October 27, 2008
So, a Republican dimbulb -- the candidate's brother Joe McCain -- decided that NoVA isn't the "real" Virginia. Now for starters, fuck that idiot. Secondly, Obama has a double-digit lead in the polls statewide right now, so it looks like there's no such thing as "Real Virginia" at all. And thirdly, John McCain's campaign is based in NoVA!
But it got me thinking. Counties have seceded from Virginia before, after all. *Waves to WV* So what would happen if "Fake Virginia" decided to tell "Real Virginia" to take a hike?
(Disclaimer: This is all just for shits and grins. But it's a moderately interesting mental exercise.)
We're now going to create the 51st state, Potomac. We'll start with my current residence, Fairfax County. Fairfax County is 407 square miles, with 1,077,000 people earning a per capita income of $36,888.
Already Potomac is a more populous state than Alaska. We can't see Russia from here, though.
Add in:
- Arlington County (pop. 206,800; 26 sq.mi.; $37,706 per capita)
- Alexandria City (pop. 128,283; 15.4 sq.mi.; $37,645 per capita)
- Falls Church City (pop. 10,377; 2.0 sq.mi.; $31,247 per capita)
- Fairfax City (pop. 21,498; 6.3 sq.mi.; $31,247)
- Loudoun County (pop. 268,817; 521 sq.mi.; unk. per capita income)
- Prince William County (pop. 383,644; 348 sq.mi.; $25,641 per capita)
- Manassas City (pop. 35,135; 10.0 sq.mi.; $24,453 per capita)
- Manassas Park City (pop. 10,290; 2.5 sq.mi.; $21,048 per capita)
This gives Potomac a population of 2,141,844 (36th, with Real Virginia dropping to 21st), or 28% of Virginia. Divvying up the representatives, we'd get 3 and Virginia would keep 8. Thus we'd have 5 electoral votes.
I couldn't find a per capita income for Loudoun County, but Potomac seems to be pretty well off: Using the information I do have, the per capita income would be $34,364 (25th) with 4 states beating it by less than $1,000. With Loudoun having the highest household income of any county in the entire country I'm guessing we'd actually be in the top 20.
Potomac would be a small state -- 1,388 sq.mi. That would make it (just barely) smaller than Rhode Island.
Depending on how Combined Virginia fares on November 4th, the effect might be to simply add two Democrats to the Senate and two Democratic electoral votes. Or it could be an eight-vote swing toward the Dems (VA would lose 3 Republican votes, PT would gain 5 Democratic votes).
Now with all that said, this is a bad idea, even once you take account for the fact that it would never happen. With Virginia being an ethnically, politically, socioeconomically and geographically diverse state the fact that Obama is forcing McCain to spend time and money here is an important thing. It also means that Obama is putting a great deal of time and effort into the state.
If a Democratic candidate could focus only on Potomac and leave Real Virginia to the Republicans (with only 10 electoral votes it may not be worth it) the tenor of elections would change, I think, for the worse. So it's an interesting mental exercise (with a large assist from Wikipedia) but of no consequence in reality.
