The final votes in this year’s statewide election won’t be in until today; noon is the deadline for properly postmarked mail ballots to arrive. In many places (especially those with colleges), registrars are also still working through provisional ballots, which may make the difference in some closely watched local races, such as the one for Blacksburg mayor.
Nonetheless, we know the big picture, so let’s dive into the numbers to see what they tell us about Virginia’s 2025 election.
Was it really a blue wave? Yes, but maybe not as big as we might think.
Abigail Spanberger won with the largest share of the vote for any Democratic candidate for governor since Albertis Harrison in 1961; Democrats swept all three statewide offices and picked up 13 seats in the House. That certainly looks like a blue wave, and I definitely won’t dispute it’s a wave, but that wave wasn’t quite as big as it might seem. The Democratic vote ticked up for sure, but what’s also notable is how the Republican vote fell — and it was that fall which made the Democratic margin bigger than it otherwise would have been.
Four years ago, Democrat Terry McAuliffe lost, and it appeared that his party was lethargic that year. In reality, the Democratic vote that year was bigger than it ever had been in Virginia; the problem was that the Republican vote just happened to be a little bit bigger. Generally, because of population growth, even the loser’s vote gets a little bigger each year. This time, though, Republicans saw their vote totals fall from where they had been in 2021.
Based on unofficial returns so far, the total vote in Virginia this year was only 72,634 more than it was four years ago. Spanberger ran 320,953 votes ahead of McAuliffe’s Democratic record in 2021, but Earle-Sears’ tally came in 229,323 votes short of where Youngkin had been.
That’s a nice uptick on Spanberger’s part, but hardly unprecedented. In 2017, Ralph Northam ran 339,029 votes ahead of where McAuliffe had been in his first run in 2013. We can call Spanberger’s vote increase a blue wave, but Earle-Sears’ vote drop made it seem bigger than maybe it really was.
Here’s one way to measure this that might be easier to understand: Spanberger increased the Democratic vote 20% over what it was four years ago, when it was already at a record high, but the Republican vote for governor declined by 13.7%. Taken together, that’s a pretty big swing, but not all of it was due to Democratic success; part of it was driven by Republicans’ failure to turn out their own voters. More on that to come.
Here’s another way to look at things: If Earle-Sears had matched Youngkin’s totals four years ago, Spanberger would have still won, but with 53.5% of the vote and not 57.14%. Democrats would have still picked up a seat in the House of Delegates, but not as many as they did (13). Some Republican House members probably lost their seats because Earle-Sears did such a poor job driving turnout.
Even a modest blue wave was enough to save Jones
There’s always some vote drop-off from the top of the ticket to the bottom; some voters just don’t vote in every race. We certainly saw that this year in the attorney general’s race. It will take more number-crunching to figure out just how many Democrats skipped Jones to protest his infamous text messages, but it clearly wasn’t enough to make a difference. Here are two relevant numbers:
Jones got the third-highest number of votes for any of the three top state offices ever; the only two candidates to receive more votes were … Abigail Spanberger and Ghazala Hashmi.
The increase in the Democratic vote was large enough that even if Miyares had been able to match his 2021 totals, he’d have still lost. He didn’t, though. His vote was down 5.3% from four years ago — 88,136.
There was a blue wave of some dimension, even after you factor in the Republican vote drop.
Earle-Sears’ inability to generate Republican turnout made it almost impossible for Miyares to win
Miyares probably isn’t to blame for not matching those 2021 numbers. That was a good year for Republicans; this year wasn’t.
Here’s another measure of how bad it was. Democrats this year achieved 82% of the vote last year for Kamala Harris; Republicans only got 69% of the Donald Trump turnout. Democrats showed up; Republicans didn’t.
The collapse of the Republican vote in the governor’s race put Miyares in a hole that it was hard to crawl out of. We’ve occasionally seen candidates for attorney general get more votes than their party’s candidates for governor, but the differences are modest. The last time we had a split ticket win was 2005; that year, Republican Bob McDonnell took 58,559 more votes than his party’s candidate for governor, who lost. This year, Miyares received 125,017 more votes than his party’s candidate for governor, but it still wasn’t enough. In 2001, Republican Jerry Kilgore won the AG’s race in a landslide in what was otherwise a Democratic year; he outpolled his party’s candidate for governor by 219,834 votes. For Miyares to win this year, he’d have needed 319,704 more votes than Earle-Sears, and that just doesn’t seem possible in today’s highly partisan environment. Ultimately, it’s up to the candidate for governor to generate the turnout, and the other candidates just ride along. Earle-Sears didn’t.
Earle-Sears’ biggest vote collapse was in Northern Virginia
Remember how earlier I said that Spanberger increased the Democratic vote by 20% over 2021, while Earle-Sears decreased it by 13.7%? Now let’s look at some specific places where Spanberger helped expand the Democratic vote while Earle-Sears presided over it shrinking.
Fairfax County is the state’s most populous locality. It’s solidly blue these days, but it is still the biggest source of Republican votes anywhere in the state. When Republicans win, they win with a big turnout in other parts of the state, but they still need a decent base of votes in Fairfax County. One of the reasons that Youngkin won four years ago is that he was able to increase the Republican vote in Fairfax County. Democrat Terry McAuliffe that year increased his vote tallies there some from the previous election, but Youngkin increased his by a lot — and even though Youngkin still lost Fairfax County, that gave him a stronger base to stand on as he rolled up more votes from rural areas.
We all wondered what the federal government cutbacks would do to the vote here — not just the cutbacks but also Earle-Sears’ tone-deaf response in which she declared that losing a job was “not unusual” and “not a huge, huge thing.” Well, here’s what happened: Spanberger increased the Democratic vote in Fairfax County by 11.5% — 32,999 more votes than even the record number McAuliffe got four years ago. But Earle-Sears saw the Republican vote drop by 25% — 38,116 fewer votes than what Youngkin had tallied. Notice that drop is almost twice her statewide average.
The result: Four years ago, the Democratic candidate came out of Fairfax with a margin of 134,206 votes, which got wiped away by Republican votes downstate, especially from rural areas. This year, Spanberger came out of Fairfax with a margin of 205,321 votes — and then expanded on that.
In percentage terms, the Republican vote collapse was even worse in some other localities in Northern Virginia.
In Alexandria, the Republican vote was down 27.3% from four years ago, while the Democratic vote was up 15.4%.
In Falls Church, the Republican vote was down 27.7% while the Democratic vote was up 16.8%.
In Arlington, the Republican vote was down 28.6% while the Democratic vote was up, but only by 8.9% from last time.
Yes, there was a blue wave in Northern Virginia, but the stronger currents flowing were a Republican riptide flowing outward that saw their vote tallies collapse, usually to about what they were in 2013, three elections ago. In percentage terms, the Republican share in Northern Virginia has been falling throughout this century as voters have realigned, but here’s how low Earle-Sears took the Republican vote. In Arlington, she received 16.16% of the vote. We have to go back to 1941 to find another Republican who did that poorly in Arlington — Benjamin Muse that year took 16.11% in his loss to Colgate Darden. How much of that was due to Earle-Sears and how much of that was due to Trump is an open question, but Earle-Sears took a challenging political environment and handled it especially poorly, taking the whole Republican ticket down with her.
Virginia Beach saw a big swing as Democratic vote rose and Republican vote fell
It’s hard to find just one place that made a difference because there were so many, but here’s another place that really stands out: Virginia Beach. “The beach,” as politicos call it, is a classic bellwether in Virginia. There are some places that are more perfect indicators (hang on, they’re coming), but those places are smaller. Virginia Beach is the state’s third-most populous locality (behind Fairfax County and Prince William County) and, unlike those two places, it tends to swing back and forth and is almost always close. Republicans can’t win statewide without carrying Virginia Beach; the last Republican to win without “the beach” was Mills Godwin in 1973.
Four years ago, Youngkin carried Virginia Beach with 53.6% of the vote. This year, Earle-Sears lost it. She didn’t just lose, she lost badly. Spanberger took 55.2% of the vote in Virginia Beach; Earle-Sears just 44.6%. That’s the highest vote share for a Democratic candidate for governor in Virginia Beach, and the lowest vote share for a Republican one, since Albertis Harrison defeated Clyde Pearson in 1961.
Was this a case of Spanberger doing well or Earle-Sears doing poorly? Yes. Both happened. Spanberger took 17,423 more votes in Virginia Beach than Democrats did four years ago — an increase of 23.5%. Earle-Sears won 13,073 fewer votes than Youngkin did — a decrease of 15.0%. If you compare these to the statewide trends, you’ll see that Spanberger ran higher here while Earle-Sears ran lower, so this swing city swung more than usual. A Washington Post analysis found that the vote swing in Virginia Beach, in percentage terms, tied Frederick County and Prince William County for the highest in the state. We don’t know whether this signifies a permanent realignment (probably not), but Republicans might want to worry some about this.
Spanberger reversed the fall of the Democratic vote in rural areas
I don’t want to overstate this point because the Democratic vote in rural Virginia remains anemic to the point that there’s essentially not a two-party system in much of Southwest and Southside. In many rural counties, the Democratic vote has been in free fall for the past quarter-century or more. I would not have been surprised if the increase in the Democratic vote passed over Southwest Virginia. It did not. In one county after another, it increased — modestly in terms of numbers but significantly if you measure them against history. In Wise County, Spanberger polled more votes than any Democratic candidate for governor since 2009. That didn’t really make much difference in the end; she still won only 20.5% of the vote in a county that Democrats once counted as part of their base, but it was an oh-so-modest improvement in a part of the state where the Democratic vote had been shriveling up. This could just be the political equivalent of what Wall Street types call a “dead cat bounce” — a slight rebound after a hard fall that doesn’t really signify a turnaround. Nonetheless, for the first time in several election cycles, the Democratic vote in rural areas, especially Southwest, didn’t fall.
While the numerical increase for Democrats in Wise was small, in percentage terms, it was large: Spanberger increased the Democratic vote there by 25.3%, while Earle-Sears saw the Republican vote drop by 10.3%, a smaller decline than elsewhere but still a decline. Here’s the bottom-line result: Youngkin took a margin of 7,895 votes out of Wise; Earle-Sears took just 6,436. That’s not bad, but she needed to increase margins in rural Virginia to counter what was happening elsewhere. Instead, she reduced them and then got wiped out elsewhere. Spanberger helped Democrats across the board; Earle-Sears hurt Republicans.
Spanberger is less dependent on Northern Virginia than previous Democratic governors
Spanberger currently has a margin of 486,588 votes. She took a 205,321-vote margin out of Fairfax County, so 42.1% of her margin came from Fairfax. That seems a lot, and it is, but consider the historical comparisons:
In the 2017 election, 59.2% of Ralph Northam’s margin came from Fairfax County.
In 2013, Terry McAuliffe was wholly dependent on Fairfax County; he won statewide by 56,435 votes, but won Fairfax by 68,065.
In 2005, Tim Kaine saw 53.1% of his margin come from Fairfax County.
We have to go back to Mark Warner in 2001 to find a modern Democratic governor less dependent on Northern Virginia votes: 26.5% of his margin that year came from Fairfax County.
This is a testament to Spanberger’s vote-getting ability statewide. While our traditional red/blue map looks pretty similar to previous years, what we don’t see in those maps is whether votes rose or fell in various communities, such as in Virginia Beach.
Spanberger carried Lynchburg; first Democratic candidate for governor to do so in 20 years
One unusual blue dot on that map is Lynchburg, which we normally think of as a Republican stronghold. It certainly tilts Republican, but not by as much as some may think. This year is an example: Spanberger became the first Democrat since Kaine in 2005 to carry Lynchburg in a gubernatorial election. This happened because Lynchburg saw the same trends as other places: The Democratic vote was up, and the Republican vote was down.
Under Spanberger, the Democratic vote in Lynchburg increased by 16.9%, a slightly lower rate than what she was doing overall. Under Earle-Sears, the Republican vote decreased by 8.1%. That’s less of a collapse than we saw elsewhere, but the combination of the two was enough for Spanberger to take Lynchburg, 50.47% to 49.32%.
For those curious, Spanberger was the only Democrat to carry Lynchburg. In the lieutenant governor’s race, Republican John Reid won 50.5% of the vote in Lynchburg to 49.03% for Hashmi. So, yes, a Muslim candidate came close to carrying the home city of Liberty University, which instead voted narrowly for a gay Republican.
These numbers will cheer Lynchburg Democrats as they look toward next year’s at-large council elections, where they hope to win some seats, but I’d caution that every election is different, and this year could be an anomaly.
Spanberger carried Spotsylvania County; first Democrat to do so in 40 years
Perhaps of more significance is Spotsylvania County flipping. The last Democratic candidate for governor to win here was Gerald Baliles in 1985. This year, Spanberger carried “Spotsy,” as the locals call it, with 51.1% to 48.7% for Earle-Sears.
This was more of a Democratic surge than a Republican drop — the Democratic vote was up 40.7% from four years ago, while the Republican vote was down 11.4%. I have to wonder how much of this was due to demographic changes that may have brought in new voters, because that’s an astounding increase in the Democratic vote.
Update: Spanberger also carried Waynesboro, the first Democratic candidate for governor to do so since 1985. I’ll have more on Waynesboro in a future column.
Prince Edward County is Virginia’s best bellwether
Prince Edward County has a long streak of voting for the winning candidate for governor. How long? The last time Prince Edward voted for the losing candidate was 1969, when it voted for Democrat Bill Battle instead of Republican Linwood Holton. Before that, we have to go back to 1893, when Prince Edward voted for Populist Edmund Cocke instead of Democrat Charles T. O’Ferrall.
Just because Prince Edward has this long streak of siding with the winner doesn’t necessarily mean its vote totals look like the state’s. While Spanberger was winning a thumping victory statewide, she eked one out in Prince Edward, with 50.33% of the vote to 49.4% for Earle-Sears. Still, a win’s a win.
I’ll have more analysis of the election returns in this week’s edition of West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that goes out Friday afternoons.
