Politics & Government

How Did Arlington Vote in Virginia's 2013 Election?

Gov.-elect Terry McAuliffe did exceedingly well among absentee voters, winning nearly 80 percent of those ballots.

Reliably blue Arlington County helped deliver the votes needed to put Gov.-elect Terry McAuliffe over the top on Election Day, thanks to higher-than-usual voter turnout and the lack of any Republican challenges on down-ballot races.

Statewide, McAuliffe's victory over Republican Ken Cuccinelli was by less than 55,000 votes, according to unofficial results from the State Board of Election. Those results paint much of the state red, but McAuliffe won enough support in the so-called urban crescent — Northern Virginia, Richmond and Henrico County down to Hampton Roads — and chipped away at Cuccinelli's margins in more rural parts of the state. 

McAuliffe won 48,288 votes in Arlington County, or 71.57 percent of total ballots cast. That's less than two tenths of a percentage point below what Barack Obama captured in Arlington in his 2008 run for president, though that year saw substantially higher turnout.

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Still, McAuliffe did exceedingly well among absentee voters, winning nearly 80 percent of those ballots.

McAuliffe's strongest precincts were Arlington Mill, where he won 84 percent of the vote; the Glebe Precinct, where he received 81.5 percent; and Arlington View, where he captured 80.6 percent. Arlington Mill and Glebe are in the Douglas Park and nearby Nauck communities, respectively, and Arlington Views isn't terribly far away.

Find out what's happening in Arlingtonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The governor-elect captured more than 60 percent in all but one Arlington precinct.

The polls at the Madison Community Center in North Arlington proved to be the biggest battleground, if you can call it that with McAuliffe still winning nearly 59 percent of the vote there to Cuccinelli's 34 percent. Libertarian Robert Sarvis won almost 7 percent of the vote at Madison.

Countywide, Cuccinelli won 22 percent of the vote in Arlington; Sarvis, about 6 percent.

Arlington enjoyed a 49.34 percent voter turnout on Tuesday. Election workers noticed early in the day that a large number of State Department employees, flagged because past assignments overseas had required ballots be mailed to them, turning out — and that's likely a group largely dissatisfied with the recent partial government shutdown.

Obama joined McAuliffe at Washington-Lee High School less than 48 hours before the polls opened this week to link the Republican ticket to that shutdown and to put the "fear of God" into Democratic activists heading into Tuesday.

"We saw an unusually high turnout for a gubernatorial election," Arlington County Registrar Linda Lindberg said in a statement Wednesday. "The unofficial turnout figures show a reversal of a downward trend for gubernatorial elections that we had seen in recent years."

Local state delegate contests against third-party candidates were largely no contest.

Democrats all, Del. Patrick Hope won 70 percent or more in all of his precincts — including a whopping 98 percent of the vote in the Arlington Forest Precinct. Del. Rob Krupicka carried the five Arlington precincts in his district with at least two-thirds of the vote in each. Thirteen Arlington County precincts are in Del. Alfonso Lopez's district; he won 80 percent or more of the vote in six of them, plus in the absentee category.

Arlington County Board Vice Chairman Jay Fisette handily won reelection against Green Party candidate Audrey Clement. Clement performed best in the Virginia Highlands Precinct, where she won almost 40 percent of the vote, and captured about 39 percent at the Crystal Plaza, Crystal City, Hume and Oakridge precincts — all of which are in or around the Crystal City community.

For the fourth time since the 1950s, Arlington County voters rejected a housing authority referendum. 



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