For Trump, winning back the White House depended on this base. That won't win Virginia. • Virginie Mercury

There was an interesting revelation at a recent panel discussion at the University of Richmond on the 2024 election, where all of us outsiders learned, with varying degrees of astonishment, that Donald Trump's campaign had no interest in persuading the undecided.

Mike Young, captain of the Trump campaign in Virginia and North Carolina, put it bluntly: The Trump campaign deliberately decided not to expand its base but rather to reach every one of Trump's voters and ensure let everyone vote for him. It worked in North Carolina, with its 16 electoral votes, but failed in Virginia, with 13.

This would explain Trump's actions throughout the campaign that left self-appointed observers like me perplexed when he made bizarre and unfounded claims, such as that Haitian immigrants were eating pets in Ohio.

Many at the time, myself included, thought he had made a strategic error by doubling down on clownish tropes that would energize his frothy loyalists but alienate persuasive independents. He ceded vital common ground to Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, who already had an army of footballers angry over the issue of reproductive rights and support from minorities outraged by Trump's relentless smear of immigrants lacking permanent legal status.

That leaves him with just his base, and that wouldn't be enough to win the 270 electoral votes required to become president. RIGHT?

This is false, at least on a national scale. Trump's All-About-That-Base approach (apologies to Meghan Trainor) has prevailed beyond what conventional pre-election polls and the national media that breathlessly parroted them would have us believe.

Trump significantly improved his performance in Virginia from the 10 percentage point defeat he suffered four years ago at the hands of President Joe Biden, but he fell short against Harris by about five percentage points.

Virginia, perhaps more in sync with official Washington than any other state, rejected Trump and his proxies every time they appeared on a statewide ballot during his 2016 candidacy and of his presidency through 2020. This time, his base turned out but couldn't match even an unenthusiastic Democrat. coalition.

He won 31 states and a total of 312 electoral votes, 42 more than he needed to achieve an electoral majority that had eluded him in his previous two elections.

Nationally, he overwhelmingly gained vote shares in localities and states he had lost to Biden, including seven swing states and the so-called blue wall of Midwestern states, which were vital for the Democrats' hopes of remaining in power.

Some of this also happened in Virginia, but not to the extent necessary to tip the commonwealth into the red for the first time in a presidential race since 2004.

The instinct for self-preservation may partly explain this. The people of Northern Virginia have a lot to say about which candidates will win statewide elections, and those voters include federal government employees or employees of federal contractors or companies that rely on the trade with federal employees or contractors. When Washington catches a cold, all of northern Rappahannock sneezes.

Trump has made no secret of his desire to reduce the federal workforce. He tried it during his previous tenure in the White House, but was new to dealing with wily agency leaders and the institutional inertia of bureaucracies. This time he returns to power surrounded by a platoon of tried and devoted minions and has put Elon Musk, arguably the richest plutocrat on the planet, in charge of the demolition.

If he succeeds, it could devastate not only the economy of Washington's suburbs and suburbs, but also state government revenues by shutting down its economic engine.

Despite this, Trump gained vote shares in all but nine of Virginia's 133 localities, including some Democratic-aligned D.C. suburbs like Fairfax County, the state's largest, where he benefited a shift of nearly nine percentage points to the right, according to the Virginia Public Access Project.

Demographically, Trump made gains among black men, Hispanic/Latino voters, voters under 30 and white voters in key states, according to NPR's analyzes of election polling data. Unlike ever-changing issues like the economy, inflation, immigration and the job approval ratings of those in power, these are enduring trends that should make Democrats shudder.

This is not to say that Virginia will become Trump country, if only because he is about to serve the second and final term granted to presidents under the 22nd Amendment. That's because this state is more than capable of handing things off to other Republicans, despite national media pundits who view Virginia as reliably Democratic.

Governor Glenn Youngkin is living proof. In 2021, Virginia voters thought Trump was forever exiled to his luxury beachfront resort in Palm Beach, Florida, and possibly a jail cell, and pent-up frustration over the COVID-19 pandemic 19 and the wall-to-wall democratic regime manifested itself. in a statewide GOP sweep.

Youngkin, a wealthy former hedge fund executive making his first bid for elected office, defeated the favored former Democratic governor, Terry McAuliffe. In her wake, fellow Republican Winsome Earle-Sears became the first woman of color to win statewide elections with her victory as lieutenant governor and Jason Miyares' triumph as attorney general made him the first Hispanic-American to be elected to statewide office.

Fresh off that heartbreaking and worse-than-ugly presidential campaign, we were about to launch another gubernatorial campaign in earnest, one that seems destined to finally give Virginia its first female governor. Earle-Sears and incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger have both announced their candidacy and are prohibitive favorites to win their respective nominations.

With Trump returning to the White House and promising to significantly reduce the federal workforce, it will be much more difficult for Earle-Sears to avoid his stain than for Youngkin. Democrats won't have to work under a deeply unpopular president, and Youngkin has maintained a respectable job approval rating.

Spanberger and the Democrats, however, know, or should by now know, the kind of turnout that a motivated Republican Party can produce in the countryside and eat away at the margins of urban and suburban redoubts. They must find a way to reconnect with their left-wing base while reassuring workers in the face of a scary world.

This opportunity is about to present itself. The question immediately before us is whether Democrats or Republicans will make best use of it in an election that will serve as the first barometer of the second Trump in the White House.

And in a dozen months, we will know the answer.

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