2012 United States presidential election in Virginia

2012 United States presidential election in Virginia

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Turnout	66.9% (voting eligible)[1]
Nominee Barack Obama Mitt Romney Party Democratic Republican Home state Illinois Massachusetts Running mate Joe Biden Paul Ryan Electoral vote 13 0 Popular vote 1,971,820 1,822,522 Percentage 51.16% 47.28%
County and Independent City Results Congressional district Results Precinct Results Obama   40-50%   50-60%   60-70%   70-80%   80-90%   90-100% Romney   40-50%   50-60%   60-70%   70-80%   80-90%   90-100%
President before election Barack Obama Democratic Elected President Barack Obama Democratic

The 2012 United States presidential election in Virginia took place on November 6, 2012, as part of the presidential election in which all 50 states plus the District of Columbia participated. Virginia voters chose 13 electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote pitting incumbent Democratic President Barack Obama and his running mate, Vice President Joe Biden, against Republican challenger and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and his running mate, Congressman Paul Ryan.

Virginia was won by Obama with 51.16% of the vote to Romney's 47.28%, a 3.88% margin of victory.^[2] Third parties and write-ins received a cumulative 60,147 votes, representing 1.56% of the vote. In 2008, Obama won the state by 6.30%, becoming the first Democratic presidential nominee to win it since Lyndon B. Johnson's nationwide Democratic landslide of 1964, but it had otherwise been a reliably Republican state prior to this. However, 2008 represented a realignment election for Virginia.^[3]

Much of the Democratic gains were attributed to the growth of progressive suburban Northern Virginia, particularly in Fairfax County, Loudoun County, and Prince William County, all of which voted for Obama twice despite becoming Republican strongholds after 1964. The Northern Virginia suburbs are generally dominated by Washington, D.C., the most Democratic region in the country, and increasing minority populations have turned Virginia from a Republican stronghold to a Democratic one. Obama's increased strength in this heavily populated region more than canceled out his weakness across rural Virginia, which, similar to the rest of Appalachia, swung towards the Republican Party in 2008 due to the Democrats' increasingly environmentalist policies. Obama suffered a historically poor showing even in traditionally Democratic counties of Southwest Virginia, similar to his weak performance in neighboring West Virginia. This would ultimately foreshadow 2016, when the Republican nominee won the election without carrying Virginia for the first time since 1924. Despite its narrow margin, as of 2023 this was the last presidential election in which Virginia was a seriously contested state, as it would move on to be reliably Democratic in succeeding presidential elections.

Obama's 2012 win made him the first Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt to carry Virginia in two consecutive elections, and this was the first election since 1948 that the state voted Democratic in consecutive elections. The Democratic margin of victory also made 2012 the first time since 1948 that Virginia voted more Democratic than the nation as a whole, albeit by a narrow advantage of 0.02%: These were ultimately signs of Virginia's continuing leftward shift, after it had been a mostly reliable state for Republicans on the presidential level since 1952. This was the first election since 1976 in which Virginia did not vote in the same way as neighboring North Carolina, and the first election ever in which Virginia voted Democratic while North Carolina voted Republican. Virginia is the only state that Obama won twice that Bill Clinton lost twice in the 1990s.

As of the 2020 presidential election, this was the last time the Republican nominee won Montgomery County, and the last time the Democratic nominee won the independent city of Covington along with Buckingham, Caroline, Essex, Nelson and Westmoreland Counties. This remains the most recent election in which Virginia voted to the right of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Maine, Nevada, and New Hampshire.