virginia governor’s race 2025
Photo Credit: Virginia Governor’s Office
the frontrunners can make history …
The Old Dominion has an off-cycle election every four years with an open seat available on election day, November 4, 2025. The state’s constitution prohibits incumbent governor Glenn Youngkin from seeking a consecutive term in Richmond's capital city.
Younkin’s lieutenant governor, Winsome Earle-Sears, is seeking the seat and is the odds-on favorite to win the Republican nomination on June 17th. Even though the Lt. Governor may be facing primary opposition, Earle-Sears will likely win the nod, especially after being endorsed by her popular boss.
The Democrats also appear ready to embrace former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger’s bid for their party’s nomination. Spanberger is a former CIA operative who held Virginia’s 7th district seat in Congress, winning elections in 2018, 2020, and 2022, before voluntarily not running in 2024 to run full-time for governor.
If either Earle-Sears or Spanberger is elected in November, they will be the state’s first female governor.
Virginia’s junior United States Senator Tim Kaine has called the election a “bell weather” on Donald Trump’s popularity, particularly in the face of massive federal employee layoffs in a state where more than 145,000 Virginians work for the federal government.
Earle-Sears hopes that a campaign that appears to be positioning itself as Youngkin 2.0 will prevail. Youngkin ran successfully in 2021 on an education and cultural issues platform that Earle-Sears is expanding upon.
In 2021, candidate Youngkin, an executive with the private equity firm Carlyle Group, ran against pandemic school closings due to COVID-19 challenges and critical race theory issues that the state’s more moderate and conservative voters mistrusted.
Earle-Sears has embraced President Trump’s opposition to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and transgender students competing in female sports. The broader campaign context for the Lt. Governor is to run on “common sense” arguments and pocketbook issues.
Although Democrats are having a hard time defending federal government reductions in employee overhead and are not successful so far in attempts to justify the perceived bloating, Virginia may be the exception to the rule in this case. Many voters do not argue with Mr. Trump’s use of Elon Musk to root out waste, fraud, and abuse in Washington, but they do take issue with how those reductions are being handled in early 2025.
Virginia is a moderate state that leans purple on occasion. Youngkin defeated former Virginia governor and Democratic National Committee chair Terry McAuliffe in the 2021 election by only two percent of the vote, replacing Democrat incumbent Ralph Northam, who could not run again.
virginia Republican Party Voters: 32.69%
virginia Democrat Party Voters: 49.38%
virginia unaffiliated Party Voters: 17.93%
Spanberger hopes President Trump’s aggressive cutbacks will benefit her campaign in a state where then-Vice President Kamala Harris defeated then-President Donald Trump by 5.8% of the vote.
Mrs. Spanberger is a married mother of three who graduated from the University of Virginia and earned an MBA from Purdue University. A centrist Democrat, Spanberger did not vote for Nancy Pelosi as the U.S. House speaker in 2019.
A Jamaican American by heritage, Mrs. Earle-Sears is a married mother of three. She graduated with an AA degree from Tidewater Community College, earned her undergraduate degree from Old Dominion University, and a master’s degree from Regent University. She is a former corporal in the United States Marines, and she served in the Virginia House of Delegates for one term after running for the U.S. House in 2004 and the U.S. Senate in 2018.
Virginia will present an interesting early indicator of how Donald Trump and his Make America Great Again colleagues govern the United States. Stay tuned. There will be more to come on this key race, without question.
it’s a race
Virginia Democrats hold an advantage over Virginia Republicans in party registration. However, independent voters comprise nearly 18% of the electorate, making independent voters (no party and minor party voters) a significant swing vote to factor into outcome predictions and campaign progress.
Both front-runner candidates have the opportunity to make history in Virginia by being the state’s first female governor. Both candidates are also highly qualified for the office.
A lot is at stake in the Virginia governor’s race because it will be a bell weather indicator of how Old Dominion voters view President Trump and his agenda in 2025. If Earle-Sears wins the race, the 2026 midterm elections will look strong for Mr. Trump and MAGA republicans. If, on the other hand, Spanberger wins, the Trump agenda will look like it will need a very rapid mid-course correction to keep the U.S. Senate and U.S. House in GOP hands.
This story will be updated as campaign events warrant.