Virginia’s 2025 elections ended with a bang Monday — the bang of a gavel at the State Board of Elections meeting that officially certified the results.
With that, our 2025 elections are now official and consigned to history. Well, except for the ones with recounts, such as the Blacksburg mayor’s race. Or the ones that now trigger special elections, such as the race to fill the Richmond-area state Senate seat that Lt. Gov.-elect Ghazala Hashmi will be vacating. Both of the Democrats contending for that seat are in the House of Delegates, so if one of them wins, that means a special election for a House seat. We in Virginia love elections so much that we have them as often as possible.
After the election, I listed 13 reasons why it turned out the way it did, and later added a 14th. Because I love lists so much, I’ve compiled a different list — shorter this time — of seven lessons that both parties can draw from the 2025 elections that probably apply to the 2026 elections as well.
1. It’s the economy, stupid
The famous James Carville quote from the 1992 presidential election still very much applies today. Broadly speaking, Republicans won in 2024 because people were unhappy about the economy. Broadly speaking, Democrats won in 2025 because people were still unhappy about the economy.
Democrats last year tried to explain away inflation, trotting out statistic after statistic about why things were actually going pretty well. They may have been right, but their numbers didn’t match how people were feeling. Republicans right now are making the same mistake. Donald Trump has managed to make himself into Joe Biden — seemingly out of touch with what people are feeling. Ouch.
At the recent meeting of the state Senate Finance Committee at Radford, legislators saw presentations about how we’re seeing a K-shaped economy — the top arm is upper-income earners who are doing quite well, the bottom leg is everybody else, and they’re not doing so well. In the early 1990s, the top 10% of Americans, income-wise, accounted for about 36% of consumer spending. Today it’s 50%. That’s masked what’s really happening in the economy: Overall, it appears to be doing well, but it’s propped up by one specific group of high-income spenders.
In 2024, many of those lower-end earners flocked to Trump because he promised them better times — but he hasn’t been able to deliver. In 2025, many of those lower-end earners simply stayed home because Republican Winsome Earle-Sears didn’t address their concerns, while a smaller number appeared to vote for Spanberger, who did.
Here’s the thing about the economy: People aren’t experts on the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics report (assuming there is one), but they are experts on their own condition — and they will react accordingly.
Now, here’s the challenge for both parties: Neither side may be able to fix the economy. We have certain structural problems that may defy politics. An aging population (including a declining birth rate) is slowing economic growth. Many jobs are being automated, either by robotics or artificial intelligence. Our two political parties may be arguing around the edges, while a fundamental economic transformation is taking place. We might be in for a long period of discontent where voters keep throwing out politicians because none of them can change the real economic drivers.
2. Trump is poison for Republicans in much of Virginia
I don’t consider that a political opinion but simply an objective fact. Let’s consider:
2016: Trump is elected president
2017: Democrats sweep the three statewide offices and gain 15 seats in the House of Delegates.
2019: Democrats pick up six more seats in the House to win a majority.
2020: Trump loses the presidential election.
2021: Republicans sweep the three statewide offices and regain control of the House of Delegates.
2023: Virginia’s legislative elections result in only a few seats flipping, although that’s enough to give Democrats a small majority in the House.
2024: Trump is elected president again.
2025: Democrats sweep the three statewide offices and gain 13 seats in the House of Delegates.
The cause-and-effect seems pretty clear to me: Virginia voters reacted so negatively to Trump 1.0 that they turned to Democrats in large numbers. Once Trump left office, Republicans won in Virginia again. When Trump returned, Democrats again made big gains.
In this year’s attorney general’s race, Democrat Jay Jones was hit with a scandal that, in ordinary times, would have ended his political career. For a time, voters recoiled — but in the end, they came back to Jones, not because they approved of his conduct but because they considered it less offensive than voting for a candidate endorsed by Trump.
As long as Trump is around, Republicans are going to have a hard time dissociating themselves from him — because Democrats will spend their time tying them to the president.
The one key exception to this is that it only applies in certain districts. As we look ahead to the 2026 congressional elections, Republicans Jen Kiggans in the 2nd District and Rob Wittman in the 1st will have more problems with Trump than will Ben Cline in the 6th, Morgan Griffith in the 9th and John McGuire in the 5th. That’s because the first two represent swing districts, the last three do not. (I’ll have more to say on this in an upcoming column where I take a deeper dive into those three congressional districts.)
Republicans won’t like this part of my analysis, but I’d offer this warning to Democrats: Running against Trump may be a short-term buzz for Democrats, a kind of political sugar high. Once he’s gone, then what? Virginia’s 2021 election might be a cautionary tale.
3. The blue wave was powered by a green wave
Whenever I write about campaign finance reports, I always point out that money doesn’t matter as much as people think it does — but money does matter some. What we saw this year was an astonishing imbalance of campaign funds. Virginia Republicans raised about what they usually did, but Democrats raised far more — enabling some of their challengers to outspend GOP incumbents 14-1 on television. (I devoted an entire column to this subject the week before last.) It’s hard to withstand that kind of onslaught. That’s like getting pounded by a wave of B-1 bombers when all you have to fight back with is a Gatling gun.
Republicans need to close that financial gap. Now, here’s what we don’t know yet: How much of Democrats’ overwhelming financial advantage this year was driven by opposition to Trump?
Here’s something that might tell us: How much money did Virginia Democrats raise from out of state? There are always out-of-state donors for both sides, but did Virginia Democrats benefit because we were one of the few states to hold an election this year? For many out-of-state donors, sending a few dollars (or a lot of dollars) to Virginia might have been the easiest way to send an anti-Trump message.
We don’t have final numbers yet, but a Virginia Public Access Project analysis in September of campaign finance reports from House candidates found that the top 15 recipients of out-of-state contributions were all Democrats. Because of anti-Trump sentiment, it might have been a lot easier for Democrats to raise that out-of-state cash than Republicans.
Wherever it came from, Democrats swamped Republicans in so much cash that it was hard for many GOP candidates to compete.
4. Voter enthusiasm matters
Here’s a fun fact: Voter turnout this year appears to be exactly what it was four years ago: 54.9%.
So why were the outcomes so different? Because it was a different 54.9% each time.
Four years ago, Republicans were more motivated than Democrats, and so we saw turnout spike in a lot of Republican areas, particularly rural ones. This year, Democrats were more motivated than Republicans — so we saw turnout go up in Democratic localities and go down in Republican ones.
Here are a few examples: Charlottesville is about as blue as blue can be. In 2017, the city saw a 52% turnout. In 2021, turnout slipped to 51%. This year, it went up to 55.1%. That may not seem like a large percentage increase, but when 89% of those votes in Charlottesville are Democratic, any increase in turnout yields big dividends for the party.
Or take Richmond, another strongly Democratic city. Turnout in 2017 was 49%; turnout in 2021 was 50%. This year it was 56.5%.
On the other side of the scale is Botetourt County, a Republican-voting county. Four years ago, turnout was 66%. This year it was down to 61.8%.
Likewise, Appomattox County fell from 63% to 57.7%, Franklin County fell from 62% to 56.5%, Henry County and Russell County fell from 52% to 47.4%. You get the idea.
Voter enthusiasm is not something that can be turned on and off by campaigns with a few commercials, or even a lot of commercials, at the end. It’s either there or it’s not, something that has built up gradually over the year like a pressure cooker. The party out of power (in this case, Democrats this year) usually has an enthusiasm advantage because the party out of power always wants back in, while the party in power sometimes gets complacent. By that measure, Democrats will enter 2026 with an enthusiasm advantage; what can Republicans do to counter that?
5. Candidates matter
I don’t mean to relitigate this year’s election, but Spanberger was a good candidate, and Earle-Sears was a poor one. That’s not a judgment on their positions, just an assessment of their candidate skills. Spanberger was always “on message” and never made any mistakes. She ran one of the most disciplined campaigns I’ve seen. Earle-Sears, by contrast, lurched from one message to another and frequently made mistakes — dismissing the concerns of former federal workers, for instance, by saying that losing a job was “not a huge, huge thing.” John Reid, the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, was the best candidate of the six statewide contenders: smooth in interviews, gregarious on the trail, energetic enough to put in 19-hour days. He just didn’t have any money. Despite that, he still polled more votes than Earle-Sears, which is a testament to his abilities and an indictment of hers.
Sometimes good candidates lose because of other circumstances, but bad ones rarely win. (Again, I’m just looking at whether they’re good campaigners, not whether their policies are good or bad.) Both parties sometimes forget this essential point.
6. Both parties have bad reputations right now
Democrats are understandably feeling good about themselves due to the Virginia elections, but they shouldn’t assume that those wins fix all their problems. Polls show voters nationally have a poor impression of both parties — and, if you go by the Real Clear Politics polling average, Democrats are in worse shape than Republicans. Real Clear Politics shows Republicans’ unfavorable rating at 53% but Democrats’ at 56.9%. Likewise, that polling average shows Republicans’ favorability rating at 40.2%, Democrats’ at 34.0%. The industry term here is “underwater,” so Republicans are underwater by 16.7 percentage points, Democrats by 22.9.
What that tells me: Democratic challengers in 2026 begin at a disadvantage on this point (even if they have an advantage overall). Voters don’t like Republicans, but they distrust Democrats even more. Del. Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax County, who chaired the Democratic campaigns for the House of Delegates this year, addressed this in my recent column on fundraising. “We had to separate our candidates from a national Democratic brand that isn’t resonating and put in place a specific [Virginia-based] Democratic brand,” Helmer said. That obviously worked in the state elections, but may not work so well in congressional elections — different issues.
On the plus side for Democrats (and the minus side for Republicans): Democrats may be able to change their brand more easily than Republicans, who may be fated to be anchored to Trump, for good or ill. On the minus side for Democrats (and the plus side for Republicans): They still start off in a deeper hole, and what worked for Democrats in a state election may not work so well in a congressional one.
7. State elections are different from congressional ones
This isn’t really a lesson from this year’s results; it’s more of an enduring fact. We elect governors statewide, and we elect members of the U.S. House by districts. We elect the General Assembly by districts, too, but those are different districts. Put another way, the playing field is simply different. Spanberger won big statewide but still lost in three congressional districts: the 5th, the 6th and the 9th. She could afford to give those parts of the state — Southside, the Shenandoah Valley and Southwest — slight attention because she didn’t really need them to win. Democratic candidates running in those districts must try to win in places where not even she could. The same lesson applies to Republican candidates running in Democratic-leaning congressional districts, just in reverse. A Republican candidate running in some of those districts needs to have a better answer to federal jobs cuts than Earle-Sears did, just as a Democrat running in a Republican district might need to have a different approach than Spanberger did in a statewide election.
A year from now, we may be looking back and drawing entirely different lessons from the 2026 results (or not). For now, though, these are the lessons we can draw from 2025 that both parties can take into the new year.
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