Fairfax County Turns Virginia Blue
November 6, 2020
Fairfax County has a large and growing population. It currently has a little more than 1,000,000 people; that’s twice the population of Wyoming. On election night, November 3, 2020, Virginia remained red until Fairfax and surrounding counties’ results came in. Most of Virginia’s counties are rural, making them likely counties to vote for the Republican candidate, but Northern Virginia is heavily Democratic. Let’s break up the 4,200,000 million votes that were cast in VA: 1,900,000 for Trump, and 2,300,000 for Biden. Before all of Fairfax County’s votes were counted, the results were 38% for Biden to 52% for Trump, but they still gave VA to Biden at that time, possibly because officials predicted that Virginia was going to turn blue after votes from the Democratic counties in Virginia were counted. This shows that even though Fairfax County is small geographically, population-wise, it matters more than any of the rural counties when it comes to elections, considering it made up about 1/4th of the votes in Virginia.
Fun fact: VA was solidly Republican until 2008 when Obama ran for president and won. After that, it’s been a Democratic state.
Glasgow Middle School, History 6 teacher, Julie Kouril responded when asked the question: Why do you think urban areas tend to be Democratic?
“Fairfax County is the largest county in Virginia and we have so many people that it affects how Virginia votes as a state in presidential elections. I was born here and have lived here for most of my life and here is why I think it tends to vote more Democratic. This area attracts educated, talented people because there are good paying jobs here and in nearby Washington, D.C. Polling data shows us that people with a college degree tend to vote for Democrats. This area is also very diverse and attracts people from all around the world because we are close to the US capitol. Many people in Fairfax are not white and non-white voters are also much more likely to support Democrats.”
Multiple hosts and news channels were surprised to see Virginia red. Some of them even mentioning that once Fairfax County’s votes were counted, the state would be quick to turn blue. Similar things happened in other states like Pennsylvania. When the mail-in ballots were counted from the Democratic areas, Joe Biden began to lead. All in all, this presidential race will definitely be a close call, possibly coming down to one or two points that separate the candidates.
Rewan Farag (she/her) attends Glasgow Middle School and is in 8th grade. She was born in Alexandria, Egypt, and lived there until she was 5. She then moved to Northern Virginia.
She loves to read and write. She has been playing the viola for about 4 years now and is in Chamber Orchestra at Glasgow MS. She knows how to speak Arabic and is currently learning French. She loves to swim in the summertime. She also loves to do community service; she is in a volunteer club. Her favorite subject is math and she has 2 brothers and a sister.
