If you take a look at the black population of Virginia by county and overlay that with a map of the election results of the gubernatorial primary between Ralph Northam and Tom Perriello, you’ll be able to see the correlation quite clearly. It’s particularly noticeable in the southern and western parts of the state where the demographics are less complicated and the culture is more classically Virginia than in the DC suburbs. Here are the ten county groups with the heaviest black populations by percentage. Overall, Northam won 56 percent to 44 percent for Perriello.
Petersburg city: percentage black= 77.8, Northam 73 Perriello 28
Emporia city: percentage black= 63.6, Northam 66 Perriello 34
Greensville: percentage black= 59.2, Northam 72 Perriello 28
Sussex: percentage black= 57.8, Northam 72 Perriello 28
Franklin city: percentage black= 56.4, Northam 72 Perriello 28
Brunswick: percentage black= 56.1, Northam 57 Perriello 43
Portsmouth city: percentage black= 53.5, Northam 76 Perriello 24
Richmond city: percentage black= 50.1, Northam 55 Perriello 45
Hampton City: percentage black= 49.7, Northam 72 Perriello 28
Danville city: percentage black= 49.3, Perriello 88 Northam 12
You can see that Northam outperformed his statewide average in eight out of the ten, the exceptions being in Richmond where he basically matched his average and in Danville which is a major outlier that I’d love to understand.
Here are the ten county groups with the smallest black populations by percentage.
Craig: percentage black= 0.2, Perriello 71 Northam 29
Dickenson: percentage black= 0.4, Northam 61 Perriello 39
Highland: percentage black= 0.6, Perriello 62 Northam 38
Scott: percentage black= 0.8, Perriello 51 Northam 49
Carroll: percentage black= 0.8, Perriello 58 Northam 42
Russell: percentage black= 1.0, Northam 65 Perriello 35
Washington: percentage black= 1.5, Perriello 58 Northam 42
Giles: percentage black= 1.6, Perriello 72 Northam 28
Floyd: percentage black= 1.9, Perriello 74 Northam 26
Rockingham: percentage black= 2.0, Perriello 59 Northam 41
Here you can see that Perriello also outperformed his statewide average in eight out of ten, and by quite a lot.
I suppose there are several ways to interpret these results. One obvious way is to theorize that black voters in Virginia were heavily influenced by the fact that Northam enjoyed virtually unanimous support from elected Democrats in the state.
Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, who beat Perriello for the Democratic nomination by 12 percentage points, had the backing of nearly every Virginia Democrat elected to state and federal office — the result of years of cultivating relationships…
…Democratic primary voters also seemed disinclined to rebel against the state party establishment. Outgoing Gov. Terry McAuliffe and U.S. Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark R. Warner are beloved by Virginia Democrats. And all three backed Northam.
“The real story, at least on the Democratic side . . . is people are generally happy with their leadership,” said David Turner, Northam’s spokesman.
Perriello’s campaign found it an enormous challenge. “It’s hard to break through against an entire unified state Democratic Party operation, and we knew that from the beginning,” [Ian] Sams said.
Overall, the election was decided in the northern suburbs where Northam vacuumed up an impressive lead, and he was assisted in this by his financial advantage. The northern suburbs are also the region where the endorsement of the Amazon-owned Washington Post probably helped Northam the most against his anti-monopoly opponent.
Perriello’s internal polling showed him plunging 12 points in the final week of the campaign, mostly in vote-rich Northern Virginia, after Northam won the endorsement of The Washington Post editorial board and outspent Perriello on advertising by 2 to 1, according to Ian Sams, Perriello’s spokesman.
Because Perriello was endorsed by Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and several progressive groups, there’s a narrative that his loss proves that progressives’ “bark is worse than their bite.”
Personally, I don’t think this race was a very good laboratory for making that kind of assessment. Perriello wasn’t fighting on an even enough playing field. Northam’s money advantage was probably surmountable, but Northam’s institutional support was overwhelming. He was able to hold enough white liberals in his camp to blunt what should have been Perriello’s natural base of support. And Northam quite obviously did extremely well with the black community.
If this had been a more even fight, I might be comfortable saying that it provided confirmation of what we saw in the Democratic primaries between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. It would be further proof that white progressives have not figured out how to appeal to black voters, without whom they cannot prevail.
I don’t feel comfortable saying that in this case for two reasons. The first is that Perriello isn’t a carbon copy of Bernie Sanders. He’s actually more in the mold of Elizabeth Warren, although (like Sanders) he lost some progressive support over his record on guns and (unlike Sanders) his support of the Stupak Amendment to the Affordable Care Act.
The second reason is a little complicated because Sanders and Perriello both started late and both faced nearly universal opposition from the party establishment which had lined up early for their opponents. This provides a lesson about the importance of getting started early and finding powerful allies within the party, but it tells us very little about whether a progressive can accomplish this if they go about it the right way. In other words, it’s hard to tell if there are substantive policy and messaging problems that are dividing white progressives from black voters or if their weakness in these two contests is better explained by a failure to make inroads within the party’s power structure in general. Another factor that makes this hard to gauge is that a lot of people will tell you that Sanders and many of his supporters were tone-deaf on issues of concern to the black community, but I doubt you’ll hear people say the same about Perriello.
I wish we could draw cleaner conclusions from the result in Virginia because Perriello road-tested the strategy a laid out in my magazine piece How to Win Rural Voters Without Losing Liberal Values and he had success in the very areas that I identified as a priority for Democrats if they want to make a political comeback in this country. I’d love to see an experiment where we could compare Perriello’s and Northam’s strategies for beating Ed Gillespie in November. That could tell us if a liberal can use an anti-monopoly, anti-consolidation message to do better in rural areas without compromising on liberal values and still motivate the base and clean up in blue strongholds.
Tomorrow we will get results in Georgia’s affluent well-educated 6th District special election. That will be another imperfect laboratory. If Ossoff wins, we’ll be told that the Democrats are back on track. If he loses, no matter by how little, we’ll be told that the Democrats have never been more pathetic. In truth, the outcome can’t teach us either thing. It might provide comfort for the idea that the Democrats can win again without more rural support, and that would probably be the most dangerous possible outcome.
A persuasive case on why we really should win GA-6.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/19/upshot/this-list-of-well-educated-districts-explains-why-georgias
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Statistically-insignificant anecdotal evidence dept.: I was with a bunch of right-wing relatives this weekend and was genuinely surprised at their take on the current situation, from an economic/business standpoint. The people I was expecting to be anti-regulation, anti-tax, and (especially) anti-union were the opposite — the smartest in the bunch were renouncing their ties to the Republican party and insisting that some kind of “third way” solution had to emerge upward out of the angry population (not exactly a new angle, but they were saying this in a way that involved progressive-sounding ideas).
My most vocally right-wing cousin (a very pleasant person; just has those views) said to my (extremely liberal/progressive) dad, “Your gang has let you down, too!” My dad agreed entirely.
(Obviously that forced symmetry is false — no need to argue about that — but the basic idea is sound; those Obama voters who fled to Trump were definitely trying to express an idea, Hillary-tarring etc. aside.)
Of course a right winger who bemoans what his party has become…but will neverevereverever vote for a Democrat…has to trot out the false equivalency trope.
It gives them cover for voting the way they vote, be it Repub or if they’re totally lost, glibertarian.
As was noted earlier, Perriello won in the areas of the state with the smallest populations, most rural, poorest, and less racially and culturally diverse. Northam won in the Nothern and Eastern parts of the state which have experienced greater economic growth, greater population, etc….
You are asking why.
Institutional advantages for Northam, whos bio is tailor made for those western counties, did not help him there. Perriello is the very poster boy for C’ville-NoVa govt elitism but worked in the small towns, and rural areas of the state.
If you want my guess, (being familiar with large portions of Tom’s win georgraphy) I would say the Institutional Democratic Party is dead in those porions of the state. Its identification with all the worst political tendencies through bombardment by large and small RW media has basically killed it on the county level. Any 1/2 decent alternative to another Same ole’ same ole’ being pushed by the Richmond/Alexandria nexus would be welcome (sound familiar?)
But as I mentioned, many of these counties have seen the Democratic Party shrivel through ineptitude and disinterest from Richmond/Alexandria. (one again, sound familiar?) Many of the counties you listed (Craig, Carrol, Giles, + others etc… have less than 30,000 population and oftern less than 1000 voting in the Democratic Primary). {BTW-have I mentioned Carroll Co. is a speed trap on both I77 and Rt58?}
That small portion of the voting Democratic population is probably those who are politically engaged on the Net, NPR, university educated, etc… And having two interesting candidates probably ginned up interest in what was supposed to be a cake walk.
Any national lessons have to take local considerations into one’s political calculations, you have to factor in resentment of the Grand Poobahs in Richmond by the mountain farmer or trademan as well as Perriello’s message. And even that, the margins were quite close.
Re:Danville-
Small city which was center of tobacco and agriculture. On NC border and last Capital of the Confederacy when Richmond fell. After war, tobacco and textiles became main economy. Rigid socal class and racial barriers. 1960’s race struggle and police response. Effort made to bring in other industry. Textile killed by free trade deals and city began experiencing white flight to county as social structures began to change. Pttsylvania County has benefited from that; but its character is still red dirt farming.
Danville is center of black political power in area, also home to regional medical facilities, shopping, small university and becoming a wine / craft beer area (early stages). Also beginning to offer younger educated professionals some amenities. I can easily see where Perriello could do well there. But perhaps the pressence of multinational corporations and some vestages of Unionism accounts for the large margin he and his message enjoyed in Danville / Pittsylvania co.
I think you might have nailed it. Especially if you’re an outsider candidate in you have to start early. You may not necessarily lock down party support but you may freeze it long enough for you to show strength and maybe win them over.
No one wants to back a losing candidate, so that’s why you rather they waited and you can only do that by showing strength earlier in the process
How early did Teachout start against Cuomo?
Rasmus Pianowski argues it was due to region rather than race. Seems best argument to be made is that it was regionally based, and then I’d throw in institutional state support as the next strongest factor (if not strongest):
Northam was/is the sitting Lt. Governor. It’s pretty hard to overcome that. I don’t think the institutional support mattered as much as Northam already having name ID and Perriello only having name ID, before the race, in the Charlottesville area. Then you add in his iffy record and you get the result that happened. Our Revolution is still in its infancy stage, relatively speaking. They’ll start winning races eventually. Give it another year or two.