It’s game day in Blacksburg.

Last Saturday, the home of the Hokies bustled with excitement for one of the biggest football games of the season: Virginia Tech vs. Wake Forest. Center Street was a sea of flames with students clad from head to toe in orange, all partying to their heart’s content before what would turn out to be an unfortunate loss for the home team.

As ticket-goers flocked to Lane Stadium, both candidates for the House of Delegates were dutifully knocking on voters’ doors, hoping to earn their support in the upcoming election. 

House District 41 was the second-closest race in the Virginia House of Delegates in 2023. In what turned out to be a much tighter race than political insiders in Virginia had anticipated, former prosecutor Chris Obenshain (R) beat Lily Franklin (D), Roanoke Delegate Sam Rasoul’s former Chief of Staff, by just 183 votes, or 0.7%.

Franklin ran a scrappy campaign in 2023 that received little support from the House Democratic Caucus in comparison to other competitive seats up that year. This was possibly due to faulty internal polling that didn’t include nearly enough Virginia Tech students for a representative sample. This is commonplace for competitive state legislative districts in college towns– according to sources familiar, this was an issue in Williamsburg’s House District 71 in 2023, too, and has occurred in the previous iteration of Blacksburg’s House of Delegates district during the 2010s.

The House Democratic caucus is trying to do right this year by consistently showing their support for Franklin in her second attempt at becoming the Delegate for the 41st throughout the campaign, despite the district moving slightly to the right on the presidential level in 2024 due to Democrats cratering with college-aged voters that year. It was as of the end of August that this year’s election for the 41st already became a million-dollar campaign, with Lily Franklin raising a total of $893,921 during her campaign to Chris Obenshain’s $490,443. By the end of the 2023 campaign, Franklin had raised $971,004 and Obenshain had raised $597,528.

Of the seats Democrats are favored to flip in the House of Delegates in the State Navigate forecast, District 41 is one of the shakiest. Chris Obenshain is only down by 2.1% to Lily Franklin, who has a 62% chance of winning. Any resident of Blacksburg who lived in the town in 2021 can tell you that there was a red wave in the air that year, with “Hokies for Youngkin” signs seeming ubiquitous. But the “vibes” are different this year, with most houses planting signs for Spanberger and Franklin on their lawns. I drove around a couple neighborhoods around town as I went down memory lane myself, and counted 20 for Franklin and 7 for Obenshain. Yard signs may not vote, but I think they’re a good indicator of a shift in the environment when you’re able to compare to past years.

Obenshain is preparing for this shift in the environment in the town compared to four years ago, or even two years ago when he narrowly won the 41st. There’s a new President in the White House this time, which means there is almost certainly going to be change in the makeup of the electorate compared to 2023 and 2021.

I caught up with the Delegate in the parking lot behind one of my favorite spots during my college heydays, Halwa. I asked him about issues relevant to his constituents, the October surprises that had just dropped and, of course, Virginia Tech football.

I then tagged along the Delegate as he knocked doors in the east side of Blacksburg on Orchard View Lane, in precinct A-2. Franklin won this precinct by 57 points last time, which was slightly higher than Tim Kaine’s 56-point win here for the US Senate race the following year. The morning had turned from fog into a cloudless sky with a slight brisk in the air that sent a shock of nostalgia into my body. On this morning, Obenshain was knocking the doors of identified swing voters.

Of the conversations he had, most went well: he shook hands and spoke briefly with his son’s bus driver and a voter who already had an Obenshain for Delegate sign in his garage. In between, one voter shoo’d him away by finger motion and said something along the lines of “You’re knocking on the wrong door” after Obenshain introduced himself. Such is the necessary gamble of knocking on a door of someone who may, or may not, be on your team.

After Obenshain wrapped up the street, I proceeded to head over to the west side of town behind the longstanding University Mall. There, I’d arrive at the office of the Lily Franklin campaign to interview her. In 2023, their office was situated on the south side of town near the “Gucci Kroger” as locals call it, but it had been rented to someone else since the previous campaign ended. As such, the Franklin campaign instead began renting out an old radio station on Lark Lane. Let’s listen to the broadcast:

Now it was time for door-knocking: the weather had, in true Virginia fashion, began to feel like a warm Spring day. So much for that autumnal brisk. Franklin stayed close to headquarters as we walked down Lark Lane in precinct F-2, which contains one of the largest apartment complexes in Blacksburg, Foxridge. In 2023, Franklin won here by 56 points, three points more than Tim Kaine’s 53-point margin in the voter-rich precinct the following year.

Franklin’s objective today was different than Obenshain’s: turnout among her base is the name of the game, so she talked to Democratic-leaning voters who aren’t certain to vote this year (in campaign terms, “lower propensity” voters). She talked with several voters who recognized her and affirmed their support, asking about the top issues on their mind, one of whom replied “fascism.”

After wrapping up with Franklin, I noticed how incredibly different Blacksburg had become since I graduated from Virginia Tech. Most notably, two giant bus stations on the north side of campus with new lines I had never heard of and transit officers to help guide riders to get to their destination: no more buses parking in front of Burruss Hall. Though the town has changed faster than the leaves falling off the trees since graduating, no matter what, this is home.

Voter Registration in Blacksburg

In a district like this, ground game makes all the difference. It’s rare that state legislative district elections get high-quality documentaries covering them, but in 2017 when Blacksburg-based District 12 flipped Democratic, NowThis covered the Democratic campaign operation that year, which highlighted the Democratic strategy of registering as many students to vote in the town as possible. Thanks to their efforts, District 12 flipped to Democrat Chris Hurst. In 2019, the Hurst and Virginia Tech Democrats machine continued its voter registration efforts while facing a weak opponent, and voter registration in the town of Blacksburg reached a new high.

Then came COVID. The college experience for Hokies changed drastically, with no in-person classes from the spring of 2020 to the spring of 2021. In-person classes returned in the fall of 2021, but the damage had been done. The Virginia Tech Democrats were hit hard by the pandemic and there were few active members of the club. To add insult to injury, Chris Hurst had a drinking-while-driving scandal at the beginning of 2020 that Republicans were able to use successfully against him during the campaign. House Democrats largely wrote off Hurst and he lost by a double-digit margin in 2021.

Every precinct in the current District 41 was contested by both parties in 2017, 2019, and 2021 under the previous district lines. It last voted Democratic on the House of Delegates level in 2019, and given voter registration rates in the town compared to years past, Democrats should feel good about their odds of winning the district, if they hold a level of support among Tech students like they did in each previous year the House of Delegates was up for election.

Previous Partisanship in HD-41 and Voter Registration in Blacksburg

Year	HD-41 Result	10/1 Blacksburg Voter Reg.
2017	GOP +0.5	23,458
2019	DEM +3.1	24,355
2021	GOP +13.9	21,046
2023	GOP +0.7	20,621
2025	TBD	23,850

One difference in the 2023 District 41 campaign compared to Blacksburg campaigns in the past was a new law that went into effect in 2022: same-day voter registration. To vote on election day or the remaining days for early voting, Virginians must register to vote three weeks before election day to cast a ballot for the upcoming election. Otherwise, Virginians have to wait to register to vote on the day of election day and cast a provisional ballot at their polling place. Franklin’s campaign knew in 2023 that they didn’t have enough voters to win once the three-week deadline arrived, so they took advantage of the new law.

With the campaign’s allies at the Virginia Tech Democrats, students were handed informational fliers about registering to vote on election day with a QR code that directed them to the voter registration portal. Franklin’s campaign was hoping to get 2-3 thousand same-day registration votes in the district, but they came up short: There were only 875 same-day registration votes cast in the Montgomery County portion of District 41. Democrats in the 41st are planning to use the same-day voter registration plan again, but are working harder to not fall flat in registration efforts before the three-week deadline like they did in 2023.

A new difference in the 2025 election that may benefit Franklin this year is a satellite voting location opening up in Blacksburg. Satellite voting locations are, in Virginia, early voting locations that spring up around the Commonwealth, usually in densely-populated areas, in the final two weekends before Election Day where Virginians can vote early.

In 2023, voters in HD-41 would have to drive to the Montgomery County Office of Elections in Christiansburg at 1546 North Franklin St. to cast an early ballot (which is between a 10 to 15 minute drive from Blacksburg). Now, at the Blacksburg Community Center at 725 Patrick Henry Drive, which is on the north side of the town, voters can either walk, drive, or take the fare-free Blacksburg Transit via the North Patrick Henry (NMP) line to the center on Saturday, October 25, and Saturday, November 1st.

Voter registration in Blacksburg sat at 23,850 as of October 1st. That’s 392 voters more than the number of registered voters at this point in 2017, but 500 fewer than at that point in 2019. If registration in the town shoots up by the voter registration deadline to at least 24,500, the Franklin will likely win the seat if she holds the support amongst students that she had in 2023.

Regardless, Blacksburg is going to make up a larger share of the district’s electorate than it did in 2023 given its surge in voter registration, with 3,229 more voters on October 1st, 2025 than October 1st, 2023. While HD-41 moved slightly to the right in 2024 compared to its 2020 presidential margin, it was largely because of Republican gains amongst young voters in Blacksburg.

Partisanship and Districtwide Vote Share in HD-41 (provisional votes not included)

District Segment	2024 Presidential	2023 House	24 Vote Share	23 Vote Share
Blacksburg	DEM +48	DEM +53	33.3%	32.3%
non-Blacksburg Montgomery	GOP +30	GOP +27	37.5%	38.3%
Roanoke County	GOP +31	GOP +34	29.2%	29.4%

For the first time in decades, 18-year-olds likely voted Republican in a presidential election last year, thanks in large part to an incredible gender gap between 18-year-old men and 18-year-old women: according to one of the nation’s leading voter data experts, David Shor, 18-year-old men were as “red” on the Presidential level as Wyoming, which voted for Trump by 46 points in 2024. The results in the 41st will determine whether the Zoomer generation will grow to be another Generation X, or if Trump’s support with young voters has evaporated, as public polls indicate.

Polling college-age voters, however, is incredibly difficult, so it’s reasonable to be skeptical of polls showing Trump’s massive drops in support with the demographic. The State Navigate team had explored the idea of examining states with automatic voter registration, partisan registration, and age breakdowns, but it was too time-consuming (and likely too expensive) a project for us to pursue for this article.

We’ll have to wait and see for the election results to see if Democrats are winning back young voters, or if they are about to be sandwiched between two incredibly conservative generations by the 2030s.