So it’s a rout. Blow out. I think the change is less than it appears – the 2008 Obama election/electorate resulted in part from a HUGE effort in the Dem jurisdictions in the north part of the state to turn out absentee voters. There are criteria which absentee voters are supposed to meet (absence from County, illness, etc.) and which have within living memory been enforced – or at least you had to lie about meeting them before the lady at the courthouse would give you a ballot. In the Obama 08 election, it was Katy bar the door, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. We were all told how dreadful the lines would be election day, were nearly dragooned out of the subway to vote early. Obama’s margin for the state was I think around 150000 and that was a whole lot like the number of absentee ballots cast in the NoVa burbs. It was a huge effort with a number of folks full time running poll stations in the runup to the election, and the Reep leaning jurisdictions in south state had nothing like it, nor had they relaxed standards from what the law called for. There was nothing like that this time from FFX-ARL in facilitating votes, nor would it have worked, really, since all of us voters had no realistic fear of long lines on voting day!

This is probably not replicable, and particularly now with the Reeps in charge they will make sure that there is a uniform standard for absentee voting across the state.

What I’m saying is, that the recent change in the electorate is probably from a one-time thing to something more like the base state, here in VA.

Are you joining Pelosi in dismissing the losses in VA and NJ?

http://www.politico.com/livepulse/1109/Pelosi_dismisses_impact_of_New_Jersey_Virginia.html

Any chance you could knock up a similar chart using the exit polls from ‘08? I’d be interested in a visual comparison.