Virginia will be solid red again, within 15 years.
There is a huge veterans preference in federal hiring. In my experience, well over 2/3 of new federal hires are veterans.
This is going to dramatically shift the politics of the federal workforce over the next 10-20 years. Without huge super majorities for the Democrats in the DC area, Virginia will return to the red column.
That's good news...
Yeah, like CA. VA is gone never to be red in generations. The demography is changing rapidly fueled by mass immigration. One third of Fairfax County, the largest county in VA, is foreign-born. The 2012 election marked the first time that the ballot was in Spanish in Fairfax County.
NoVA determines who wins in VA. The Dems dominate in NoVA especially in Fairfax County, Arlington County, and Alexandria.
The United States Census Bureau estimates that the state population was 8,411,808 on July 1, 2016, a 5.1% increase since the 2010 United States Census. This includes an increase from net migration of 381,969 people into the Commonwealth since the 2010 census. Immigration from outside the United States resulted in a net increase of 159,627 people, and migration within the country produced a net increase of 155,205 people.
Aside from Virginia, the top birth state for Virginians is New York, having overtaken North Carolina in the 1990s, with the Northeast accounting for the largest number of migrants into the state by region.
The state's most populous ethnic group, Non-Hispanic White, has declined from 76% in 1990 to 62.7% in 2015. The largest minority group in Virginia is African American, at 19.7% as of 2015.
More recent immigration in the late 20th century and early 21st century has fueled new communities of Hispanics and Asians. As of 2015, 9.0% of Virginians are Hispanic or Latino (of any race), and 6.5% are Asian. The state's Hispanic population rose by 92% from 2000 to 2010, with two-thirds of Hispanics living in Northern Virginia.