To become president, Barack Obama will obviously have to win some of the states that were lost in 2004 by John Kerry , whose 251 electoral votes were a scant 19 short of what is needed to win the White House. With its cache of 13 electoral votes, Virginia could go most of the way toward closing that gap. Obama is showing every indication he's going after them; his first big rally after Hillary Rodham Clinton conceded in June was staged in the Virginia suburbs of Washington - the changing demographics of which are what give the Democrats hope of swinging the state their way this fall.

    Not long ago, making such a bid might have seemed like so much political happy talk. Virginia has voted Republican in all of the 10 presidential elections since the Johnson landslide of 1964, when John McCain was a 28-year-old naval aviator and Barack Obama was a toddler. Virginia is the biggest prize among the 11 states that have voted exclusively Republican for president over the past 40 years.

    Republican strategists acknowledge Obama will run well in Northern Virginia, though they argue the image John McCain has long cultivated as a maverick, independent-minded Republican will hold the Democratic margin down. The GOP is counting on McCain's history as a Vietnam prisoner of war and defense-focused lawmaker to appeal to the large numbers of military-related voters, heavily concentrated in parts of Northern Virginia and the Hampton Roads area, including Virginia Beach. They expect him to do as well as previous nominees in Republican strongholds in the Shenandoah Valley and some suburbs of Richmond.

    Any Democratic campaign to win the state begins with maximizing turnout in Northern Virginia, where Democratic leanings have intensified in recent years. And with Obama as the first black presidential nominee of a major party, Democrats are hoping for higher-than-average turnout among the state's African-Americans, who are about 20 percent of the population.

    Although Obama cruised to victory in the primary, the result exposed a potential weakness for the general election. He lost decisively to Clinton in southwestern Virginia, a mountainous area with many lower-income white voters who are ancestrally Democratic but socially conservative.

    "Our polling shows that, although Obama does decently up there," Republican Rep. Thomas M. Davis III of Northern Virginia said, "the kind of margins coming out of there for the Democrats are not anything likely to be what you see in other statewide elections."

    If Virginia Republicans are cautiously optimistic about delivering the state to McCain, they are much less sanguine about their prospects of keeping a foothold in the Senate. At age 81, Republican John W. Warner is retiring this year after five terms, and the almost prohibitive favorite to succeed him is Mark Warner, who was the popular Democratic governor from 2002 through 2005. (The two aren't related.) The Republican candidate is another former governor, James S. Gilmore III, who made a drive-by appearance in this year's GOP presidential field and then struggled to win the GOP nomination against the more conservative state Rep. Bob Marshall.

    A Warner victory would give the state two Democratic senators for the first time since 1970. CQ Politics rates the race as Democrat Favored.

    Democrats are hopeful this will be the year they gain at least one seat in the state's congressional delegation, which has been 8-3 Republican since a GOP-drawn district map was implemented for this decade. And the party is favored to pick up the suburban Washington seat opened by Davis' retirement after seven terms. Democratic candidate Gerry Connolly is chairman of the board of supervisors in Fairfax County, where most district residents live. Still, he faces a tough fight from Republican Keith Fimian, the founder of a home inspection company, who is not nearly as well known but is well funded. CQ Politics race rating: Leans Democratic.

    Three challenges to GOP incumbents are mild long shots. Along the Atlantic Coast, Republican Thelma Drake , who won with just 52 percent last time, is seeking a third term against Glenn Nye, who has had civilian government jobs in Iraq and other global trouble spots. In the central part of the state, Democrat-turned-independent-turned-Republican Virgil H. Goode Jr. is being challenged for a seventh term by well-funded Tom Perriello, who has been involved with international nonprofit organizations and founded faith-based groups. In Northern Virginia, Republican Frank R. Wolf is in a rematch with Judy Feder, a former Georgetown University dean. All three races are rated Republican Favored.

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