Rhodes Cook recently posted an excellent, data-rich take on the new Democratic Presidential majority. His data break down the specific reasons that that the national Democratic advantage is durable and further suggest that the demographic trends behind it it are also having trickle-down effects on other elections in purple states like Virginia and Colorado.

Cook builds his analysis by comparing Obama’s performance in 2012 to Dukakis’ performance in 1988, the last election before the Democrats went on their current run of popular vote victories (five of six elections). Cook remarks:

Democrats have made great strides on the electoral map since 1988. They have established firm bases of support on both coasts, more than held their own in the battleground states of the industrial Midwest, and made inroads into Republican terrain in the South and the Mountain West. But the Democratic vote share has not increased everywhere since 1988, when Michael Dukakis lost the popular vote 53.4% to 45.6% to Republican George H.W. Bush. In a total of 19 states, Dukakis drew a larger share of the vote in 1988 than the victorious Barack Obama did in 2012. These states were predominantly rural in complexion and scattered about the country — in Appalachia, the South and border South, the upper Midwest, the Plains states and the Mountain West.

Cook provides a map that usefully summarizes these disparate trends between 1988 and 2012:

Driving these trends within and across states have been sweeping changes in how urban, suburban and rural residents vote. As Cook puts it:

It is no mystery how the Democrats transformed themselves from an also-ran in presidential politics in the 1970s and 1980s to a dominant force since 1992. In the last two decades, they have expanded their majorities in the nation’s major urban centers and flipped populous suburban counties adjacent to such cities as New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., in their favor. But Democrats have tanked of late in rural America, from the “God and guns country” of western Pennsylvania and the Appalachian states to the small towns of the South and the Plains.

Cook illustrates these trends with a handy table:

Cook concludes his analysis with a look at the stunning transformation of Northern Virginia. In 1988, Dukakis could only carry the liberal bastions of Arlington and Alexandria. But in 2012, Obama carried every major suburban jurisdiction in Northern Virginia, running up a margin of a quarter million votes in the area, more than enough to counterbalance his 80,000 vote loss in the rest of the state. Cook provides a table that documents this transformation:

Cook’s data on Virginia are particularly interesting to contemplate in light of the recent self-inflicted wounds incurred by the state’s GOP. Instead of adapting to an ongoing wave of change, they are hurtling in the opposite direction. The Virginia GOP’s caucus nominated a far right winger, E.W. Jackson, for lieutenant governor. Jackson is so poisonously extreme that his nomination may effectively eliminate the chances of his running mate, the extreme-in-his-own-right Ken Cuccinelli, to win the Virginia governorship. In addition, the state party cannot yet come up with anyone to run against Democrat Mark Warner in next year’s Senate race and may wind up effectively ceding the seat to Warner.

This disarray, as Josh Kraushaar pointed out in a recent National Journal article, is mirrored in Colorado, another fast-changing state contributing to the new Democratic Presidential majority:

The [Colorado] party’s brightest recruit, Rep. Cory Gardner, just opted to pass up a Senate campaign against Mark Udall, leaving the GOP empty-handed. Even more startling is the reemergence of immigration hardliner Tom Tancredo as a legitimate gubernatorial candidate, jumping in the race this month against Gov. John Hickenlooper. (Tancredo won 36 percent of the vote as a third-party candidate in 2010.) If Republicans can’t contest the Senate and governorship in 2014, it would mark eight straight setbacks in presidential, Senate, and gubernatorial contests dating back nearly a decade.

Remarkable. It’s almost like the party’s in shock — and the faster the change, the greater the shock and disorientation. Unless the GOP shakes off its current state, the new Democratic Presidential majority could be with us for quite awhile.

In perhaps the most uninspiring election this cycle, Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Ken Cuccinelli are locked in a battle to emerge as Virginia’s “least objectionable” candidate for governor. Public Policy Polling’s just released analysis of the race concludes that voters are increasingly turning away from both candidates as they learn more about their backgrounds and positions.

That’s not the normal trend, but it’s also not normal to have an election where voters dislike both candidates five months out:

That’s the case here. Terry McAuliffe is not popular, with 29% of voters holding a favorable opinion of him to 33% with a negative one. But we find that Ken Cuccinelli is even more unpopular, with 44% of voters rating him unfavorably to just 32% with a positive opinion. As a result we find McAuliffe leading Cuccinelli by a 5 point margin, 42/37. McAuliffe also led by 5 points on our January poll, but the share of voters who are undecided has spiked from 13% at the start of the year now up to 21%.

Cuccinelli has a big problem with independent voters. Only 25% have a favorable opinion of him to 51% with a negative one, and he trails McAuliffe by 11 points with them at 39/28. Democrats are also a little bit more sold on McAuliffe with 82% supporting him right now, while 78% of Republicans are committed to Cuccinelli.

Democrats shouldn’t crow over McAuliffe’s 5-point lead when 21 percent of Virginia voters remain undecided — up from 13 percent in January. Low-interest, off-year gubernatorial elections are typically not kind to Democrats who need decent turnout from base voters particularly in more centrist/independent states like Virginia. Although President Obama won Virginia two elections in a row, his presence does not ensure Democratic advantages. As PBS NewsHour reported in an early overview of the election, “No candidate from the party of the sitting president has won a gubernatorial race in Virginia since 1973.”

The extreme positions of Cuccinelli alone will not deliver the McAuliffe team to victory. There are plenty of far-right voters in the state who can rally around his well-defined conservative vision (however odious) and tilt an election with little or no voter interest. Instead of running out the clock, McAuliffe needs to give core Democrats a reason to support him. He needs, in other words, to explain why, in terms of policies and values, he’s a candidate progressives would want to support, not one that they’d have to by default.

There’s a good model for this type of campaign in Virginia’s recent political history — Tim Kaine’s 2005 campaign for governor.  Kaine, a lifelong devout Catholic, frequently invoked his faith on the campaign trail to define the context for his positions on things like public service, commitment to the poor, and abortion and the death penalty (Kaine opposed both but argued in the campaign that he would uphold existing Virginia law which allows both). His Republican opponent, Jerry Kilgore, tried to hammer Kaine for his opposition to the death penalty and failed dismally. Why? Because Kaine took the criticism head-on. His defense of his own values gave voters a reason to believe that the then-candidate would make for a principled governor.  As the Washington Monthly reported at the time:

In 1987, while representing a death-row inmate convicted of murdering a widow, he told reporters before the man’s execution: “Murder is wrong in the gulag, in Afghanistan, in Soweto, in the mountains of Guatemala, in Fairfax County… even in the Spring Street Penitentiary [here].” During his campaign for lieutenant governor, he also called for a state moratorium on the death penalty.

Throughout the campaign, Kaine’s opponent–former attorney general Jerry Kilgore–has pounced on that opposition. In their July debate, Kilgore suggested that Kaine might offer clemency to all death row inmates. Yet Kaine swung back with his faith. Kaine responded, “Jerry–I’ll state it again, and I’ll state it clearly: I am not going to apologize to you for my religious belief that life is sacred.”

After trailing for most the election cycle, Kaine took a late lead in the race and went on to win a solid 52 percent of the vote.   By talking candidly about his faith and motivations, Kaine was able to reach out to an ideologically diverse set of voters across the state and drive stronger support among his base.

Now, this “politics of definition” strategy may work better for someone like Kaine who has a well-known history of Catholic activism. But McAuliffe is surely not the caricature of a deal-making businessman and partisan that is often invoked when describing him. Like Kaine, he is a serious Catholic who regularly attends Mass and went to both Catholic University and Georgetown Law. You wouldn’t know from any of his current campaign materials that this strong faith has any bearing whatsoever on what he believes in politically. His ads play up his business experience and ability to work across partisan lines more than his core beliefs. These are important qualities, but they don’t give people a reason to believe in you and turnout in an otherwise boring election cycle.

In an election when your opponent is vulnerable to charges of extremism, it is tempting to engage in trench warfare and grind out a “lesser of two evils” victory.  But standing for something clear and concrete, based on real values and beliefs that define a person’s reason for seeking public service, always motivates more people to support your campaign and trust in your ability to lead. Ask Tim Kaine and Barack Obama.

Virgnia GOP statewide nominees Mark Obenshain, Ken Cuccinelli II, and EW Jackson Sr. (Credit: Kyle Green/Roanoke Times)

Cuccinelli told a crowd in Abingdon, VA on Monday that he wants Jackson, as Lt. Governor, breaking ties in the currently split Virginia Senate: “I don’t need to know what the subject matter that’s going to tie up 20-20 that the LG can vote on will be. I’m confident that we’re going to get the right vote every single time out of E.W. Jackson. So I’m glad he’s on this ticket, too.”

But in a statement to the Virginia Pilot, Cuccinelli also said he would not answer questions about his new running mate’s views. “We are not defending any of our running mates’ statements now or in the future,” he noted, adding “The people of Virginia need to get comfortable with each candidate individually.”

Given the panic and criticism from some Republicans over Jackson’s surprise victory at Saturday’s Republican Party of Virginia nominating convention, it is unsurprising that Cuccinelli wants to keep his running mate at arm’s length. But their arch-conservative views on key issues seem largely identical:

For his part, Jackson sees Cuccinelli as an ideological soul mate. In a March posting on his campaign website, entitled “Ken Cuccinelli Is Right,” he wrote: “As an American and a Virginian whose ancestors were deemed by some to be less than human, I am proud to stand with a man who has the courage to speak to our consciences. As the Republican nominee for Lieutenant Governor, I will be proud to help Ken Cuccinelli bring common sense values and governance to Richmond. If we are elected in November, KEN AND I WILL FIGHT FOR EVERY VIRGINIAN’S RIGHT TO LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.”

Credit: National Journal

Virginia gave President Obama a fairly comfortable 4-point victory (51 percent-47 percent) victory in 2012.  Yet the Washington Post has just released a poll showing Democrat Terry McAuliffe trailing arch-conservative Republican Ken Cuccinelli by 5 points in the race for the 2013 Virginia governor’s office. Why the discrepancy?

Well, elections will always going to be harder for Virginia Democrats in off years like 2013 than in a Presidential election year due to turnout patterns that favor the other side. But on the evidence of the poll, McAuliffe’s problems may run deeper than just getting voters to the polls. He may also have trouble generating the kind of enthusiastic support Obama received from key demographic and geographic segments of his coalition.

Start with Obama’s minority support.  In 2012, Obama received overwhelming 83-16 support from Virginia’s minority voters, a 67 point margin. By comparison, McAuliffe’s margin among minority voters (57-21) is little more than half of Obama’s margin. This has a great deal to with McAuliffe’s performance among African-American voters, who only favor him by 69-10 in the poll, compared to Obama’s 93-6 in 2012.

Breaking McAuliffe’s support down geographically, he is dramatically underperforming in areas where Obama was strongest in 2012. In Northern Virginia, McAuliffe is only leading by 4 points, compared to Obama’s healthy margin of 16 points. That’s potentially fatal given that this area is Democrats’ strongest in the state and accounts for about a third of ballots statewide.

McAuliffe’s other big underperformance is in the Virginia Beach/Tidewater area. In the poll, McAuliffe is actually trailing Cuccinelli by 2 points, compared to Obama’s strong margin of 12 points. The Virgnia Beach/Tidewater area accounts for another fifth of the Virginia vote.

McAuliffe is not known as a Democrat with particularly strong ties to the base of the party, having functioned mostly at an elite level, particularly as a fundraiser. On the evidence of this poll, it may not be enough for him to call out Ken Cuccinelli as a right-wing extremist (as deserved as that criticism is). If he wants the Obama coalition to power him to victory in the state, they are likely to need a reason to vote for him as a representative of their interests, not those of elites.