In Canada, they are breathing a sigh of relief because they have managed to stave off having a fifth national election in five years. Here in the Commonwealth of Virginia, the yearly statewide election is a way of life.

Last year was the national Presidential election, with the Congressional House seats and a Senate seat.  This year, Virginia elects her Governor, Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General, not to mention its House of Delegates.  In 2010, the Congressional Elections are back on.  In 2011, The entire Virginia Senate and House of Delegates are on the ballot. And in 2012, there’s another Presidential election. And in 2013, the whole thing starts all over again.

If you are a party operative in the state of Virginia, your work is never done.  On the first Tuesday in November, all the hard work of the past year culminates in a statewide election.  On the first Wednesday in November, you start organizing your precinct volunteers for the next statewide election.  It’s a fact of life.

So while others have been ruminating over Obama’s favorability ratings and what they foretell for the Congressional elections in 2010, here in Virginia we’ve been in the trenches actually having an election.  Gubernatorial elections in Virginia, because they occur in a year where there are few elections of national import, tend to attract a lot of attention.  Young party operatives from all over the country looking to get campaign experience descend on Virginia looking to make a name for themselves.  And the media loves to assert that the election in Virginia is a harbinger for the 2010 Congressional elections, a way to read tea leaves and divine what may be coming for the following November.

The fact of the matter is that the Virginia Governor’s race is its own beast.  To expect one race in one state to be the thermometer that takes the temperature of the entire nation is a highly suspect notion indeed.  And when that state is Virginia, all bets are off.

Virginia was one of the states that “flipped” for Obama in the 2008 election. Indeed, Virginia had not voted for a democratic candidate for President since 1964 before last year. But don’t kid yourself into believing that “turning Virginia blue” happened overnight, that it was some sort of miracle perpetrated by the Obama campaign.  In fact, democrats in Virginia had been working on “turning Virginia blue” for years before the 2008 election.  With the growth of the suburban DC counties, demographics in Virginia had been shifting the Democrats’ way in the state for several years.  Before Obama even dreamed of running for President, Virginia had already elected two Democrats as Governors (Mark Warner and Tim Kaine) and had installed another as its junior Senator (Jim Webb).

Virginia is like many states that have large urban centers.  There is an “upstate vs. downstate” dynamic that rules in such states.  People in New York, Illinois, Georgia, Nevada, Washington, and other places will understand what I am talking about.  In the major urban area of the state, the voters are solidly democratic.  Outside the city, in the more rural areas of the state, the voters are solidly republican.  Where the urban center is very populated and densely populated, the state ends up being blue (New York, Illinois).  Where the urban center is less populous, more sprawling, the democratic majority never achieves critical mass and the state ends up being red (Georgia, Nevada).

Where there is an upstate-downstate dynamic, understandably, the issues that matter to voters will differ depending on which group they belong to.  For northern Virginians, the big issue is transportation.  The suburban areas of DC are among the worst in the nation in terms of traffic, and while there is the Metro, there has been much debate over how to extend Metro service further into Virginia, to Tyson’s Corner and to Dulles International Airport.  Because the state budget process is run out of Richmond, and the northern counties have little power to influence the Virginia Legislature, the money necessary to really handle the issue hasn’t been forthcoming.  Virginia’s Governors end up coming up with transportation plans that are never executed, either because of NIMBY concerns, or because they can’t get the funding .

Voters outside the northern Virginia counties are primarily concerned with economic growth.  Even before the recession, rural Virginia suffered as many parts of small-town America did – the jobs moved to the city, and the young townsfolk along with them.  Economic development of the rural regions of Virginia has been a critical component of building a successful Democratic candidacy in Virginia since Mark Warner first did it back in 2001.

All Virginians are concerned about the public school system and about “values” issues, but understandably, where you stand on those issues can often be a function of where you are from.   

Ultimately, the Governor’s election in Virginia is not driven by what is happening on the national political stage.  While Obama is taking his hits as was inevitable as he tried to push forward his legislative agenda, his popularity is an ancillary consideration in what is happening in Virginia.  When you look at the campaign ads airing on television, none of them mention Obama or national issues, choosing to focus instead on the fundamentals of Virginia politics – education, transportation, and jobs.  The notable exception has been Deeds’ ads regarding McDonnell’s thesis.  But even this is a local issue, because the national stage hasn’t really been preoccupied with abortion rights, except as an ancillary concern.

Saturn Smith did a pretty good sum up of the history between Democrat Creigh Deeds and Republican Bob McDonnell. And indeed, the recent revelation of McDonnell’s law school “thesis” containing a “blueprint” for Virginia’s families that for all intents and purposes would set women back over 50 years has been a game-changer for Creigh Deeds.  But where the analysis loses its way is in its obsession with how tightly the Deeds camp will tie itself to Obama White House. The Virginia election is not a referendum on Obama, and whether there are Virginians who regret their vote for Obama will have little to do with whether those voters will vote for Creigh Deeds. 

It’s important to remember the Virginia voters have been ticket-splitting for years.  The years that Virginia was voting in Mark Warner in 2001 and Kaine in 2005, it also voted for George Bush in 2000 and 2004.  Even within the northern counties, the rules are often different for statewide candidates versus the local heroes.  Tom Davis managed to keep his House seat in the 11^th District of Virginia even as Fairfax County went for Kerry in 2004.  Virginia voters have always chosen their statewide leaders based on a different set of criteria than those used in Presidential elections.

The Attorney General election in 2005 was gut-wrenching.  Having just come off of a disappointing loss in 2004 in the Presidential race, Virginia Democrats were determined to show that they could keep the Governor’s mansion, that Kerry campaign operatives who all but shut down their efforts in Virginia four weeks prior to election day on the belief that the resources would be better spent on a “sixteen state” strategy, had been misguided. While Tim Kaine won the governor’s mansion, Deeds was left with a contentious recount effort that could have very easily gone the other way.

McDonnell was considered a fairly successful Attorney General that had both name recognition and a sizable war chest fueled by downstate republicans and beltway conservatives determined to reverse the tide of GOP losses from 2008. McDonnell was the odds on favorite by over ten points in the spring.  The lead disappeared in June and July as Deeds emerged as the victor over Terry MacAuliffe in the June primary, a surprise considering that MacAuliffe had lots of name recognition, support from many out-of-state party leaders and a lot of ready cash. Once the hullaballoo was over, McDonnell was back on top by more than 10 points.

Although Virginia is inexorably turning blue over time, and Saturn is correct that losing in Virginia would be a “black eye” for the Democrats, what she sees as a “purpling” of a recently blue state is actually nothing more than the upstate-downstate dynamic that plays itself out in Virginia every year in the statewide elections.  Every year on election night for the past eight years, outsiders watching the returns in Virginia panic at 7 pm when the polls first close and the first returns come in, usually from downstate counties.  The dirty little secret of Virginia elections is that until the precincts in Fairfax and Arlington Counties start reporting, usually after 8 p.m. or even 9 p.m., the real picture statewide does not emerge.

The most recent polling in Virginia shows that the race has been tightening for weeks.  Rasmussen’s polls show Deeds within two points of McDonnell, shaving seven points off his previous nine point lead several weeks earlier.  The Washington Post poll shows McDonnell’s 15 point lead cut to a mere four points.  Some of this is the result of the publication of McDonnell’s “thesis” from his days at Pat Robertson’s Regents University Law School. The thesis contains McDonnell’s “blueprint” for families in Virginia, which puts women back in the kitchen, without reproductive choice, even going as far to suggest that birth control should be restricted even for married couples.

But there’s another reason the polls are tightening.  From the beginning, the GOP “downstate” forces mobilized early.  Republican stalwarts have been looking to Virginia as their first opportunity to stop the electoral slide of the Republican party. Democratic stalwarts mobilized first for the primaries in June, and have now united behind Deeds.   But the vast majority of people in Virginia haven’t been focused on the Govenor’s race.  With all the action on the national stage, most people’s attention has been on the healthcare debate.  This has been particularly true in the northern counties of Virginia, which due to their proximity to DC tend to get caught up in national political affairs more readily.  With the summer over and the election about a month away, people are finally focusing on the governor’s race. Many of the polls still have enough undecided responses in the mix to close the gap between Deeds and McDonnell. 

As is true of every election every year, the stalwarts drive the bus in terms of poll results until about September, when the general populace finally becomes aware that there is indeed an election and begin having an opinion about it that starts showing up.  The key is to watch how the large percentage of undecideds in early pollings “break.”  As the undecideds make up their minds, who are they making up their minds for?  The answer is they are choosing Creigh Deeds.  This, combined with the continued favorable demographic shift in the last four years for Democrats, means that Creigh may not win by much, but will likely win in November.

What does that mean for the Congressional elections in 2010?  Really, not much. Whether the gains made in Congress by the Democrats in 2008 sustain, expand or diminish in 2010 is being guided by an entirely separate set of issues and influences than what’s playing out here in Virginia in 2009.

It’s time for the pundits to get a new set of tea leaves.