We’re now less than 100 days away from Virginia’s elections for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, and the House of Delegates. The Commonwealth has typically been seen as a catalyst for how the party out of power from the White House should go forward in its messaging in the following midterm elections, and a barometer for public opinion on the incumbent President.
This tradition stems from a usual decline in presidential approval as the public exits the ‘honeymoon phase’ of a president’s term, as well as Virginia being the only member of the union to limit its Governors to non-consecutive terms, guaranteeing an open race for Governor every four years. Since 1977, Virginia has elected a Governor opposite of the incumbent President’s party, with the exception of 2013, when Terry McAuliffe (D) won the gubernatorial election at the start of President Barack Obama’s second term, due in part to a federal government shutdown and a weak Republican statewide ticket.
It should come as no surprise that our Virginia forecasts this year expect that the tradition will continue. Democrat Abigail Spanberger has a 96% chance to become the next Governor of Virginia over her Republican opponent Winsome Sears, who has just a 4% chance of pulling off an upset this November. In margin, Abigail Spanberger leads the race for Governor by 11.4%.
Our gubernatorial forecast is the first-ever quantitative statewide forecast produced by the State Navigate team; previously, all analysis for statewide elections was qualitative. You can find our methodology here.
There isn’t typically much ticket-splitting in modern Virginia statewide elections: 2021 had a record low difference between the best Republican and Democratic performance in the off-year statewide elections, but our forecasts this year suggest that ticket-splitting will be slightly higher than in 2021.
In the race for Lieutenant Governor, Democrat Ghazala Hashmi is favored with a 89% chance of victory over Republican John Reid, who has just a 11% chance of victory; Hashmi is up by 8 points in our model. Similarly in the race for Attorney General, incumbent Jason Miyares (R) is down by 8.4% against former Delegate Jay Jones (D): Miyares has a 10% chance of winning to Jones’ 90% chance of winning.
Most observers of the Virginia election this year likely won’t be surprised by these statewide forecasts, whether familiar or unfamiliar with them, other than the race for Lieutenant Governor being the closest at the moment. What is likely the most surprising part of our forecasts in Virginia this year is our House of Delegates model, which based on our conversations with Democrats and Republicans across all levels and professions is more favorable to the House Democrats compared with what political insiders believe, likely based either whatever internal data they’re privy to, a lack of missing the 2017 election cycle, recency bias, or a combination of these.
Currently, Democrats are favored to flip 7 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates, which makes them favored in 58 seats in the chamber this year. The chamber is almost as likely to be controlled by Democrats as Abigail Spanberger is to win the race for Governor, with a 76% chance of a Democratic majority, a 15% chance of a Democratic supermajority, a 2% chance of a tie, and a 6% chance of a Republican majority.
Democrats are favored to win 6/8 seats that Republicans hold that voted for Kamala Harris last year, as well as 1 seat that narrowly voted for Donald Trump last year. There are a couple of competitive seats on the board that Republicans are favored in that narrowly voted for Donald Trump in 2024 that Democrats aren’t really trying in at the moment based on recent campaign finance reports, such as HD-99 in northern Virginia Beach, HD-52 in Lynchburg, HD-34 in Harrisonburg— make sure to check out a piece on these seats coming out tomorrow on our website.
The lack of investment is similar to the 2017 cycle in that leadership in the Democratic caucus likely is opting out of investment in these seats for their presidential partisan lean. The most Republican-leaning seat that Democrats seem to be targeting is HD-41 in Blacksburg, which voted for Donald Trump by 2.9% in 2024; HD-99 voted for Trump by 4.8%, HD-52 voted for Trump by 11.7%, and HD-34 voted for Trump by 6.5%. While these seats are certainly ‘reaches’ for Democrats, previous election data and trends suggest they could be in play if they sense an opportunity.
Such opportunities for Democrats are mostly driven by whatever President Trump’s approval is at. At the end of the day, the net loss in presidential approval from the start of a President’s term compared to its standing by Election Day is more often than not the most useful tool in predicting the outcome of Virginia’s gubernatorial-year elections.
That’s not great for Virginia Republicans, as Trump’s decline in approval is similar to that of his loss in approval in the 2017 cycle. Should Trump’s approval continue its trajectory through Election Day, Democrats’ chances of winning the statewide races by large margins and thus flipping more seats in the House of Delegates would widen.
One thing our forecast doesn’t take into account as we draw comparisons to 2017 is the vastly different electorate that makes up the two parties this year. In 2017, while Republican Ed Gillespie lost the race for Governor by 8.9%, he still carried white, wealthy counties with a large college-educated population such as Stafford and James City, and barely lost Chesterfield. These counties have zoomed leftward over the last eight years as Republicans trade off voters here with voters that are of a lower propensity, or less likely to turn out in non-presidential years, especially conservative minority voters without a college education.
Even though we know this trend to be true, it’s hard to quantify in a forecast. Virginia elections are a lot like a mile long race track: the first quarter mile are the presidential results, the next are the results in the gubernatorial year, the third quarter are the midterm results, and the last quarter are the ‘gubernatorial midterm’ elections when the House of Delegates and State Senate are up the year before the presidential election. The closer you are to the end of the track, the easier it is to predict the results of what will happen in Virginia elections, as you have more data to work with.
We’re at the beginning of the track, and the results from 2024 bode well for Democrats, especially in the House of Delegates as they have a geographical advantage in the chamber due to their gains with white, affluent and college-educated voters in Republican-held districts while Republicans’ gains have been made in mostly uncompetitive seats.
This year’s elections will be the first real test of what the makeup of the electorate will look like throughout the rest of Trump’s second term up until 2027. This is why gubernatorial year elections are harder to predict than the Virginia elections that occur before the presidential year: we’re just past the quarter mile.
We’re rapidly approaching the end of the gubernatorial quarter mile, and Democrats are over 400 yards ahead of the Republicans.
