New Jersey is a blue state.
After eight years of Chris Christie Democrat candidate Phil Murphy could have embezzled the state orphan fund, ordered the sate police to racially profile Senator Corey Booker, molested a Girl Scout troop, and been the 'Lucky Pierre' in a three way with Chris Christie and Jim McGreevey and he still would have ground Republican Kim Guadano to dust for later use as tire traction in an ice storm.
Virginia's also a blue state.
As late as 2004 Virginia was reliably red. That actually started to change in 2001 when Mark Warner won the governorship. Tim Kaine won same in 2005. In 2006 when Senator George Allen was defeated we knew the tide had turned.
We moved form Virginia to New Jersey in 2001, just when the blue transformation began. Coincidence, we think not.
Interestingly Virginia's blue areas, NOVA (Northern Virginia), Richmond, Norfolk, seem to be getting bluer. While the red rural areas seem to be getting redder.
Let us call Virginia a purple state, though a deep purple state. There, now you won't be able to get Hush out of your head all day.
We lived in Arlington, the very NO of the NO part of NOVA.
In 2000 it was filled with young people like Mrs. Stroock and myself just getting started after school. One met few people who were actually from Arlington much less Virginia. Arlington Country is really part of the Washington metro area surrounded by the infamous Beltway.
One also encountered a ton of immigrants. Here The Simpsons was played out live in that every 7/11 was owned by an Indian man. So were the hotels. There were tons of Somali immigrants, we once helped the head-scarfed wife of a Somali man with a broken down car. Mohamed was a janitor in Arlington but back in Mogadishu he'd been a computer science professor. We say the career change was worth it. The area also had a large Ethiopian immigrant population. Our friend who worked at Fridays said the Ethiopians always, always ordered 7&7s. NOVA had Lots of people from the Middle East too with a big mega-mosque at Seven Corners. After September 11th we asked our G-Man friend if he knew of that mosque and he said, 'Yes I'm parked outside it all the time'.
So there's your demographic change, and there's why Virginia is blue.
The other take away from this election is motivation. Like Labour after Brexit in Theresa May's blundering election this year, the left is highly motivated. They're pissed off and organized. We saw this first hand at a town hall for our own Leonard Lance last winter.
So the GOP, Bannon, Trump, et al better be prepared.
Governor (elect) Tim Murphy and entourage
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