On Tuesday night, the polls closed for the 2025 Virginia primaries. Democrats held contests for Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, and eight House of Delegates seats, whereas Republicans only held contests for eight seats in the House of Delegates.
The statewide Democratic primaries were both closely decided: State Senator Ghazala Hashmi emerged victorious in the race for Lieutenant Governor with just 27.5% of the vote to former Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney’s 26.7% of the vote, State Senator Aaron Rouse’s 26.2% of the vote and three other candidates garnering 19.7% of the vote. In the primary for Attorney General, former Delegate Jay Jones edged Henrico County Commonwealth’s Attorney Shannon Taylor, 50.9% – 49.1%. Hashmi currently leads by 3,759 votes, and Jones leads by 9,019 votes.
As the general election campaign proceeds, what should our takeaways be from the statewide primary results? Let’s break it down.
Richmond Dominates the Primary, and takes revenge upon Stoney
It became clear in the last stretch of the campaign that this was going to be an increasingly Richmond-centric primary electorate. Political insiders thought this boded well for Shannon Taylor, Ghazala Hashmi, and Levar Stoney.
But the Richmond area is what sunk Shannon Taylor and Levar Stoney: Stoney’s second-worst locality was Richmond City, even placing fourth and fifth in some precincts. Ghazala Hashmi won the city overwhelmingly, with 58.1% of the vote. The map is similar to what the 2023 Casino vote looks like, but there are several precincts that voted for the Casino that ‘flipped,’ if you will, to Hashmi. Anger amongst city residents toward Stoney for Navy Hill, the Casino referendums, and the water crisis are likely to blame for Stoney’s loss. Hashmi is leading in the city by 10,509 votes: almost 3x her statewide vote margin over Stoney.
Taylor also underperformed expectations in the Richmond area, which is what sunk her. In comparison to the 2021 Attorney General Democratic primary, Jones flipped Richmond City and Chesterfield County, which most observers expected to vote for Shannon Taylor.
A clean sweep for Clean Virginia
Close, but no cigar for Dominion Energy this year. For the first time ever, Clean Virginia has a statewide ticket: the anti-Dominion 501(c)(4) and PAC has endorsed Spanberger, Hashmi, and Jones, and supported the latter two in the primary. Dominion threw their support behind Taylor and Stoney.
The Dominion money likely made the primaries closer; Stoney and Taylor (especially Taylor) needed to financially compete with their opponents on the air. However, there was a tradeoff in losing progressive whites around the Commonwealth, especially for Taylor. Maps from Sabato’s Crystal Ball show that Jones flipped a lot of localities with white progressives: the college towns of Blacksburg, Harrisonburg, Charlottesville, Williamsburg and James City County, white progressive localities in Northern Virginia like Manassas City and Arlington, and white progressive neighborhoods in Richmond like the Museum District and the Fan.
The last of which helped us become the first outlet to call the race for Jay Jones since Richmond City was the slowest locality to report last night, and most of the vote was in heavily African-American neighborhoods (which supported Jones for the most part) and the white progressive neighborhoods (which were evenly divided between Jones and Taylor or went to Jones).
Democrats have a regionally, racially, and ideologically diverse ticket
Overall, this is probably the most progressive candidate that could have been produced in the Democratic primaries amongst the top contenders. Abigail Spanberger is notoriously center-left as per her voting record on DW-NOMINATE from VoteView. Some media outlets have discussed the possibility of progressive whites not turning out and costing Spanberger the general election, a take which we’re skeptical of, but Hashmi and Jones on the ticket, both of whom won progressive whites, that should ease such concerns.
Spanberger also now has a black ticketmate, which helps protect her Achilles’ heel of being a poor motivator for black voters in an off-year election. Having black representation on the campaign trail and on the air can help motivate black voters to come out and vote up and down the ballot for Democrats this year. Hashmi, who is South Asian, may also help with appealing to a demographic that Democrats lost last year, the Indian American vote.
Democrats were also going to at least double-up on one region (Richmond or Hampton Roads) in their ticket based on the top contenders in the primaries. They avoided an all-Richmond ticket and have Hampton Roads representation in Jones, who can be the Democrats’ voice for the region that swung hard to the right in 2021. There’s a lot of work ahead of them in the region, too, given the poor African American turnout in these localities in the primary.
