Stephen Farnsworth, a political scientist at the University of Mary Washington, said the divisiveness has ratcheted up as Virginia, which had not voted for a Democratic president in nearly half a century before choosing Barack Obama in 2008, has become more of an evenly split presidential battleground.
“The more closely divided a political environment, the nastier the disputes are,” he said. “Because the state is basically 50-50, all parties are engaged in the kind of trench warfare that really is a very, very distinct departure from the dynamic that previously marked state government here.”
