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Virginia has made enormous progress in minority voting rights. From a period of massive resistance a half-century ago, Virginia elected the only African-American governor and the first African-American lieutenant-governor. The state mightily resisted the initial implementation of voting rights, fighting to retain its poll tax in the 1960s. The state had also used a literacy test with an understanding clause, and, seven decades ago, a white primary.

In 1964, Virginia had the highest level of black registration for states entirely covered by the Voting Rights Act, but the act’s provisions still increased black registration almost 18 points to 55.6 percent of the voting age population by 1967. Since then, Virginia’s white population reports being registered at higher rates than do African Americans, but unlike for most other southern states, more recent years also reveal some fairly large differences with much higher percentages of white than black Virginians reporting being registered. 

In several other southern states, black registration rates exceeded those for African Americans living in other parts of the country. That pattern occurs with less frequency in Virginia. Virginia blacks usually turnout at substantially lower rates than whites, but Old Dominion blacks occasionally approximate or even exceed African-American turnout in the rest of the nation.  With the exception of 1994, Virginia whites also vote at lower rates than whites outside the South, especially in midterm elections. 

In the late 1960s, Virginia had just 30 black elected officials, a number which progressed to more than 100 black officials by the mid-1980s and by 1997 the number increased to 333 (almost half of these serving on newly-elected school boards). The number of black school board members reported was halved within two years and the total number of black officials falls to 250 blacks in 2004.  The state has elected one African-American to Congress in contemporary times--Robert Scott. The first black state senator, Douglas Wilder won election in 1969, and would subsequently be elected lieutenant governor and then governor. The legislature is about 12% African-American. The black proportion of the Senate is slightly larger than in the House of Delegates, but both are somewhat less than the black percentage among voting age Virginians. However, black candidates in the southeastern part of the state often defeat white opponents to win seats in the Assembly and Senate and not infrequently win a majority of the white vote. 

Since the 1980s, both black and white Democratic candidates for statewide constitutional office have failed to command a majority of the white vote.  Of the fifteen statewide contests held between 1985 and 2001, Democrats have won nine, including two of three races featuring African-American candidates. While the white vote is now solidly Republican, Democrats still manage to win about half the statewide contests by relying on a coalition that combines overwhelming African-American support with a sizable minority of the white vote. 

Electoral patterns suggest that African-American and white Democratic congressional candidates perform similarly after controlling for incumbency status. Non-incumbent Democrats, regardless of race, typically attract little white support. On the other hand, incumbent Democrats--both black and white--can usually get the bulk of the white vote.  African-American Member of Congress Robert Scott succeeded in attracting approximately half the white vote when seeking the open Third District and continues to run well with white voters, even winning without opposition in two of the three most recent elections.

Edward Blum is a visiting fellow at AEI. Abigail Thernstrom is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.