This month’s votes followed the usual regional lines, but with shifts toward Democrats even in rural Appalachia
By Colin Woodard
This month’s off-year gubernatorial contests in Virginia and New Jersey resulted in solid Democratic victories, but they followed the regional patterns familiar to readers of American Nations and Nations Apart. (If you’re unfamiliar with the American Nations model, start here.)
In the Virginia contest, the biggest divide wasn’t between urban and rural counties, but between the state’s Tidewater and Greater Appalachian sections, just as it was in the previous governor contests in 2017 and 2021. Here are the results by county and region, showing the mirror-image split between the state’s two sections:
Former Democratic congresswoman Abigail Spanberger defeated of Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears by a 15.4-point margin overall, but she was defeated in Appalachian Virginia by 16.3 points. Her margin in Tidewater – 26.5 points – allowed her to carry the day because that region is much larger, comprising 72.5 percent of Virginia’s population. Contra the “rural-urban divide explains all” thesis, if only urban counties had voted, Spanberger would still have lost Appalachian Virginia by 8.4 points, while winning Tidewater by a whopping 29.9. She did lose rural Tidewater by 13.3 points, but that’s a far cry from rural Appalachia, where she lost by a staggering 41.4. Regional cultural influences are a powerful force.
That was actually a dramatic improvement, all the way around, compared to the experience of the Democratic nominee last time around, Terry McCauliffe, who lost his contest by two points to Glenn Youngkin, who’d successfully concealed his Trumpy extremism on the campaign trail. Here’s the regional breakdown in that 2021 contest:
Compared to 2021, Spanberger’s victory represents a 17-point blueward shift in Tidewater and a 15-point one in Appalachia. She also substantially improved over McCauliffe in all four county types: a 10.9-point improvement in rural Appalachia, 16.3 points better in urban Appalachia, 4.2 in rural Tidewater, and 17.5 in urban Tidewater.
There are several ways of interpreting this dramatic shift against Republicans across both regions. It might be a reaction against Trump’s dictatorial agenda, though you’d think that would have had a greater differential between Tidewater – where many people are federal, employees, contractors, or suppliers – and Greater Appalachia, which has consistently been Trump’s most loyal region nationally. Alternatively, Youngkin and Spanberger might just be better candidates than the (Bill Clinton ally) McCauliffe or Earle-Sears. But Trump’s failure to endorse or really encourage voters to support Earle-Sears probably has something to do with it. The Republican nominee, a loyal Trumpist, has said she doesn’t know why he didn’t but, given Trump’s overt ethnonationalism and sexism, the fact she’s a black woman may well be a factor.
Indeed, the election quite closely resembles the 2017 contest, when Democrat Ralph Northam defeated Republican Ed Gillespie by almost 9 points. Here’s the breakdown of that one:
The county-level pattern is fairly similar, though Spanberger made relative gains over Northam in the outer D.C. suburbs and the central part of the state. Overall, she bested his performance by nearly 7 points in Tidewater and by more than four in Appalachia, which may be the best indication of Virginia’s underlying direction of travel in the Trump era. (Her improvement against 2017 was negligible in rural Tidewater (+0.1), modest in urban and rural Appalachia (+6.2 and +9.6) urban Tidewater (+8).
Youngkin may have been a flash in the pan, a final hurrah for Republicans in the commonwealth. Because it’s almost impossible to win Virginia if you lose Tidewater, but if you’re also hemorrhaging support in Greater Appalachia it might be time to look in the mirror and ask yourself where you went astray.
Garden State Shift
New Jersey is split in half between its Midland south and New Netherland-ish north, and as a result can be competitive, even in these polarized times. Not that long ago, Republican Chris Christie won and re-won the governorship by large margins positioning himself as a practical, un-extreme politician before aligning himself with the likes of Paul LePage and Donald Trump. Last time around, in 2021, incumbent Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy only won reelection by 3.2%.
Not this time.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill defeated the same Republican who’d taken on Murphy, former state assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli, in a 14.4 point landslide, the best performance by a Democrat since 2001. At a regional level, she won the state’s liberal, commerce-minded New Netherland section — where 73% of its people reside – by 19.3 points, and the far more competitive Midlands by 1.3.
More often than not, presidential elections are decided by trends in the Midlands, the continent’s great swing region, which twice supported Obama by healthy margins, but was basically split down the middle in 2004, 2016, and 2024. It matters because former or current swing states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Missouri, and Iowa can be won or lost based on what Midlanders do.
Consider that Christie won the Midlands by 32 points just 12 years ago, in the Tea Party era that set the stage for the Trump presidencies. That means Sherrill’s performance constitutes a 35-point swing from then. Four years ago, Gov. Murphy only won 2 of the Garden State’s eight Midlander counties. On Nov. 4, Sherrill won five. If this trend is reflected elsewhere in the Midlands, it’s a bad sign for Trumpism.
Thanks, as always, to our partners at Motivf, where Tova Perlman wrangled the data in this post and John Liberty created the maps.
— Colin Woodard, author of Nations Apart: How Clashing Regional Cultures Shattered America and American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, is director of Nationhood Lab.