By Matthew Continetti
Saturday, November 09, 2019
So this is what it feels like to live in a lab
experiment. As a native Virginian, I’ve watched my state come full circle. The
last time Democrats enjoyed the amount of power in the Old Dominion that they
won on Tuesday, I was entering middle school in Fairfax County.
In 1993 the governor was a Democrat, one of two U.S.
senators was a Democrat, Democrats held seven of eleven House seats, and
Democrats controlled both the House of Delegates and the state Senate. Next
year, the governor will be a Democrat, both U.S. senators will be Democrats,
Democrats will hold seven of eleven House seats, and Democrats will control
both the House of Delegates and the state Senate. Hardly anything has changed.
Except for the Commonwealth itself.
President Trump so dominates the popular imagination that
every election result is described in relation to his job approval and conduct
in office. Trump is unpopular in Virginia, and suburban voters are eager to
rebuke him at the polls. But the story of this particular Democratic winning
streak is less about Trump than it is about long-running demographic and
cultural transformation. He catalyzed changes decades in the making.
The former capital of the Confederacy is now a hub of
highly educated professionals, immigrants, and liberals whose values are
contrary to those of an increasingly downscale, religious, and rural GOP.
Democrats continue to benefit from the shift in the college-educated population
toward progressivism. Not only are Republicans increasingly bereft of a language
in which to talk to these voters. They may be incapable of doing so. The two
sides occupy different realities.
Virginia has followed broader trends of enrichment,
immigration, and densification. John Warner’s election to the U.S. Senate in
1978 was an early sign of the Republican revival in the South. The election of
1993, which brought George Allen to the governor’s mansion, was a preview of
the Republican Revolution the following year. In 2000, Allen joined Warner in
the Senate.
For the next year, the governor and both U.S. senators
were Republicans. Then Mark Warner won the governor’s mansion, then Jim Webb
defeated Allen, then Warner replaced Warner (confusing, I know), and except for
a brief appearance by Governor Bob McDonnell, Democrats have held all statewide
offices since.
Over the last 29 years, Virginia has become wealthier,
more diverse, and more crowded. The population has grown by 42 percent, from 6
million in 1990 to 8.5 million. Population density has increased by 38 percent,
from 156 people per square mile to 215. Mean travel time to work has increased
from 24 minutes to 28 minutes. The median home price (in 2018 dollars) has gone
from $169,000 to $256,000. Density equals Democrats.
The number of Virginians born overseas has skyrocketed
from 5 percent to 12 percent. The Hispanic population has gone from 3 percent
to 10 percent. The Asian community has grown from 2 percent to 7 percent. In
1990, 7 percent of people 5 years and older spoke a language other than English
at home. In 2018 the number was 16 percent.
If educational attainment is a proxy for class, Virginia
has undergone bourgeoisification. The number of adults with a bachelor’s degree
or higher has shot up from 25 percent of the state to 38 percent. As baccalaureates
multiplied, they swapped partisan affiliation. Many of the Yuppies of the ’80s,
Bobos of the ’90s, and Security Moms of the ’00s now march in the Resistance.
Nationwide, “In 1994, 39 percent of those with a
four-year college degree (no postgraduate experience) identified with or leaned
toward the Democratic Party and 54 percent associated with the Republican
Party,” according to the Pew Research Center. “In 2017, those figures were
exactly reversed.” Last year, college graduates favored Senator Kaine over
challenger Cory Stewart by 20 points.
All of these developments are more pronounced in the most
important part of the state: northern Virginia. Fairfax County has grown from
800,000 people to 1.1 million. The percentage of foreign-born residents has
gone from 16 percent in 1990 to 31 percent in 2018. The number of Hispanics has
more than doubled from 6 percent to 16 percent. The number of Asians has almost
tripled from 8 percent to 20 percent.
Slightly less than half of Fairfax County residents held
a bachelor’s degree or higher in 1990. Now that number is 61 percent. The
median home price has gone from $225,000 to $535,000. In 1992, George H.W. Bush
and Ross Perot won a combined 58 percent in Fairfax. In 2016, Hillary Clinton
won 64 percent of the vote.
When I was growing up, Loudoun County was considered a
rural area disconnected from the rhythms of the Beltway. In the years since,
its population has exploded from 86,000 people to 407,000. The percentage of
foreign-born residents has gone from 6 percent to 24 percent. A county
population that was 3 percent Hispanic and 2 percent Asian is 14 percent
Hispanic and 20 percent Asian. The percentage of the county with a bachelor’s
degree or higher has gone from 33 percent to 60 percent. Loudoun is the richest
county in America. Fairfax is second. In 1992, Bill Clinton won 35 percent of
the vote in Loudoun County. Twenty-four years later, his wife won 55 percent.
As Virginia has moved into the Democratic column, the
state Republican party has become more populist, more nationalist, and more
culturally conservative. The dwindling number of Republicans who spoke the
language of suburbia could not escape their party’s national reputation for
hostility to immigrants and opposition to progressive ideals. A similar process
occurred in states like California, Colorado, and Nevada. It may also be
underway in Arizona and Texas (!).
Virginia became a blue state as the world celebrated the
30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The political development of
the Commonwealth is emblematic of America in the post-Cold War world. The
Republican party found it no longer could count on unwavering support from the
upscale college-educated white voters who once made up its base. The cultural
churn produced by a migrant-driven, globalized, information-based economy gave
suburban America a different population, with a different structure of values,
which looks upon social conservatives as ambassadors from Mars.
The GOP has a path to the presidency and to congressional
majorities. But it does not go through my old Virginia home.
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