Former U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D) will be Virginia’s next governor and Democrats will reclaim the offices of lieutenant governor and attorney general on Tuesday, handing their party morale-boosting victories in a state where voters disproportionately felt the effects of the long-running government shutdown.
With 83% of precincts reporting, Spanberger was leading her rival, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears (R), 56% to 44%.
In the race for lieutenant governor, state Sen. Ghazala Hashmi (D) led radio show host John Reid (R) 54% to 46%. And in the race for attorney general, former Del. Jay Jones (D) defeated incumbent Jason Miyares (R) 52% to 48%.
The Associated Press called all three contests for the Democratic candidate.
Spanberger, 46, will be Virginia’s 75th governor — and, 249 years after Patrick Henry first occupied the office, the first woman to win election to the job. A former intelligence officer at the Central Intelligence Agency, she ran a campaign focused on her record in Congress and fighting crime, while accusing Earle-Sears of planning an outright ban on abortion rights.
“We sent a message to the whole world that in 2025, Virginia chose pragmatism over partisanship. We chose our Commonwealth over chaos,” Spanberger told fans at her victory rally in Richmond. “You all chose leadership that will focus relentlessly on what matters most: Lowering cost, keeping our communities safe and strengthening our economy for every Virginian.”
Spanberger also leaned heavily on President Trump’s growing unpopularity, especially after a government shutdown that has dragged on for more than a month before Election Day furloughed many of the more than 235,000 federal workers who live in Virginia.
According to AdImpact, a Virginia-based firm that monitors political television advertising, 48% of the televised spots run by Spanberger and her outside allies mentioned Trump.
Spanberger “always talked about creating jobs and the negative impact the reductions in force were having in our community,” state Sen. Barbara Favola (D) told Pluribus News. “There was certainly an anti-Trump vote there. People just received notices that their premiums were going to go up if they’re on the health care exchange. The timing could not have been more poignant in terms of sending a message.”
In an exit poll conducted by NBC News, almost six in ten voters said federal government cuts had impacted their family’s finances a lot, 20%, or a little, 39%. Even Republicans acknowledged that the government shutdown took a toll.
“A lot of people are still out of work wanting to get back to work. They’re taking their anger out on this ticket,” state Sen. Bryce Reeves (R) said in an interview Tuesday night. “It couldn’t come at a worse time, that’s for sure.”
Spanberger made substantial gains in Northern Virginia, the fastest-growing region of the state and the region that has proven key to Democratic successes in recent years. In Loudoun County, home to more than 12,000 federal workers, Spanberger was leading by 29 percentage points, a 12-point improvement on former Vice President Kamala Harris’s performance in the 2024 presidential contest. In Manassas city, another Washington exurb, Spanberger’s 30-point margin was a 16-point shift from 2024.
Trump did not endorse the Republican nominee. In a tele-town hall rally held on the eve of the election, Trump failed to so much as mention Earle-Sears’s name.
An Emerson College poll released last week found just 45% of Virginia voters approved of Trump’s handling of his job as president, compared with 49% who said they approve of the job Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) is doing.
Spanberger’s victory fits an historical pattern in Virginia, where governors are limited to a single four-year term, elected the year after a presidential contest: Since 1977, the president’s party has lost Virginia’s governorship with only one exception.
Both Spanberger and Earle-Sears avoided potential primary challenges earlier this year, though many Republicans harbored concerns about Earle-Sears’s abilities on the campaign trail. In the run-up to the general election, Spanberger raised more than twice as much money as Earle-Sears, nearly $54 million to about $26 million, according to campaign finance reports.
Jones, 36, faced the closest contest of the evening. His political future was thrown into question last month when the conservative National Review published text messages Jones had sent to Del. Carrie Coyner (R), a former colleague, in which he said he hoped then-House Speaker Todd Gilbert (R) got “two bullets in the head.”
Jones took responsibility for the messages and apologized, but Republicans used their existence — revealed just a month after the assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk and in the midst of a moment of heightened political violence — to cast Jones as unfit to serve. Even in the race for governor, Earle-Sears sought to tie Jones’s comments to Spanberger.
Polls through October showed Miyares pulling ahead, even as Spanberger continued to build her lead over Earle-Sears. But the outrage over the texts subsided as the government shutdown dragged on. Those close to Miyares said they believed he could have won had the texts come out closer to Election Day.
In the race for lieutenant governor, Hashmi, serving her second term in the Senate, will be the first Asian American person and the first Muslim to serve in statewide office. She narrowly beat out former Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney (D) and state Sen. Aaron Rouse (D) in a Democratic primary in which the three leading candidates were separated by fewer than 5,100 votes out of nearly half a million cast.
Reid won the Republican primary by default after his lone rival, Fairfax County Supervisor Pat Herrity (R), pulled out of the contest, citing health problems.
Hashmi declined to participate in debates during the general election, the second election cycle in a row in which no head-to-head debates were held.