VIRGINIA ELECTORAL REGIONS

A recent publication by the Metropolitan Institute – “The 2005 Governor's Race: A Geographic Analysis of the “Four Virginias” – divides Virginia into four broad socio-economic regions.  This is a major simplification of the regional diversity of the Commonwealth, especially from the perspective of electoral geography.  To be fair, no two researchers ever seem to agree on the regional subdivisions of Virginia.  Nonetheless, I would like to provide a refinement of the regional subdivisions of the state as they manifest themselves in the results of recent statewide elections.

In the last decade of the twentieth century, the political center of gravity in Virginia shifted irrevocably to the three major metropolitan regions of Northern Virginia, Metro Richmond/Tri-Cities, and Hampton Roads – the so-called “Golden Crescent” of the I-95/I-64 corridor.  This was an inevitable transformation as the southern end of the great Megalopolis urban conglomeration sprawled its way southward.  Political contests largely now come down to a battle for the votes in the suburbs of those metropolitan regions.  As the maps of the victory percentages and the intensity of the Republican vote below show, Democrats do well in cities and in Fairfax County, while Republicans do better as one moves toward the exurban and rural counties.  Much of eastern Virginia therefore does break down neatly into three urban/suburban regions.  However, the Middle Peninsula, Northern Neck, and Eastern Shore are not really part of any of the former regions and it is a mistake to lump them together with Hampton Roads and the Lower Peninsula.  I prefer to call those areas “Tidewater.”  Likewise, the Southside counties of Surry, Sussex, Greensville, Brunswick, Southampton, and Suffolk – all with high percentages of African American voters – are distinct from Hampton Roads and lean strongly Democratic.  Traditionally, this area was called “Virginia South of the James” (as opposed to “Southside,” which is a term applied to the counties southwest of Richmond and south of the Appomattox River) and I call it the “Southern Shore.”

Republicans do well in most of the rest of Virginia and dominate in most of the rural counties.  The exceptions are counties in the Charlottesville region (influenced by the University of Virginia), Prince Edward (tipped by Longwood University and Hampden-Sydney College), and the union-heavy coal counties of Buchanan and Dickenson.  The intensity of Republican votes reveals definite regional variations in what the Metropolitan Institute calls “Shenandoah.”  The Shenandoah Valley itself was Republican before it was cool, both because it showed weak support for the cause of slavery and because of its propensity toward conservative religious sects.  The counties of the Roanoke-Lynchburg-Danville industrial triangle are another Republican stronghold, even though Roanoke and Danville lean Democratic.  Finally, Republican support is strong in the Southern Highlands along the North Carolina border.  All three of those areas should be considered separate regions of the state.

Some counties do not fit neatly into any one region.  The counties between the Rappahannock and Rapidan Rivers lean strongly Republican, but it is not clear if they should be considered exurbs of Northern Virginia yet or not.  Certainly, the sprawl along US 29 and I-95 slowly are drawing Rappahannock, Culpeper, Madison, Greene, Orange, and Spotsylvania into its hungry jaws, so perhaps they already are.  Caroline is hard to place, because it has historic ties to Tidewater and because its large African American minority makes it tilt Democratic.

Geographers have grappled with this problem for decades.  There are many criteria one can use to subdivide Virginia, so there are many different ways to break it down.  Even though I have taught the geography of Virginia for years, I still have not come up with regional subdivisions I am completely happy with. This is not a complete or particularly thorough breakdown of Virginia, but it is close enough for the purposes of a discussion of the voting patterns of Virginia localities.  In the future, I plan to analyze the close statewide elections from 1995 to 2005 to see if regional divisions are clearer.

Comments, suggestions, revisions, gripes?
hardinds@longwood.edu

Copyright, D. Hardin, 2005