuliffe didn’t do much better, percentage-wise, in key NoVA counties than the last Democrat to win a governor’s race (Tim Kaine in 2005), this region’s explosive growth means that Dems will keep winning more raw votes even if their share doesn’t increase. At the same time, Republicans have only improved in the smallest counties, a phenomenon well-illustrated by this second cartogram comparing the 2005 results with 2013’s.

Meanwhile, Larry Sabato and company took a somewhat different approach, but ultimately, their cartogram shows the same things as UMW’s:

As you can see, this map preserves Virginia’s outline, but in so doing, it shifts counties further from their actual locations, such that giant Fairfax appears to sit along the Shenandoah Valley. But that displacement once again shows how dominant the D.C. suburbs have become in Old Dominion politics, while Sarah Palin’s “real Virginia” continues to fade.

Mark Herring’s statistically miniscule edge over Mark Obenshain in the attorney general race grew to 163 votes Tuesday evening as a midnight deadline approached for localities to finish counting ballots and report their tallies to the state.

That updated count came after the Fairfax County Electoral Board finished tabulating provisional ballots, leading several Democrats to declare Herring victorious after a week of fluctuating returns since last Tuesday’s too-close-to-call election.

(Fairfax’s numbers were widely reported Tuesday evening on Twitter, leading several people to declare Herring victorious, though they had not posted to the State Board of Elections web site as of 9:45 p.m.)

Herring was similarly emphatic about the outcome Tuesday night: “The margin was close, but it is clear that Virginians have chosen me to serve as the next Attorney General.”

“Today we begin the process of governing. I look forward to working with Virginians from all regions and all background, Democrats, Independents and Republicans to move our Commonwealth forward,” he added.

Obenshain, a Harrisonburg Republican, at one point had a roughly 1,200 vote lead that slowly vanished amid post-election canvasses in places such as Fairfax and Richmond.

Subject to a possible recount, the 2013 election will mark the first time since 1969 that all five statewide offices will be held by Democrats.

Pilot on Politics