Governor

Democrat Abigail Spanberger leads Republican Winsome Earle Sears by 13 percentage points, 54 to 41, the same margin as our poll last week. Spanberger’s margin among voters who say they have already voted stands at 24 percentage points, slightly narrower than last week’s 29 percentage points, though still a formidable lead. Spanberger appears to be reversing some movement towards Republicans among nonwhite voters in the state; Sears leads by 2 points among white voters, while Spanberger holds a 56-point advantage among nonwhite voters. In particular, Spanberger leads by 74 percentage points among voters who identify as Black or African-American, 82 to 8. Among the most reliable voters, Spanberger leads big: Spanberger carries voters who have turned out in all 4 of the last general elections in Virginia by a 15-point margin.

When breaking down voters by how many of the last five general elections they have voted in, Spanberger holds high support amongst lower propensity voters and the highest propensity voters, while there’s a more competitive result for middle propensity voters.

Unsurprisingly, it’s more often than not that the “super voters” who rarely miss elections are making up a higher share of those who have already voted.

Lieutenant Governor

In the Lieutenant Governor’s race, Democrat Ghazala Hashmi leads Republican John Reid by 12 percentage points, 53-41, slightly better than her 11 percentage point lead in last week’s survey (though within the margin of error). Among those who say they have already voted, Hashmi leads by 25 percentage points. Hashmi’s voters look fairly similar to Spanberger’s, as there appears to be very little ticket-splitting in this race: just 1 percent of voters statewide say they will either vote for both Spanberger and Reid or Hashmi and Sears.

Attorney General

Democrat Jay Jones’ lead over Republican Jason Miyares has narrowed by one point since last week. He now leads by 4 percentage points, 49 to 46 (unrounded values give 49.4 percent of the vote to Jones and 45.6 percent to Miyares, a difference of 3.8 percentage points). Moreover, his lead is held up entirely by those who say they have already voted. He leads with this group by 20 percentage points. However, among voters who say they are definitely or probably voting, Miyares is ahead 54-46. Last week, Jones held a 1 percentage point lead among voters who said they are definitely voting but had not yet cast a ballot. This week, he trails among that group by 6 points (though that may partly be due to more voters having cast their ballots between last week and this week).

Unlike in the Lieutenant Governor’s race, we do see some ticket-splitting here. Six percent of Spanberger voters say they intend to vote for Miyares, while less than 1 percent of Sears voters say they will vote for Jones. And as we saw last week, Jones is still running behind both Spanberger and Hashmi with independent voters (voters that say they do not identify with or lean toward either political party). Spanberger leads among independents by 24 points, and Hashmi leads the group by 16 points. Jones does hold a lead with independents, but it’s smaller than either of the other statewide candidates at 12 percentage points, 47-35.

House of Delegates

In the generic ballot for the House of Delegates elections, Democrats hold a lead of 11 percentage points, with 53 percent of voters saying they will vote for the Democratic candidate in their race and 42 percent saying they will vote for the Republican candidate. That’s down one point from last week: Republicans have gained 2% while Democrats have gained 1%.

Executive Approval

President Donald Trump remains deep underwater with Virginia voters. Forty-one percent say that they approve of how he is handling his job as president, while 57 percent say they disapprove, including 54 percent who disapprove strongly.

By contrast, Glenn Youngkin’s job approval is almost dead even. The rounded numbers in the survey indicate a net job approval of -1, but if you consider unrounded values, Youngkin is underwater by less than a tenth of a percentage point.

Political Ideology

Twenty-three percent of likely voters in our survey identify as liberal, 31 percent as conservative, and 38 percent as “moderate; middle of the road.” In our previous survey, we offered respondents the option of “slightly” liberal or conservative when identifying their political ideology, which we removed in this survey. As a result, the political leanings in our poll are more in line with previous exit polling in the Commonwealth. However, given the results of the gubernatorial matchup in the previous survey, which closely aligned with the political leanings, it may be the case that allowing respondents to choose these options helps identify “soft” partisans more ably than the more rigid version of the question in this survey.

In last week’s survey, among voters who identified as “slightly conservative,” Sears led Spanberger 54 to 37. This weakness among soft conservatives dragged her overall numbers down with conservative-identified voters, with whom she earned only 85 percent of the vote. This week, however, without that language in the survey, 96 percent of conservative voters say that they did/will vote for Sears. Notably, Spanberger did not have a similar weakness last week among “slightly liberal” voters, 95 percent of whom said they intended to vote for Spanberger. In this week’s poll, Spanberger earns 98 percent of liberal voters. Voters who identify as “moderate; middle of the road” also give Spanberger an edge: she leads Sears 67 to 25 among these voters.

Methodology

This survey was fielded from October 26-28, 2025, among 614 registered likely voters in Virginia. Respondents were randomly chosen from a voter file provided by i360. Text messages containing a link to an online survey designed by the State Navigate Polling Team and hosted on the SurveyMonkey platform were sent to respondents by AllianceForge. The survey was weighted by age, race, gender, education, and party identification, with benchmarks derived from the voter file, Catalist, AP VoteCast, Gallup Quarterly National Party ID, and data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau. 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.

For full results, please see the topline and crosstabs.

Differences from 1st Survey

The choices in weighting differ from our previous statewide Virginia survey. This was after learning that the 2017 VA exit poll was incredibly unrepresentative of the actual demographics in that election, per Catalist’s analysis of previous Virginia elections during their recap of the 2021 election. The demographics have largely shifted more in favor of Republicans compared to our previous survey, i.e., its weights are less educated, whiter, and older.

We also decided to change our partisan weighting choices after learning about the unreliability of the 2017 exit poll. Using AP VoteCast data in 2018, 2020, 2021, and 2024 in Virginia, we were able to estimate what the measured Party ID was in those electorates. We decided to rely on “pushed” party ID, meaning that we weighted party ID by the inclusion of leaners as opposed to without them, like on the first survey. Below are our estimates for those previous elections.

We also examined Gallup’s quarterly national party ID tracker, which saw Democrats hold a 7-point advantage nationally in party ID in Q3. Typically, party ID changes from Q3 to Q4 worsen for the party in power in the White House by a few points. Of note, this is the largest shift from a previous year’s Q4 party ID to the following year’s Q3 party ID, with an 11-point shift toward Democrats.

When examining Virginia history over the last several decades, the party that does not have the White House usually has a turnout advantage, even in 2013 when Terry McAuliffe became the sole gubernatorial candidate to win a Virginia Governor’s race while being of the same party as the incumbent President since 1973 (albeit only slightly). Using hard data from AP VoteCast and Catalist and comparing with the change in the national party ID with Gallup, the Virginia electorate’s “leaned” party ID will likely skew Democratic. While it’s understandable for pollsters to weigh their Virginia polls by the exact results of the 2024 Presidential election in Virginia, such an occurrence would go against the norm of these gubernatorial elections, especially while President Trump’s approval rating is underwater nationally.