This comment is not politically correct, but here goes. Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) ran against Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears (R-VA) in last year's governor election, and won. Spanberger is white, Sears is black. Virginia is a southern state, Richmond is both its state capital and the former Confederate capital.
I suppose the idea was Sears could win some normally Democrat black votes, perhaps she did. I wonder did she lose more than a few normally Republican white votes? In a purple state, a few thousand votes can decide elections.
I haven't seen any fine-grained analysis of who won which VA precincts and by how much. Larry Sabato's politics shop at UVA probably knows but may not divulge the answer if it is embarrassing. You know that if my suspicion happens to be correct, most of the media won't publish it.
