Virginia is of interest to me as up until November of last year I lived in Northern Virginia. It was my home for six years or so. I was all part of the changes occurring in Virginia as out of state skilled workers come into the northern areas of Virginia and work in the wider Washington DC telecommunications, government and defense industries. So it was interesting to watch Virginia start red during the night and slowly go blue as the northern county polling stations started adding to the state totals.

From a county map the state looks to be largely red. And it is. This is the difference between NoVA and RoVA as the schism is called. Where NoVA is Northern Virginia and RoVA is condescendingly known as the Rest Of Virginia.

In the suburbs tightly around DC the counties went to Obama by about 10% with difference between the northern counties and southern counties being population. Fairfax County has a population of 500,000 while Smyth County in the lower left of the state has a population of 16,000. This is why the northern counties controlled who the electoral college votes went to.

Heavy urbanization in modern American means a political lean to blue as a rule of thumb.

Some more data from the NY Times maps. This the voting by population bubbles. It makes it pretty obvious how the northern counties affect the voting outcomes.

And another map showing the shift. The almost uniform swing to the Democrats is more like a Westminster style election than a Washingtonian one.

This was an election of the Republican Party losing support almost uniformly across the nation.
Cam Riley: South Sea Republic. Freedom, liberty, equity and an Australian Republic.