This weekend while listening to Patriot Radio, Sirius XM, I heard the national party talk about what it would take to win Virginia. The entire night I heard them hammer the old ideas of, if the Republican Party can just pull Southwest Virginia, we can win this thing. Well, tonight the votes are in and let me tell you, if you are banking on southwest Virginia then the Democrats will be building on their two election streak in the Commonwealth.

See, while watching the Washington pundits show Virginia as this sea of red with these tiny specs of blue in it (click here to see map) I realized they know nothing about our state. See, Virginia is a commonwealth, meaning we don’t have cities within counties like other states. So, what they did not understand is, those specs of blue made up nearly 60% of the Virginia population.

Here are the numbers, unofficial from the Virginia Board of Elections and the US Census Bureau, Ken Cuccinelli Won 2 of the top 10 urban areas in our state. So for the top 10 localities in our state which represents 47% of the state population Cuccinelli could only win 2 of those 10 localities. Oh, but it gets worse. When you look at the top 20 localities in our state, Which represents over 61%

of the state population, Cuccinelli was only able to win 5 of those 20 localities. Mr. Cuccinelli only began to see improvement in his numbers when you look at the top 25 localities, where Mr. Cuccinelli won 9 out of 25 localities, 4 being in the bottom 25% of the sample.

Now, how can one lose all of the big urban centers but win the election, simple, have huge margins in the localities you win in and close races in the localities you lose in. Problem was in the top 10 localities, Terry McAuliffe won by an average margin of 25%, whereas Ken Cuccinelli’s average margin of victory was 5%. When you look at the largest 20 localities in Virginia, Terry McAuliffe’s margin of victory widens to 26%, but not as fast as Ken Cuccinelli’s margin of victory, 14%. Finally, when you look at the top 25 localities in Virginia, over 65% of the Virginia population, Terry McAulliffe maintains his 26% average margin of victory while Ken Cuccinelli’s margin sees continued improvement, 20% on average. However, a successful candidate cannot lose 16 out of Virginia’s 25 largest localities and lose the margin of victory race also. Continue reading →