Turning Virginia blue
The first big win for Democrats since Donald Trump became president
Observers braced for a late night. Virginia’s polls close at 7pm, and precincts in the diverse, densely populated suburbs of Washington, DC usually take a long time to come in. But networks called the race for Ralph Northam, the Democratic nominee, not 90 minutes after the polls closed on November 7th. At his watch-night party in the student centre of George Mason University, right in the heart of Northern Virginia, the crowd broke into cheers and dancing.
The mood was as much one of relief as jubilation. Mr Northam had a dreadful finish to his campaign. His polling lead over Ed Gillespie, the Republican nominee, dwindled as Election Day drew nearer. He vowed to work with Donald Trump when it might benefit Virginia, after calling the president a “narcissistic maniac” earlier in the campaign. He admitted to having voted for George W. Bush twice.
Virginia Democrats worried Mr Northam was turning off the base, as Mr Gillespie, a former lobbyist and consummate Washington, DC insider tried to energise his by going full Trump: running race-baiting ads condemning Mr Northam for wanting to remove Confederate monuments and spuriously tying him to a murderous Salvadoran gang (progressive Virginians did some race-baiting of their own: a Latino advocacy…
