Virginia Governor’s Race Preview

As one of just two states holding statewide elections this fall, Virginia will be an early test of the messages voters will hear in next year’s midterm elections. So far, Virginia Republicans, led by Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears at the top of the ticket for Governor, are leaning hard into the culture war issues that helped return Donald Trump to the White House. Democrats, led by Representative Abigail Spanberger, are running on the economy and rising prices. 

At a campaign rally to kick off early voting, which began last week, Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin spoke in apocalyptic terms of the “fork of darkness” and the “fork of wrong” if voters choose a Democratic administration. At the same event, Earle-Sears, who is running to replace the term-limited Youngkin, slammed Democrats on immigration and crime. “We don’t need more criminals,” she told rallygoers. 

Spanberger, meanwhile, has unveiled an economic development plan for the state involving new investments in apprenticeships, job training and workforce development. She’s also criticized the GOP for a growing affordability crisis. “The Trump budget raises health care costs, raises mortgages, raises the price of electricity and gas,” as one ad declares.

So far, polls show Spanberger enjoying a consistent lead over Earle-Sears, and Spanberger also holds a formidable cash advantage. In July and August, Spanberger raised $14 million, compared to just $5.2 million by Earle-Sears. History, moreover, favors a Spanberger victory; in all but one instance, Virginia’s off-year races have always favored the party that lost the White House. So Democrats shouldn’t read too much into a win, cautions pollster Pete Brodnitz, founder of Expedition Strategies. “No state is a microcosm of the country,” he said. Brodnitz’s clients have included former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Sens. Tim Kaine (D-VA), Jeff Merkeley (D-OR) and Chris Coons (D-DE), among others.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity. The full interview is available on Spotify, YouTube, and iTunes. 

Anne Kim: Just to catch people up, Virginia is choosing a new governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general this fall and all 100 members of the House of Delegates. It’s one of the very few states that has an off year election—New Jersey is the other. Before we get into the dynamics of the race itself, tell us what this election represents as far as the hopes and dreams of both parties nationally. Is it a bellwether for 2026 or even 2028? 

Pete Brodnitz: People often consider it a bellwether, but the reality is that is sometimes presages what happens in the subsequent year and sometimes it doesn’t. If national themes become part of the campaign, then it gives you an idea of how those themes might play out in the next national elections. It’s also sort of an “off-off Broadway” election, so turnout becomes important.

The race could become a bellwether in the sense that it gives you an indication of which side seems to be galvanized to show up in an off-off-year election. Sometimes the Virginia elections are just about things that are taking place in Virginia, but in this case, Trump is part of the debate. 

However, Virginia is not exactly like the rest of the country. No state is a microcosm of the country. Virginia is very similar to the country in some ways, but it’s also different in a really important respect because it’s very diverse. It has rural area and urban ones. It’s mostly suburban, but it’s also one of the most college-educated states in terms of the percentage of the public that has a college education. New Jersey, by the way, is also one of the most college-educated states. So both of them are a little different from the rest of the country, and that’s really important because whether or not you have a college degree tends to relate to how you’re going to vote these days. So that’s a big caveat on saying that what happens in Virginia or New Jersey indicates what’s going to happen nationally.

Anne Kim: Let’s look at the gubernatorial candidates and what each of them brings to the table. Abigail Spanberger is a former intelligence officer and was the first Democrat in 50 years to win Virginia’s 7^th district, which was the seat  formerly held by [former House Majority Leader] Eric Cantor. And then on the other side—also history-making, Winston Earle-Sears is Virginia’s first Black Lieutenant Governor and the first Black woman to ever hold statewide office in Virginia. Also a veteran, she served in the Marine Corps, and then before that she was in the Virginia House of Delegates. What do their biographies tell you about the nature of this race and what both parties might be thinking about who might be their standard bearers going forward?

Pete Brodnitz: Funny enough, Virginia actually has a very bad record when it comes to electing women to statewide office. It’s one of the only states that has never elected a female governor and yet both nominees are women. I don’t think it’s a centerpiece of the campaign, but it’s an unusual fact when it comes to how they compete with one another. 

Another unusual aspect of this campaign is that the Republican candidate is Black, and that’s a really important constituency that largely votes for the Democratic candidate. So it means that both sides have to compete heavily for that group of voters, which is usually about 16 percent of the electorate. 

Virginia is also one of the states that has the largest currentor past military service population, so there’s a really big military component to the Virginia electorate. There are important military bases, and a huge naval presence in Virginia Beach, plus the Pentagon in northern Virginia. 

So to have two candidates with a military background also means you’ve got an unusual competition happening. Usually you might have one candidate who has that kind of background, but it’s pretty unusual to have two. I don’t know that there’s a parallel.

Anne Kim: Let’s turn then to the question of campaign issues and the strategies the campaigns are using. Looking at their campaign ads, it definitely seems that Earle-Sears is leaning in on culture issues—her new ad attacks transgender Americans—while Abigail Spanberger’s ads are focused on kitchen-table issues and affordability. They’re very different appeals. How do you think these messages are going to land in Virginia?

Pete Brodnitz: So I’m looking at a Roanoke college poll that just came out a few weeks ago, and it looks like economic issues are the top concern. And that’s a little complicated for the Republicans—or at least it should be.

One of the questions the poll asked is whom do you trust on inflation and rising prices, and it’s basically a tie. Thirty-six percent say they trust Republicans more, and 33 percent trust Democrats more. So why does that matter? 

Elections and campaigns are designed to try and control the question voters are asking themselves when they go and vote. So if Sears is trying to control the dialogue, she probably wants voters to think she going to be a governor like Youngkin, who has good ratings in that Roanoke poll.

So it seems like Spanberger is trying to compete on the bread and butter issues to try and create a little bit more of an advantage than maybe she has right now, according to this one poll. And this poll, by the way, says people don’t know either candidate all that well. There’s a little bit of a Democratic advantage in general, but on that economic issue, it’s almost a draw. 

Donald Trump is also very unpopular in Virginia. He lost the state, by the way, and he lost the state with a larger margin than preceding Republican candidates for governor. He’s not a popular guy in this state. So Spanberger is trying to make Earle-Sears not a Youngkin Republican, but a Trump Republican. She’s probably hoping to generate good turnout in the off-year election by doing that—making sure that Democratic voters who might take a pass on the election remember Donald Trump and remember to show up. 

Anne Kim: What extent is this race actually a referendum on Trump or a referendum on Youngkin?

Pete Brodnitz: They can choose to make it a referendum or not make it a referendum. From what I’ve seen, it looks like the Spanberger side is choosing to make a referendum on Trump. For instance, they’re now running an ad that features the endorsement of two former Republican members of Congress. So that’s about getting cross-party support. That’s a pitch to independent voters who are sick of partisan politics.

Now, the challenge here where exactly are they running that ad? Because if you run that kind of thing in rural Virginia, you might have the same kind of experience that Terry McAuliffe had against Youngkin, when you run an ad against Trump and generate enthusiasm among the Trump voters. 

Anne Kim: At the moment, there’s a lot of rage in Northern Virginia because there are so many federal workers—and former federal workers—who have been bearing the brunt of Trump’s attacks on federal workers, firings by DOGE, funding cuts at NIH, troops in DC, you name it. How is all that going to factor into this question of turnout and can the Northern Virginia turnout swamp what’s happening in other parts of the state?

Pete Brodnitz: I think it’s a big problem for the Republican side. There’s going to be a lot of Democratic enthusiasm because of the fear and the frustration that you just described. Democrats will be counting on banking votes in Northern Virginia. 

Anne Kim: Last question: What do you foresee as having the possibility of radically changing the dynamics of the race as it looks like today? What are some possible scenarios that could really scramble what happens in November or change the trajectory that we’re seeing now?

Pete Brodnitz: Well, the Trump administration is doing what they can to make sure that  we don’t have a lot of information about the health of the economy—changing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and now saying that maybe we shouldn’t have corporate reporting. I wouldn’t be surprised if that is an intentional gambit to make sure that there is less information publicly available about the health of the economy. And the reason why I say it is because the big thing that could change is us actually tipping into this recession that we’ve been on the cusp of now for a long time. 

Because if we do tip into a recession, it’s because of the Trump tariffs. And in terms of voters connecting the dots between a recession and anything that might have caused the recession, I think the most likely answer that voters will come up with is that tariffs really didn’t work out for the economy. 

Well, that makes the economic issues much more front and center. It also makes it harder to run on the Youngkin record if people perceive that the Virginia economy is weak. For me, that’s probably the most likely thing. The only other would be that we go to war with Venezuela or Venezuela goes to war with us because the United States is bombing their boats. If you go to war, that could change the dynamic, particularly in a state that has a heavy military population, but that’s a really big unknown.