“The rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated.” – Ticket-Splitting Voters, apparently
Abigail Spanberger has reached a new zenith in the race for Virginia Governor.
A new State Navigate poll conducted between October 17th and October 20th shows Spanberger with a 13-point lead to become the next Governor of Virginia, her widest lead yet in any public poll. In State Navigate’s survey of 694 likely voters, Spanberger has 55% of the vote to Republican Winsome Sears’s 42%. Only one other poll has shown a similar result in both percentages and margin of victory, which was the Washington Post/Schar School poll in late September.
Among respondents who claim that they have already cast a ballot, 64 percent say they voted for Spanberger, while 35 percent say they voted for Sears. Spanberger’s lead narrows among those who have not yet voted, but among voters who say they are definitely or probably voting, she maintains a 54 to 45 lead. Among Independent voters (voters who do not identify as Democrats or Republicans or lean toward either party), Spanberger leads Sears 72 to 17. Of note, Spanberger is making large gains amongst lower-income voters compared to Kamala Harris’s 2024 performance, with a 9-point shift amongst voters making <$30,000, and a 2-point shift amongst voters making $30-$50K a year.
In the race for Lieutenant Governor, the odds look mostly the same compared to those for Governor. Democrat Ghazala Hashmi leads Republican John Reid by 11 percentage points in our poll, 53 to 42. Among those who say they already voted, Hashmi leads by 25 percentage points. Among those who say they will definitely or probably vote, but have not yet cast a ballot, Hashmi’s lead narrows to 6 percentage points, at 51 to 45. Among Independents, Hashmi leads Reid 57 to 25.
The most competitive and contentious statewide race in Virginia is for Attorney General in the wake of Jay Jones’s various scandals throughout the month of October. As a result, it’s more likely than not that we’ll see ticket-splitting between the statewide races unlike any we’ve seen in the last decade. We haven’t witnessed such a gap in the Commonwealth’s vote since 2013, when there was an 11-point difference in margin between the Attorney General and Lieutenant Governor races.
Democrat Jay Jones leads Republican Jason Miyares by 5 percentage points, 50 to 45. Jones’ lead is buoyed by those who have already cast their ballots, who say that they voted for him by 18 percentage points. Among those who say they are definitely voting, but have not yet cast a ballot, Jones’ lead falls to 1 percentage point, and among those who say they are probably voting, Miyares leads by 9.
Jones limps behind other statewide Democrats among Independent voters, with only a 17-point advantage among Independents, compared with 55 percentage points for Spanberger and 32 percentage points for Hashmi. And while Spanberger and Reid both have almost all of their own party on board, Jones is also slightly underperforming with Democrats. Less than 1 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters say they did/will vote for Sears, and just 2 percent say they did/will vote for Reid, but 5 percent say they did/will vote for Miyares. Moreover, fewer voters say they are definitely in Jones’ camp: 36 percent say they will definitely vote for Jones, compared with 49 percent for Spanberger and 42 percent for Hashmi.
In the poll overall, we see relatively little ticket splitting among voters, though it’s certainly higher than in 2021; for example, just 3 percent of Spanberger voters plan to vote for Reid, and 2 percent of Sears voters plan to vote for Hashmi. However, the Attorney General race appears to be something of an exception; among voters who say they did/will vote for Spanberger, 7 percent also say they did/will vote for Miyares. One percent of Sears voters plan to vote for Jones.
In the House of Delegates, Republicans better hope that their incumbents will overperform the generic ballot and statewide environment, as is typically the case in state legislative elections in Virginia. In the generic ballot for the House of Delegates elections, Democrats hold a lead of 12 percentage points, with 53 percent of respondents saying they did/will vote for the Democratic candidate in their district and 41 percent saying they did/will vote for the Republican candidate. This would roughly translate to Democrats flipping between 10 and 12 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates, reaching between 61 and 63 seats.
Weighing down Republicans’ chances of winning in Virginia this year is, of course, President Trump. The President is deeply unpopular with likely voters this year: 40 percent say that they approve of how he is handling his job as president, while 59 percent say they disapprove, including 55 percent who disapprove strongly.
Governor Glenn Youngkin’s approval rating is underwater by just one percentage point, with 46 percent of likely Virginia voters saying they approve of his job performance and 47 percent saying they disapprove.
Thirty-two percent of likely voters in the poll identify as either very liberal, liberal, or slightly liberal; Spanberger earns 99 percent of the vote among these voters. Forty-one percent of likely voters identify as either very conservative, conservative, or slightly conservative. Among these voters, Sears earns 85 percent of the vote. In particular, Sears lags among slightly conservative voters, with only 54 percent of these voters saying they did/will vote for Sears, compared with 95 percent of slightly liberal voters saying they did/will vote for Spanberger. In addition, voters that identify as “moderate; middle of the road” lean heavily toward Spanberger; she leads Sears among that group 68 to 29.
Notably, this poll has more voters identifying as either liberal or conservative than in Virginia exit polls in 2021 or 2017. In exit polling conducted in 2021, for example, 23 percent of Virginia voters identified as liberal, 36 percent as conservative, and 41 percent as moderate. It’s possible that the inclusion of the options “slightly liberal” and “slightly conservative” may have resulted in more precise ideological identification in this survey than in previous exit polling.
This survey was fielded from October 17-20, 2025, among 694 registered likely voters in Virginia. Respondents were randomly chosen from a voter file provided by i360, and texted a link that directed them to complete an online survey hosted on the SurveyMonkey platform. Fieldwork was conducted with support from AllianceForge. The survey was weighted by age, race, gender, education, and party identification, with benchmarks derived from the voter file, data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, and exit polls from the 2017 and 2021 Virginia gubernatorial races. The margin of error is 4.0% for a 95% confidence interval. The survey was designed and conducted by State Navigate. This survey was not sponsored by any party, candidate, or candidate’s committee.
After a flurry of polls yesterday and our statewide poll today, the State Navigate forecast now shows Abigail Spanberger with an 11% lead in the race for Governor with a 98% chance of victory; Ghazala Hashmi has a 7.6% lead in the race for Lieutenant Governor with a 92% chance of victory. The only competitive race is the one for Attorney General: Jay Jones has seen his lead collapse in recent weeks and now only leads by 4.6% with an 81% chance of victory. Given the poll’s margin of error and Miyares’s earning of Spanberger voters thus far, he has a path to pulling off an upset if he can pull off “soft” supporters of Jones and win undecided voters. 13 days to go, don’t rule it out.
