Net Results

Virginia becomes the latest state in which Democratic voters have been much more energized to turn out for their candidates than Republicans are for theirs.

With about a third of all precincts reporting, 153,161 votes had been recorded in the Democratic primary -- more than three-fifths higher than the 94,376 combined votes in the Republican primary.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this disparity is that Virginia does not register voters by party, and their primary therefore was "open," meaning votes of any political persuasion could vote in the party's primary of their choice.

For the sake of comparison, the last time each party held a competitive presidential primary in Virginia was in 2000 for the Republicans and 2004 for the Democrats. The Republican turnout in 2000 was 664,093. The Democratic turnout in 2004 was 396,181.

The primary disparity this year undoubtedly will whet Democratic strategists' ambitions to see if they can put Virginia in play this year, testing a GOP lock that has existed for more than four decades. The last Democratic to win Virginia for president was Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, and, as in most Southern states, Republicans by the 1990s rose to a position of dominance in Virginia. Democrats have been staging a comeback in recent elections, winning the past two contests for governor, the 2006 race for U.S. Senate and the battle of control of the state Senate in 2007.

But the Democrats would have to take a great leap forward to capture Virginia's 13 electoral votes in November. George W. Bush won by 8 percentage-point margins in the state over both Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004.