Virginia made history Tuesday, in more ways than one.
Abigail Spanberger became the first woman to be elected governor of Virginia and she did it in a sweeping fashion. She won 56.7% of the vote, the highest vote share for any Democratic candidate for governor since Albertis Harrison in 1961, which takes us back to a pre-modern era of Virginia history.
Whether Spanberger rode a blue wave or commanded one is a question we may debate for years, but there’s no debate about the results: Democrats won all three statewide offices, with Ghazala Hashmi becoming the first Muslim woman to win statewide office anywhere in the United States, and Jay Jones becoming Virginia’s first Black attorney general. In the process, Democrats picked up at least 13 House seats. That gives the party 64 seats in the 100-member House, the most the party has had since the 1987 election also gave them 64.
Here’s how thorough the Democratic victory was: Democrats targeted 14 Republican-held seats in the House and wound up winning all but one of them.
It’s tempting for commentators to attribute the breadth of this victory to just one cause: the unpopularity of President Donald Trump in Virginia. He certainly played an outsized part in the election, but he wasn’t the only factor.
Here are 13 reasons why the election turned out the way it did. I’ve tried to organize these more or less in chronological order; think of them as one factor stacked on top of another.
1. Virginia’s basic inclination is to elect Democrats
Virginia is by no means a solidly blue state, but it leans enough to the left now that Democrats start with an advantage in a statewide race unless there are unusual circumstances. Going into this year’s vote, four of the past six gubernatorial elections (dating back to 2001) have been won by Democrats. Virginia has gone Democratic in five straight presidential elections. Our two U.S. senators are Democrats and our last seven Senate elections have gone Democratic. None of this assured Spanberger victory, but the lay of the land was tilted in her favor. That Democratic tilt, though, certainly didn’t guarantee a victory of the magnitude she won; the difference between winning by a little and winning by a lot was due to all the factors that follow.
2. President Trump was a dead weight for Republicans
Republicans may love Donald Trump but few others in Virginia do. Democrats spent much of their time running against Trump, not their Republican opponents, as they tried to capitalize on the intense feelings some voters have about him. Remember that Trump lost Virginia all three times he ran for president, so he was never going to be helpful for Republicans. In Virginia’s 2017 election, which came in Trump’s first term, Democrats not only swept the statewide elections, they picked up 15 seats in the House of Delegates, far exceeding expectations. Two years later, with Trump still in office, they picked up six more to win a majority. As soon as Trump was out of office, Virginia Republicans won again statewide and regained a House majority. With Trump back in the White House, Democrats once again exceeded even their own expectations and took the size of their House majority back to what it was nearly four decades ago. Trump has basically been poison for Virginia Republicans.
The most recent Roanoke College poll found 53% view him unfavorably, 40% favorably. The Atlas Intel poll had Trump at an even higher disapproval rating — 56%. In many ways, the size of the Democratic victory probably says more about Virginians’ feelings about Trump than they do about their feelings for Spanberger. I don’t know that there was a groundswell for her personally, but she seemed to be more of a vehicle through which voters could express their disapproval of Trump — although Spanberger was certainly more popular than her Republican opponent, which brings us to this:
3. Earle-Sears was never popular
Winsome Earle-Sears speaks at a campaign event in Marion on Oct. 23. Photo by Eric Francis.
Let’s go back to a poll that Roanoke College took in February. That’s the earliest poll I can find that asked favorable/unfavorable ratings for the two gubernatorial candidates. At that point, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears had been in statewide office for three years — and was “under water,” as the polling phrase goes. That poll found that 39% of Virginians thought unfavorably of her, 34% favorably. By contrast, Youngkin has consistently been on the plus side, with a favorable rating that at the time was 48% (and sometimes higher). The polls couldn’t tell us why Earle-Sears was viewed less favorably than Youngkin, but she was — and her campaign never changed that. The final Roanoke College poll found Earle-Sears’ unfavorable rating had jumped to 45%, while her favorable rating was only up a little to 38%. It’s hard to win when you’re unpopular.
By contrast, Spanberger began the year even in the Roanoke College poll — 37% favorable, 37% unfavorable. My suspicion is that might be the default result for a generic Democrat. At that point, she’d been a U.S. representative for the 7th Congressional District but had never run statewide. Fewer people knew about her then than know about her now. By the final Roanoke College poll, Spanberger was polling at 47% favorable, 42% unfavorable. Over the course of the campaign, she became more popular, while Earle-Sears became less so.
Here’s how badly Earle-Sears wound up losing: Her 42.8% of the vote was the lowest vote share for a Republican candidate for governor in Virginia since Linwood Holton’s first gubernatorial run in 1965, back in a time when Republicans weren’t expected to even be competitive in the state, much less win. This was a historic blow-out. Earle-Sears polled fewer votes than either of the other two Republicans on the ticket. Even lightly funded John Reid, the party’s candidate for lieutenant governor, won more votes than she did.
4. Earle-Sears squandered her time in statewide office
Earle-Sears’ unfavorable rating at the start of the year raises an unanswered question about what she did to earn that poor a score. That’s hard to say, but there’s another measure: fundraising. State campaign finance reports show that Earle-Sears didn’t start raising money for her gubernatorial bid until 2024, when she raised $2.56 million. However, Spanberger that year raised $5.7 million — and had raised $3.6 million in 2023. That means Spanberger entered the election year having raised 3.6 times as much money as Earle-Sears, even though Earle-Sears was already in statewide office and Spanberger wasn’t. It feels as if Earle-Sears squandered her time as lieutenant governor. She didn’t raise much money. She didn’t associate herself with any particular initiative. Somehow she spent three years in statewide office and came out of it with not much to show for it politically.
5. Youngkin’s popularity did not transfer to Earle-Sears
A lieutenant governor who is running for governor ought to be able to trade on the popularity of the outgoing governor. Previous ones have. No lieutenant governor who ran to succeed a governor of the same party has ever lost a general election in Virginia — until now. We’ve had some lieutenant governors who didn’t win their party’s nomination (Fred Pollard in 1969, Richard Davis in 1985, John Hager in 2001, Bill Bolling in 2013). We’ve had some who ran and lost, but they were lieutenant governors who served under a governor of a different party (Henry Howell in 1973 and 1977, Don Beyer in 1997). Earle-Sears is the only lieutenant governor who had the nomination, and a sitting governor of her own party, and still lost.
This doesn’t seem to be a case of voters being unhappy with the incumbent. Polls consistently show Youngkin’s approval ratings are higher than his disapproval ratings. Roanoke College put his numbers at 50% approval, 36% disapproval. Had Youngkin been able to run for reelection, he might have been tough to beat. However, the good feelings that Virginians have about their governor did not transfer to his lieutenant governor.
6. Earle-Sears ran a terrible campaign; Spanberger ran a disciplined one
Earle-Sears never issued a position paper. She rarely gave interviews. She passed up meetings with key business groups that would normally be friendly territory for a Republican. She only sporadically held public events. Republicans depend on a big turnout in the western part of the state; Earle-Sears didn’t hold a single public event in the largest media market in the region (Roanoke) all summer and only one (a weekend breakfast) during September and October. When Earle-Sears did speak, she was prone to saying things that were not particularly helpful to her cause, such as when she downplayed the plight of people losing their jobs in federal cutbacks by saying “it’s not unusual” to lose a job: “The media is making this out to be this huge, huge thing. And I don’t understand why.” That certainly wasn’t the view in Northern Virginia, where business leaders have called on the region to build a new economy and where a recent survey by the Northern Virginia Chamber found pessimism rising. Earle-Sears changed her campaign staff, which is never a good sign. She lurched from one issue to another, never settling on a single theme. She didn’t raise much money; not until the fall did she come anywhere close to matching Spanberger’s fundraising totals, and by then it was too late.
Simply put, Earle-Sears ran the worst campaign for governor I’ve seen in my memory. Spanberger, by contrast, ran a campaign that was as disciplined as Earle-Sears’ was chaotic. Spanberger never seemed to make any mistakes. Perhaps the biggest challenge her campaign faced came not from her own doing but that of one of her running mates — Jay Jones’ text messages.
7. Earle-Sears ran on the wrong issues; Spanberger ran on the right ones
Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger addresses supporters in Richmond. Photo by Dan Currier.
The Atlas Intel poll listed 17 issues and asked respondents to pick the three that mattered to them most — 56.2% picked “inflation/cost of living/affordability,” which just happens to be the issue Spanberger has focused on. Nothing else came close. “Economy and jobs” was second with 33.6%, another issue Spanberger has talked about. Earle-Sears had little to say about either of those. Instead, she focused the last part of her campaign on transgender issues. That issue ranked 15th out of 17, cited by only 5.7% of those surveyed. Earle-Sears spent almost her entire campaign talking about issues that voters didn’t seem much interested in.
In focusing on transgender issues, Earle-Sears seemed to be emulating Trump’s campaign in 2024. The difference: Transgender issues seemed to matter then. A Gallup poll in September 2024 found that 38% of those surveyed ranked that issue as “extremely important” or “very important” in their choice for president. It’s hard to know what changed, but something did.
8. Nothing Republicans threw at Spanberger seemed to stick
Earle-Sears tried to portray Spanberger as someone whose support of transgender rights was so broad that she would let boys into girls’ locker rooms. As we just saw, though, voters didn’t seem to care about that issue. I prefer numbers over anecdotes, but in early October I spoke to a group of retirees in Roanoke. That’s not a demographic I would have expected to be particularly open-minded on the issue, but many of those in attendance said they found Earle-Sears’ ads on the topic laughable. They said they simply didn’t believe them.
There’s been a lot of national attention this fall on Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic socialist who on Tuesday won the race for mayor in New York City. Republicans across the country have tried to make him the face of the Democratic Party. I have to wonder if somewhere, deep down, that just didn’t work in Virginia because Spanberger, a former CIA case officer who cut a more centrist image in Congress, seemed so unlike Mamdani. Whatever the reason, Republican attacks on Spanberger just didn’t seem to work.
9. Democrats had far more money than Republicans
Whenever campaign finance reports come out, I always stress that money doesn’t matter as much as some people think it does — yet it does matter some. Democrats outraised and outspent Republicans in the races for governor and lieutenant governor, as well as in House of Delegates races overall.
Two years ago, Democrats under-invested in some House races and were surprised afterwards at how close two of their candidates had come anyway: Lily Franklin in Blacksburg and Jessica Anderson in the Williamsburg area. This year neither candidate wanted for money. Nor did a lot of others.
10. The economy that helped Republicans nationally in 2024 hurt them in Virginia in 2025
Augusta Health’s Churchville Primary Care closed its doors on Oct. 3, making patients pivot to traveling to the hospital’s Verona clinic. Photo by Bob Stuart.
When people are unhappy about the economy, they blame the party in power, no matter which party that is. This year, it was the Republicans’ turn to get blamed. Often it takes a new president time to make the case that his policies are having any effect. With Trump, it’s clear his policies are having an effect, just one many voters don’t like. Tariffs have raised prices and produced investment uncertainty without any clear payoff in jobs. Wholesale cuts to the federal workforce have roiled Northern Virginia in particular. One Democratic talking point was that the Trump-backed One Big Beautiful Bill would endanger rural hospitals. Democrats got an unexpected assist on that front when the Augusta Medical Group cited the bill as a reason why it was closing three clinics — in Buena Vista, Churchville and Weyers Cave. Democrats didn’t have to make a rhetorical case about the impacts of the bill; all they had to do was point to what a hospital in rural Virginia was already doing. Intentionally or otherwise, Augusta Medical essentially validated one of Democrats’ key claims.
11. The debate either didn’t change things or helped Spanberger
Winsome Earle-Sears (at right) turns to ask Abigail Spanberger a question during their debate. Screenshot from WAVY-TV.
Earle-Sears came into the debate determined to knock Spanberger off-balance by repeatedly interrupting her, particularly with questions about Jones’ text messages. When Spanberger didn’t respond, and at times simply stared straight at the camera, some wondered whether that would hurt Spanberger by making her seem too robotic. It did not. The polls showed that Spanberger lengthened her lead after the debate. Whether that was because of her debate performance or in spite of it, we don’t know. The bottom line, though, is that the debate didn’t help Earle-Sears.
12. Jones’ text messages hurt him, but didn’t spread to other Democrats
Attorney General-elect Jay Jones speaks at the Richmond Convention Center. Photo by Dan Currier.
Jones’ text messages obviously hurt him but didn’t hurt his ticketmates. In the end the Democratic tide was so big that it buoyed even a damaged candidate to a small but clear victory. We’ll need to dig deeper into the results of this race in the days to come, but while some Democrats appear to have sat out this race, not enough did to make a difference. One thing we were looking for was to see to what extent early voting saved Jones. It certainly helped but may not have been the decisive factor. There are certainly places where Jones won the early vote while Miyares won the day-of voting, but day-of voting often benefits Republicans. Miyares didn’t lose to Jones so much as he lost to Trump. In a more normal environment, Miyares might well have won, but this wasn’t a normal environment. Democrats recoiled from Jones’ text messages, then concluded they just couldn’t bear the thought of a Republican winning.
13. The shape of the turnout benefited Democrats
Voter turnout in Virginia doesn’t appear to have changed much over the past four years. In 2021, Virginia saw 3,288,318 voters cast ballots. So far this year, we have had 3,315,349 — an almost imperceptible increase of 0.8%, less than the state’s population growth.
Two things happened, though: Some people who voted for Youngkin four years ago appear to have voted for Spanberger. Just as importantly, some people who voted for Youngkin simply didn’t vote at all.
This drop-off was especially noticeable in Southwest Virginia, which four years ago delivered a swell of votes for Youngkin.
In 2021, Wise County cast 9,691 votes for Youngkin and 1,796 votes for Democrat Terry McAuliffe.
This year, Wise County cast 4,888 votes for Earle-Sears and 1,370 votes for Spanberger.
Put another way, Spanberger received 426 fewer votes there than McAuliffe but 4,888 people in Wise County who voted for Youngkin didn’t show up for Earle-Sears. The Republican vote in Southwest Virginia simply collapsed. Given the size of Earle-Sears’ defeat statewide, those abysmal numbers in Southwest might have simply been incidental to her but they could have been decisive in the attorney general’s race. If Earle-Sears had run better, she still might not have won — but Miyares might have. It’s hard for the candidate on the bottom of the ticket to win when the candidate at the top of the ticket can’t turn out voters.
I’ll dig deeper into the election results in coming days.
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