In an unusual primary season where both major presidential candidates have effectively been set up for a rematch from the beginning, few specific states receive much media attention. Sure, there was the New Hampshire Republican primary, which the media positioned as a make-or-break for Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign. There was also the Michigan Democratic Primary, which garnered attention for an “uncommitted” protest campaign organized by Arab-Americans and progressives in response to President Joe Biden’s conduct regarding the war in Gaza. Now that both Donald Trump and Biden have secured their party’s nominations, however, the results of any other primaries have little relevance to most Americans.
Every primary, however, is important. Primaries tell us about voter enthusiasm, voting patterns by demographic, and the strengths and weaknesses of candidates; in many elections, the winning candidate’s performance in the primary can make or break their campaign. The results of the Virginia Presidential Primary, which was held on March 5, make this fact especially clear.
The Republican Primary
In the Republican Primary, Donald Trump won 63 percent of the vote, while Nikki Haley won 35 percent. Although Trump won by a relatively large margin, this was actually one of his worst performances in a primary so far—out of around 40 primaries and caucuses so far, only 6 (DC, Vermont, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Utah, and Massachusetts) have been worse for Trump.
Where did each candidate do best? Looking at a map of the primary, some geographic patterns are clear: Haley saw her strongest performances in Northern Virginia, the Richmond metropolitan area, and a few scattered counties in the rest of the state, while Trump did better just about everywhere else. In fact, out of 133 counties and independent cities (independent cities are legally separate from counties, though many independent cities also officially serve as county seats) in Virginia, Trump won 123, while Haley only won 10. However, the counties and cities Haley won tended to be urban and suburban areas; for example, she bested Trump in Virginia’s most populous county—Fairfax—by double digits, and garnered almost 75% of the vote in neighboring Arlington and Alexandria. In other large suburban counties, such as Loudoun (NOVA) and Henrico (Richmond metro), Haley held Trump down to single-digit margins.
Haley also did well in college towns, winning Williamsburg (William & Mary), Lexington (VMI and Washington & Lee), and even our own Charlottesville (in addition to surrounding Albemarle County). In Harrisonburg (JMU), the vote was nearly tied, with Trump beating Haley by a single point. Blacksburg (Virginia Tech) is not an independent city, so results were harder to find, but precinct analysis shows Haley won solidly in the town.
On the other hand, Trump’s best results came from sparsely-populated counties in Appalachia and along the border with North Carolina; his best county was Buchanan County, which borders West Virginia, in which he received over 95 percent of the vote. It is important to remember that despite performing best in rural areas, the vast majority of his votes came from solid (though not massive) margins in suburban counties outside of the DC metro and strong margins in exurban (places not quite dense enough to be suburbs but too dense to be rural) areas. For instance, Trump’s 11,000-vote margin in Chesterfield County, a suburb of Richmond, netted more votes for him than over a dozen sparsely-populated rural counties, even though his margins were much higher in the latter.
The Democratic Primary
In the Democratic Primary, Biden received 88.5 percent of the vote, while challengers Marianne Williamson and Dean Phillips won 8 and 3.5 percent of the vote, respectively. Because Virginia only counts write-in votes for candidates who have explicitly declared their intention to be write-in candidates to the Virginia Commissioner of Elections, it is possible that there were additional votes not included in the final results, though it is unlikely the final vote totals were affected significantly.
In general, Biden’s performance in the primary was relatively average, if not slightly above average, compared to his overall 2024 primary performance (although the lack of an “uncommitted” option and restrictions on write-ins may have helped him). Nationally, Biden has averaged roughly 86-87 percent of the vote in primaries, ranging from a dismal 71 percent in Minnesota to a landslide 96 percent in South Carolina. For the most part, votes against Biden have been driven by a combination of left-leaning and Arab/Muslim voters angered by Biden’s conduct in the Gaza war and right-leaning ancestral Democrats who retain their party registration despite rarely voting for Democrats, especially in presidential elections.
In Virginia, activist groups, in lieu of voting “uncommitted,” instead endorsed voting for Williamson, which may explain her unusually high numbers in the state. Williamson did best in Harrisonburg, home of JMU, where she garnered almost a quarter of the vote; this is most plausibly due to an organized campaign by local activist groups. However, unlike in the Republican primary, this did not extend into a pattern in other college towns (Williamsburg, Charlottesville, etc. all had results roughly in line with the statewide average). Besides Harrisonburg, Williamson also performed relatively well in counties in western Virginia, which have a shrinking but still-present population of right-leaning ancestral Democrats, in addition to respectable performances in densely-populated Richmond, Fairfax County, and Loudoun County.
Biden, on the other hand, saw his best performances in counties in southern and eastern Virginia with large African American populations. Most of Biden’s best counties were rural; however, as with Trump (and because Democratic voters generally skew urban), the vast majority of his votes came from urban and suburban areas.
Takeaways
Looking at the Republican Primary, it is clear that Trump has a serious issue with the educated, suburban voters who formerly made up a large chunk of the Republican base—potentially more serious than in 2020, when that constituency flocked away from the Republican Party en masse. Virginia may be highly unlikely to go for Trump this year, but the kind of voter who rejected him in Fairfax County can be found across the country—including in crucial swing states. If Trump doesn’t make a serious effort to bring Haley voters back into the fold, it could be disastrous for his campaign.
Biden, though he won by a landslide margin, ought to take away some lessons from the primary as well. For one, while 88.5 percent of the vote is certainly high, it’s not the kind of performance an incumbent president without serious opposition should be looking for, especially when considering who exactly is voting against them. For instance, while Barack Obama had a similar (albeit slightly higher) vote total in the 2012 primary, the vast majority of votes against him came from ancestral Democrats in the South; in areas where Democrats dominated both primary and general elections, his performances were significantly better. For Biden, on the other hand, the pattern is murkier—some of the votes against him are from areas with high concentrations of ancestral Democrats, but many are also from urban and suburban areas where the typical Democratic primary voter is also a committed Democrat in regular elections. In 2020, Trump received 94 percent of the nationwide primary vote. Still, Biden’s strong performance in Black-majority counties also shows that fears of Black voters switching to the Republican Party may be unfounded.
Everything considered, it is important to remember that the election is still many months away. While many voters are nearly impossible to sway in this era of intense polarization, many others could swing either way over the course of the campaign. Beware of pundits who say they’ve solved the election before it takes place—but don’t be afraid to dive a little deeper into what we have now to get some clues about what might happen. The only thing we really know right now is that we don’t know the final outcome.
Leave a Reply