Virginia, the one state in the old confederacy carried by Hillary Clinton in 2016, chooses a new governor next year. Ditto New Jersey, another blue state, where the departing Republican governor, Chris Christie, is an on-again, off-again—but these days, mostly off-again—adviser to Donald Trump, the president-elect.
Virginia and New Jersey are the only states to pick governors in the year immediately following a presidential election. Because they represent important facets of America’s complex political personality—Virginia, the suburbanising South; New Jersey, the industrial north-east—their elections can be barometers of emerging trends and sentiment.
In Virginia, that could be voter satisfaction—or dissatisfaction—with what is going on across the Potomac river in Washington, DC. Recent history shows that more often than not Virginia voters signal a definite distaste for a new president.
Indeed, since 1976, the party that won the presidency lost the Virginia governorship the following year. There has been one exception to the so-called Virginia curse: in 2013, the year after Barack Obama was re-elected, Terry McAuliffe, a fellow Democrat, narrowly won the governorship, defeating a Republican whose rigid conservatism frightened many members of his own party.
In 2017, with Mr Trump having ascended to the presidency, the curse could augur the election of a Democratic governor (Mr McAuliffe is barred by the Virginia constitution from seeking a second consecutive term). But there is more than a quirky Virginia tradition that may favour Democrats. Rapid growth and an increasingly diverse population have transformed urban-suburban eastern Virginia into a trove of votes for the party.
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