This month, Charlottesville, VA, became a center of hatred and chaos. On August 11th, white supremacists rallied with lit torches on the University of Virginia campus. The next morning, a protest against the removal of a statue of Civil War Confederate General Robert E. Lee turned violent, and then a related hit-and-run killed one person and injured 19 more. Trump condemned “egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides” while the Attorney General and others called it domestic terrorism.

To better understand the context and the area, Social Explorer examines the data. Read on to take a closer look at demographics and voting patterns in Virginia, with a special focus on Charlottesville.

Charlottesville is the home of the University of Virginia, which has an enrollment of about 22,000 students, nearly half the city’s population of 45,084. The presence of so many students makes the city younger and more diverse than the rest of the state.

While 18 to 34 year olds make up 24 percent of the Virginia population, in Charlottesville young adults make up 43.6 percent of the population–approaching twice as many.

Charlottesville's population is 70.7 percent white and 19.2 percent black. This is close to the state population of 69.0 percent white and 19.3 percent black. However, as the following map shows, racial composition varies from county to county and (if you zoom in) neighborhood to neighborhood.

The next map compares presidential election results from 2008 and 2016. Between Obama’s first win and Trump’s win, the Republican and Democratic split intensified. Click around to see which red areas got redder and which blue areas got bluer.

Looking at Charlottesville and Virginia presidential election results from 2004 to 2016, we see different shifts in Democratic and Republican voting. These data come from David Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections, which is available on Social Explorer. The 2016 election was Charlottesville's highest Democratic turnout and lowest Republican turnout. Virginia swung from Republican to Democrat in 2008, but the Democratic vote has shrunk each year since, while the Republican vote grew one year and shrank the next.

Learn more about Charlottesville and other cities using Social Explorer’s maps and reports.

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