Northern Virginia has always been blue. The key is to run up large numbers in the states biggest city, Virginia Beach. Bush won it by 19 in 2004. Obama won it by <1 in 2008. Romney won it by 3 in 2012. Gillespie won it by 6 2 weeks ago. There are more than enough votes there to cancel out Northern Virginia. The media wants to tell us Virginia is lost for good because of Northern Virginia. Nothing has changed there including demographics. The problem is, for the last several cycles, a lot of people that used to vote republican voted democrat.
Virginia Beach is an exceptional city. Most cities our size go consistently blue. We usually always go red. Our city was also one of the only big cities in the state to vote in favor of the marriage resolution a few years ago that defined marriage as between one man one woman. I think it is partly because we are so sprawled out and suburban. Our town center has only two skyscrapers and only covers a 2 or 3 blocks. Not near as many inter-city slums and hoods as our neighbor Norfolk.
One of the aspects of the media’s job in electing democrats is to make sure conservatives and Republicans “can’t win/Warner is unbeatable”, so why bother to show up? If all the discouraged Gillespie voters had shown up. He’d have handily won