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With Final Results Now In, Here Are Some Key Takeaways from the 2025 Virginia Elections

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lowkell
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We now have what appears to be final election results from Virginia’s elections on November 4, so it’s a good time to look at what happened in detail, including some key takeaways. (Note: I plan to add more to this list…definitely more to say on these historic elections!)

  • First, from VPAP, here are the final results from the 2025 Virginia elections: Abigail Spanberger defeated Winsome Earle-Sears by 15+ points (57.6%-42.2%); Ghazala Hashmi defeated John Reid by 11.5 points (55.6%-44.1%); Jay Jones defeated Jason Miyares by nearly 7 points (53.1%-46.5%); Democrats flipped 13 Republican-held House of Delegates seats, going from a 51D-49R House of Delegates narrow majority to a massive 64D-36R House of Delegates majority.
  • Also worth noting, there were 3.43 million votes cast for governor this year, compared to the 4.51 million votes cast in the 2024 presidential election and 3.29 million votes cast for governor in 2021. So…turnout was up about 4% from 2021 (Spanberger got 1.98 million votes, up about 24% from the 1.60 million votes for Terry McAuliffe in 2021; Earle-Sears got 1.45 million votes, down about 13% from Youngkin’s 1.66 million in 2021).

  • Interesting points by DJ – “Statewide turnout is 76.2% of 2024; Spanberger finished at nearly 85% of Harris’ vote total, and she also received more votes than Trump 2020 in VA.”

  • From VPAP: Here are the gubernatorial results by US House district; as you can see, five U.S. House districts (VA03, VA04, VA08, VA10, VA11) are “Strong Dem,” with another two U.S. House districts (VA02, VA07) leaning Democratic, and with VA01 “purple”/competitive. Of course, this is BEFORE any potential mid-decade redistricting that could happen next spring, if the General Assembly passes the new constitutional amendment again, if it stands up in court, and if voters approve it next spring. But even if that doesn’t happen, both Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA01) and Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-VA02) are in jeopardy of losing their seats next November. If we get Democratic-friendly redistricting, then potentially Rep. John McGuire (R-VA05) and possibly even Rep. Ben Cline (R-VA05) could be in competitive districts. Stay tuned…

  • Per CNN’s exit polls of Virginia in 2021 and 2025, this year’s electorate was a bit more diverse racially and somewhat more liberal than in 2021.

Per CNN’s exit polls of Virginia in 2021 and 2025:

  • Looking back at past Virgnia governor’s race winners and losers (back to 1945), Abigail Spanberger’s 15.4-point margin this time was the highest for a VA Democratic gubernatorial candidate since 1961, and the third-highest margin since 1993 (Bob McDonnell won by 17.3 points in 2009; George Allen won by 17.4 points in 1993).

  • From VPAP, this map shows that turnout was BELOW the state average in SW Virginia, parts of Southside Virginia, and also in parts of the Hampton Roads area. Turnout was above the state average in parts of central Virginia, the DC exurbs, etc.

  • From Philip Bump, here’s a map showing that pretty much every jurisdiction in Virginia shifted in the “blue” direction since 2021. What a difference four years, a different party in the White House, different candidates, etc. makes.

  • From VPAP, here are some “swing localities” this year and historically. A few big ones include Virginia Beach, Chesterfield County, Stafford County, Chesapeake, etc. 

  • For those who claim that early voting numbers and models aren’t helpful in predicting election outcomes, here’s a counterargument from this year’s Virginia governor’s race. As you can see, L2 Data’s final modeled estimate was that Spanberger was winning the early vote by 17.6 points. She went on to win the election by 15.3 points (a bit lower because Republicans tend to vote more proportionally on election day, Dems tend to use early voting more heavily). Not too shabby an estimate!

  • From VPAP, here are the number and party of House of Delegates incumbents defeated in elections going back to 1997. As you can see, this year matched 2017, when Democrats defeated 13 Republican incumbents (plus two others in 2017, for a total pickup of 15 seats). Of course, this election the degree of difficulty was arguably much higher for Democrats, as most of the seats picked up this election were not as “low-hanging fruit” as the 15 seats in 2017 that were held by Republicans but won by Hillary Clinton (actually, Clinton won 17 Republican-held seats, and Democrats almost managed to pick up all 17 of them in 2017…remember one had to be drawn out of a ceramic bowl to break a tie, another was super close).

  • Per Chaz Nuttycombe – whose State Navigate did an amazing job in polling (e.g., see our article on their 10/22 poll, which had Spanberger +13, Hashmi +11, Jones +5…very close to the actual results, and MUCH better than most other pollsters), election night calls and live presentation of results, etc. this election, by the way – these four Republican delegates held on this time (in Tony Wilt’s case, by just 257 votes over Democrat Andrew Payton in HD34), but could be in jeopardy going forward, given that their districts were won by Abigail Spanberger on November 4.

  • From VPAP, election results by VPAP Index estimates show that Democratic candidates won ALL the “Strong Democratic” (39) and “Leans Democratic” (9) districts, as well as all the “Competitive” (10) districts, and even 6/14 “Leans Republican” districts. A blue tsunami, in other words!

  • From VPAP: As you can see, Democrats will now have a governing “trifecta” (governorship, House of Delegates, State Senate) in Richmond after four years of divided government, preceded by two years of an incredibly productive Democratic “trifecta” in 2020-2021. What’s truly amazing is how rarely Democrats have held a “trifecta” since 1994, and how rarely EITHER party has done so actually. Do voters prefer “divided government,” thus chose “divided government” deliberately, or what? One thing’s for sure; the last time Democrats had a “trifecta,” they got a LOT done – passing hundreds of bills that were signed into law by Gov. Ralph Northam. In contrast, the past four years, Glenn Youngkin has basically been a veto machine. So now that Democrats will hold a “trifecta,” we’ll presumably see a LOT of the bills Youngkin vetoed come back, pass the General Assembly and be signed into law by Gov. Abigail Spanberger. Good stuff.

  • From VPAP, Democrats will hold 64 House of Delegates seats starting in January 2026, “the most since 1988.” At Democrats’ low point, they held just 32 seats in the House of Delegates, so the 64 seats that Democrats will hold starting in January 2026 represents a *doubling* compared to that. For those of us who were active in Virginia politics during those years, it’s really astounding (in a good way!) to witness this…

  • From Wikipedia, it’s really striking to compare/contrast where House of Delegates Democrats were in November 2015 (just 34 seats; Republican Speaker Bill Howell seemingly entrenched forever…) compared to now (64 seats; Speaker Don Scott with a massive majority to work with).

  • Very interesting from J. Miles Coleman of Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “As with Ralph Northam 8 years ago, Spanberger led the Dem ticket and ran ahead of most Dem House of Delegates candidates. Dems won the HoD popular vote by close to 17 points–better than Spanberger’s 15.4% margin–but several Dem-held seats were uncontested.”

  • Very cool dot map by W&M and GMU grad Zach Adams:

  • From the Prince William Times, this illustrates very well the changing nature of politics in Prince William County, which has been trending blue for years now. Heck, even formerly solid-red parts of the county in the north and west are now either pink or light-blue. Amazing. More broadly, the Republican Party has been decimated throughout Northern Virginia, with very few elected Republicans left in inner NoVA (Arlington, Alexandria, Falls Church, Fairfax), and not many in more exurban NoVA (Loudoun, Prince William) either. Heck, even Stafford County and Spotsylvania County went for Spanberger, with some other parts of exurban NoVA going from bright-red to pink. Amazing.

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