Hillary Clinton clinched a hard-fought win in deeply divided Virginia Tuesday night in the traditionally red state that she eventually turned blue for the third straight presidential race in a row.
With Trump holding an edge throughout most of the evening, the tide turned toward Clinton’s favor only when all of votes from the Democrat stronghold of Northern Virginia were counted. The state was called at about 10 p.m., delivering 13 electoral votes to Clinton’s column.
Polls favored Clinton by a 5-point margin heading into Election Day, according to a RealClearPolitics survey average, but for most of the night she was trailing Trump downstate and in the west before all of the votes in the Northern Virginia suburbs were counted. Despite the close win, Clinton fell short of the votes Obama garnered in 2008 and 2012 in the Democrat-dominated, heavily African-American cities of Richmond, Hampton and Newport News, according to the latest polling figures.
The Clinton victory here comes amid shifting demographics in the deeply divided Old Dominion that helped hand Obama a win over Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in 2008. Obama that year won the state 53-46, the first time Virginia voted Democratic at the top of the national ticket in 44 years.
Four years later, Obama beat back a challenge from GOP nominee Mitt Romney in Virginia, and won 51-47.
The state’s support for Clinton also was likely buoyed by her decision to tap Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., as her running mate. Kaine, a former governor of the commonwealth and one-time mayor of Richmond, delivered a final pitch at George Mason University Monday night alongside Vice President Joe Biden and Biden’s wife Jill, a Northern Virginia Community College professor.
“History was made because of Virginia, not in spite of Virginia,” Kaine said Monday night. “We have a chance to do that again in a powerful way.”
Democrats in recent years have made gains in the Washington, D.C., suburbs of Northern Virginia where a predominance of white, liberal voters are flocking to the area for its good jobs, many in the federal government, and proximity to D.C.
Both Clinton and Trump campaigned heavily in Virginia in the days leading up to election, with Clinton focusing most of her time on turnout in Northern Virginia and Trump crisscrossing the state with stops in the farther D.C. suburbs of Leesburg, Woodbridge and Manassas.
