Election Analysis: Policies, not parties, are paramount in Virginia politics

A year after tipping Democratic for president for the first time since 1964, Virginia fell to Republicans in a dramatic statewide sweep that is a historic reminder of its enduring competitiveness - but may not be a model for a national GOP comeback.

“It’s not a red state,“ said Jay Timmons, chief of staff in the governorship of George Allen, whose victory in 1993 led the last Republican resurgence.

“It’s a highly competitive state, where voters expect those they elect to be in tune with pocketbook issues, create jobs and promote growth in the economy. Party is not an issue - it’s who they believe will support the right policies.“

Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell easily dispatched the lackluster R. Creigh Deeds, pulling in Republicans for lieutenant governor and attorney general and padding the party’s majority in the House of Delegates, by playing to voters’ economic anxiety.

Eight years ago, that theme hastened a Democratic comeback, started by Mark R. Warner, a governor-turned-U.S. senator to whom his party will look for a way out of its new wilderness - one made murkier by approaching GOP-dominated redistricting and 2010 congressional elections in which Democrats will defend control of the U.S. House delegation.

An exit poll for The Associated Press showed eight in 10 voters were concerned about the economy, and a majority of those backed McDonnell.

Further, economic jitters drove the votes of independents, who make up a third of the electorate. They broke to McDonnell nearly 2-to-1, according to The Associated Press.

In the first Republican sweep since 1997, the double-digit wins by McDonnell, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, who sought a second term, and Attorney General-elect Ken Cuccinelli suggest independents shunned their time-honored practice: ticket-splitting.

To Paul Goldman, former state Democratic chairman, this is a reminder of a constant in Virginia politics: wooing conservative-to-moderate independents. They narrowly favored President Barack Obama last year.

“Back out the Obama votes, and this is basically a 50-50 state,“ said Goldman.

The Virginia victory, a bright spot for a GOP retrenching after Obama’s election, may prove a reminder to Republicans of a continuing challenge: broadening the appeal of a party dominated by conservatives.

McDonnell’s triumph came in a comparatively thinly attended election. With yesterday’s turnout hovering at 39 percent - down from a record 74 percent last year, when 3.7 million of nearly 5 million voters cast ballots - the Republicans’ strength, fueled by a distaste for Obama’s policies, was magnified.

“They have not expanded the party,“ said Larry J. Sabato, a political analyst at the University of Virginia who has followed the state’s politics for four decades. “They have just motivated their base to show up.“

Deeds, outspent about 2-to-1 in television advertising by McDonnell and his allies, had no such luck with Democrats.

His emphasis on McDonnell’s law-school thesis in 1989, in which McDonnell made observations about working women, unmarried couples and gay people that 20 years on would seem politically incorrect, proved an ineffective parry to the Republicans’ economic thrust.

In a stunning reversal from 2008, Democratic turnout fell sharply - a consequence of party fatigue after a long winning streak and Deeds’ inability, despite two visits by the president, to harness the more than 500,000 new voters, many of them young or minorities, who flocked to Obama.

“This was always a big task that lay in front of them; it was always going to be hard,“ said Kristian Denny Todd, communications director for Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., in his 2006 upset of GOP incumbent Allen.

“It was a personal vote for Obama,“ she said of last years win.