WASHINGTON — An afterthought in presidential politics for decades, Virginia is now a bona fide battleground state.
President Franklin Roosevelt was the last Democrat to win Virginia until President Barack Obama took the commonwealth in 2008 and 2012.
“It’s pretty likely we’re going to be a battleground in 2016,” said George Mason Associate Professor Jeremy Mayer.
That may explain why voter registration has spiked early this year in Virginia. Registration activity is nearly 35 percent higher in the first quarter of 2016 than it was in the last presidential election year of 2012, according to data released by the Virginia Department of Elections.
Mayer says the tight primary races in both parties certainly played a part.
“This was a big showdown for (Marco) Rubio vs. (Donald) Trump and it was a big state for (Hillary) Clinton to make a stand against (Bernie) Sanders,” he said.
Trump’s presence in the campaign also is a big factor in the registration spike, according to Geoffrey Skelley of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
“You’re going to have some people who are very animated by his campaign and want to go out and vote for him. And then you have others who decided to register to vote against him,” said Skelley.
