AS BATTLEGROUND states go, Virginia appears to be relatively unworrying for Hillary Clinton. Even before the Democratic presidential nominee selected the state’s junior United States senator, Tim Kaine, as her vice-presidential running mate—a move that pundits believe slightly strengthens her hand here—Virginia appeared to be locking down for the Democratic ticket. So confident is Mrs Clinton that its 13 electoral votes are hers that she didn't advertise on Virginia television in September and isn’t planning to do so in October.

Donald Trump has consistently trailed Mrs. Clinton in statewide polling—sometimes by double-digits. A new poll published by the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christoper Newport University on October 3rd put her seven points above Donald Trump; a poll by the centre published on September 26th, the day of the first presidential debate, showed her leading by six points.

On September 24th, Mr Trump visited the state for a rally in Roanoke, a small, heavily Democratic city in the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was a perch from which he could reach out to rural voters, with whom he is popular, not just in Virginia but in four surrounding states: West Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky. All have seen traditional industries, such as coal, textiles, tobacco and furniture, disappear, creating a vast audiences in the countryside for Mr Trump’s protectionist views.

But it is where Virginia’s vote is most abundant—the eastern suburbs and cities linked by two heavily travelled interstate highways—that makes the state promising for Mrs Clinton in November.

Virginia’s Democratic reflex is most active in presidential years, when higher turnout—often north of 70%— produces a more moderate electorate. Plus, the vast trove of votes in the bustling crescent that spans from outside Washington, DC, to the Atlantic seacoast on Virginia’s southeastern edge can generate an insurmountable advantage for Democrats. Both helped Barack Obama end the long Republican presidential winning streak in Virginia in 2008 and in 2012. Republicans carried the state from 1968 until 2004, and did so by investing little time and money.

Another factor benefits Mrs Clinton: Virginia's growing diversity. Once an insular, provincial state where residents were, for the most part, either white or black, Virginia—with nearly 8.5 million inhabitants, more than half of whom were born elsewhere—is now multihued, reflecting the nation. It has large numbers of Asians and Hispanics. The former make up 5.5% of the population; the latter, nearly 8%; two decades ago there were almost none.

Mr Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric has pushed many of them towards Mrs Clinton. His attack on Khizr Khan, a Pakistan-born lawyer and Muslim who lives in Charlottesville, no doubt helped her further. Mr Khan made an electrifying speech to the Democratic National Convention in which he recalled the death in Iraq of his son, an army officer educated at the University of Virginia.

In addition to changing demographics, Mrs Clinton gets a lift from Virginia’s Democratic hierarchy, led by a longtime member of her privy council, Terry McAuliffe. A Clinton victory in Virginia is a matter of personal—and political—honour for Mr McAuliffe, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee who helped the candidate and her husband Bill Clinton, purchase the multimillion-dollar suburban New York house to which they moved after Mr Clinton left office in 2001.

Since he became governor in 2014, Mr McAuliffe has accomplished little in the policy realm, largely because of a recalcitrant Republican-dominated legislature. He could point to a Clinton win as a measure of his pulling power, though Republicans have sought to blunt it, too. This summer, they successfully blocked in state court Mr McAuliffe’s blanket order restoring voting rights to 206,000 felons—a scheme Republicans claimed was intended to flood the ballot box for Mrs. Clinton.

The polls suggest that she won’t need those votes—and perhaps needn’t bother to visit, either. Mrs Clinton hasn’t appeared in the state since June, relying, instead, on high-profile surrogates such as Mr Obama and his wife, Michelle. Both will have made campaign stops in Northern Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, DC, before November.

In a sure sign of enduring Democratic confidence, not even Mr Kaine is seen that often in his home state.

Since his nomination two months ago, he has appeared at only three rallies in Virginia. One was in Richmond, where Mr Kaine lives on a leafy street named Confederate Avenue (Appropriately, the house is in on the south side of the street). The other appearances were in defence-rich Norfolk and Northern Virginia, where, on September 28th, on behalf of Mrs Clinton, Mr Kaine accepted the endorsement of the state’s last Republican senator, John Warner, a moderate who has often broken with his party.

Mr Kaine will be back for a different piece of political business this week—one in which he will hope for a home-court advantage. On October 4th, he and his Republican opponent, Mike Pence, meet for their only debate. The venue is Longwood University, a small taxpayer-supported school in Farmville, a tiny Democratic burg surrounded by the vast Republican countryside.