VA Residents: What are the key counties to watch?

[Jackinbox]

I have printed out the county by county results from 2004. Which counties do you think will be most important to keep an eye on when the numbers start coming in? Thanks!

[nerddem]

1. loudon and prince william up north, maybe spotsylvania and faquier. nt

fairfax, fairfax city, falls church, arlington and alexandria should go for obama fairly comfortably, so the outer suburbs and exurbs are where dems have been getting their winning margins in the past few statewide elections.

one little margin to look for was the arlington dem committee's goal of 80% turnout and 80% of the vote.

[nerddem]

2. add to that henrico and james city county.

and that charlottesville, albemarle, richmond, portsmouth need to be ridiculous blowouts

[Eurobabe]

5. If Albemarle goes blue....

I know Charlottesville City (it's not a county) will be solid, but the outer fringes of Albemarle are usually red. :puke:

[nerddem]

8. it went 57 for webb

obviously obama needs to beat that, so i included it in my landslide column

[Every Man A King]

3. Agree with the others

Need to run up the score approach 80/80 turnout/vote in
Falls Church
Arlington County
Alexandria City
Richmond City

Need to get over 60% in Fairfax County with 75%+ turnout.

The only swing county I really know is Henrico. I know we registered alot of voters there. Need to win it and/or outperform Webb's numbers.

Need to hold Webb's numbers and maybe do slightly better in Chesapeake City, Virginia Beach City.

[black light poster]

4. Loudoun and Prince William is what I heard, too

They're large and fast-growing bedroom county ex-urbs far enough out from DC that such places tend to be home to a lot of Republicans. But the votes there have been shifting toward the blue in recent years. If they come in with significant margins for Obama, things should look good here overall.

Around Richmond where I am, I'd say Henrico could be a good indicator. The city itself is blue. Go out as far as Hanover County's ex-urbs (north of Henrico) and I'd expect that to stay red. Henrico's between the two.

Down in Hampton Roads, I'm not sure what would be a good indicator. Overall the area is less conservative than the Richmond metro area. Chesapeake and Suffolk (both formerly counties) might serve as indicators there, but again, I'm not sure what they did in '04.

Like in much of the rest of the country, expect virtually all non-metro areas to stay red.

(We should probably just pop into Larry Sabato's site at UVA, I'm sure he's got detailed projections.)

[Every Man A King]

6. Maybe you should print out the 2006 results instead

Webb's numbers are going to be a much better baseline to compare.

[Eurobabe]

7. and if Augusta Co. goes blue, its over.

:rofl: Unfortunately, there are a whole lot of freepers that live up and down the Blue Ridge Parkway. I had this obnoxious neighbor from New Market (God, Guns and Gays voter :eyes: ) when I lived in C'ville.

I am most familiar with Nelson, Buckingham, Fluvanna, Louisa, Orange, Greene, Albemarle, and Madison counties having worked for a previous Presidential campaign. I will be very interested to see how they vote.

[ccharles000]

9. ...

Virginia


County % of 2004
statewide vote What we need to
break 50% statewide 2004 Pres.
Statewide 100.0 50/49 45/54
Fairfax 14.4 58/41 53/46
Virginia Beach city 5.5 45/54 40/59
Chesterfield 4.2 42/58 37/63
Henrico 4.2 51/49 46/54
Prince William 4.1 51/48 46/53
Loudoun 3.4 49/51 44/56
Arlington 3.0 73/26 68/31
Chesapeake city 2.9 47/52 42/57
Richmond city 2.3 75/24 70/29
Norfolk city 2.2 67/32 62/37
Newport News city 2.1 57/42 52/47
Alexandria city 1.9 72/37 67/32
Hampton city 1.7 62/37 57/42
Hanover 1.6 33/66 28/71
Roanoke 1.5 39/60 34/65
Stafford 1.4 42/57 37/62
Spotsylvania 1.4 42/58 37/63
Albemarle 1.4 56/43 51/48
Portsmouth city 1.2 66/34 61/39
Roanoke city 1.1 57/41 52/46
Suffolk city 1.0 52/47 47/52


http://swingstateproject.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=6B1130137A1183061422C5BFADC878C8?diaryId=3829