Virginia Policy Review
11
! combat the Affordable Care Act. Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe (D) is an expert fundraiser with no experience in Virginia government. Simply put, the two party nominees are facing the only kind of candidate that either could beat, turning this contest into a sort of race to the bottom. The resulting campaign has been extremely negative. To a certain extent, this is not surprising. Negative campaigning is currently a fact of life – studies have shown it’s the most effective form of political advertising. But because of increased polarization across the Commonwealth, the campaigns appear increasingly less interested in influencing the small percentage of true independent voters (roughly 10% of voters nationally) to back a candidate and more about getting partisans to the polls. And what better way to cue potential supporters to turn out than to run television ads emphasizing all the reasons why they should dislike the other guy? While the 2013 campaign may prove particularly ugly, there is little reason to think that Virginia won’t see more of this in the future. Ideologically, the state parties are moving apart and finding less and less to agree on. Demographic and generational differences across the Commonwealth dictate that one party is increasingly white and older, while the other is more diverse and younger. One is primarily rural, while the other is concentrated in the Urban Crescent. Mimicking the situation at the national level, the only way to make large, substantive shifts in policy may be to win control of the executive and both legislative chambers. In Virginia, winning all three at the same time on a consistent basis is a difficult proposition, particularly for Democrats. The GOP has an iron grip on the House of Delegates that Democrats will not be close to threatening any time soon, making Republicans more likely
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