Remote learning ended more than 3 years ago and the effort to stigmatize parents who were angry at school boards is similarly old news. And yet, some parts of the country may still be feeling the effects of those decisions. Consider the suburbs of Virginia where Donald Trump did much better than expected and Kamala Harris underperformed.

Vice President Kamala Harris won the affluent, diverse Northern Virginia suburbs outside Washington, as the Democratic nominee was expected to do. But she won there by notably smaller margins than President Biden had in 2020...

“We’re devastated,” said Liz Carter, chair of the Democratic Committee in Loudoun County, where Ms. Harris won 57 percent of votes, compared to Mr. Biden’s 62 percent four years ago. “Now there is a lot of introspection.”

Introspection might help but you could also just listen to some of the voters who moved right this election.

In Loudoun County, Austin Levine, 54, voted for Mr. Trump...

Mr. Levine said he remains disappointed by what he sees as a lack of accountability for Democratic-majority institutions, like the school system, that failed his family during the pandemic. He said his two sons learned “nothing” while Loudoun schools were largely shut down for more than a year, and the academic effects were still being felt by his younger child, now a high school junior...

“I think of the taxes I am paying, and the education that is not being delivered,” Mr. Levine said.

Loudoun County is the place where police decided to arrest parent Scott Smith after his daughter was sexually assaulted at school and the school board lied about it. Smith should never have been arrested in the first place but eventually he was pardoned by Gov. Youngkin. 

Things did not work out as well for the school board. Superintendent Scott Ziegler was fired and later found guilty of workplace retaliation against a teacher who cooperated with a grand jury investigation. A judge later set aside that verdict on the basis of false jury instructions and ordered a new trial which is set to take place next year.

Thursday morning, Circuit Court Judge Douglas Fleming set Feb. 3, 2025, as the first of a possible five-day jury trial, six weeks after throwing out Ziegler’s conviction for the retaliatory firing of a teacher who reported that an elementary school student inappropriately touched her...

Last month, Fleming set aside Ziegler’s conviction, finding that while there was “ample evidence” to support a jury’s conclusion that Ziegler knowingly retaliated against the special education teacher, Erin Brooks, faulty jury instructions rendered the conviction illegitimate.

So the fallout from that incident is literally still ongoing which may be why some voters haven't forgotten. My own view is that voters are willing to overlook a lot when it comes to themselves, but when their kids are involved it's another story.

Mr. Tompkins, 44, is an engineer who has worked for the federal government...

He said that virtual learning in 2020 had made his smart, curious daughter say, “I hate school.”

Tompkins voted for Trump this time around. Of course Harris still won the state, but it was a much narrower victory than most people expected.

In a state where Democrats rallied heavily around Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, some in the party were caught off guard by a GOP surge that also saw moderately conservative areas take on a deeper shade of red.

“At this point, I’m perplexed,” said Jeff Kent, chair of the Spotsylvania Democratic Committee in a county that Trump won by almost two more percentage points this year than in 2020. “I don’t have an explanation for how things came out. The realities are not syncing up from what I see in my head to what is clearly evidenced in the results.”...

“President Trump took Virginia from a D plus-10 state to a close five-point race,” Youngkin political strategist Matthew Moran, whose firm did direct mail for the Trump campaign in some states, said in a text to The Washington Post. “That’s pretty amazing. The popularity of the governor and his successful policies also certainly played a big part in that. If Virginia Democrats want to pretend like the Commonwealth is some progressive bastion, they will pay the price in 2025.”

Obviously the shift to the right was nationwide, but then so was remote learning. Maybe that helps explain part of what happened in this election.