The G.O.P.’s Election Day Problem in the Suburbs Is Getting Worse

Mr. Trump’s election in 2016 drastically accelerated that migration away from the Republican Party, spurring an exodus of already-uneasy moderate voters away from a party defined by Mr. Trump’s caustic persona and hard-right views on race and immigration.

Each year since Mr. Trump took office has brought new evidence of his party’s decline in these areas, rich with college-educated voters and upwardly mobile communities of immigrants and young people. In 2009, in the first year of Mr. Obama’s presidential term, the suburbs of Northern Virginia propelled the G.O.P. to a sweep of the statewide offices. Eight years later, it was Democrats who rolled through counties like Fairfax and Loudoun to seize all of the state’s constitutional offices by wide margins.

There was no sign in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Virginia and other states this week that Republicans are close to containing the damage Mr. Trump has done in these kinds of areas, let alone reversing it. Democratic Party leaders, meanwhile, emerged from Election Day with the optimism that they are building on the gains they made in the 2018 midterms. A year after Democrats claimed 40 House seats and a series of governorships thanks to a surge of support from suburbanites, the results in Virginia in particular make clear that their drift from the G.O.P. won’t be easily reversed.

Virginia’s Democratic governor, Ralph Northam, made clear on Wednesday that he plans to take advantage of the historic shift from red to blue in his state, showing no signs of worry that Democrats might pay a price at the ballot box in 2020 if they push an aggressive policy agenda.

In an open meeting of his cabinet, Mr. Northam said “we have a unique opportunity in the next two years,” saying “the landscape has changed” and that he planned to push for a major new package of gun control policies, criminal justice reform, early childhood education, the decriminalization of marijuana and greater access to health services.

He particularly zeroed in on gun legislation, a divisive issue in parts of once-red Virginia but a political priority for many suburban voters.

“I really think a large part of the results that we saw yesterday were Virginians saying they’ve had enough,” Mr. Northam said. He noted that he called a special session of the General Assembly in July to consider eight gun measures, following a mass shooting in Virginia Beach that took 12 lives, but Republicans called it a stunt and quickly voted to adjourn.