The 2025 Election for Virginia's Governor Is Going to Be Very Close
The election will be decided by which candidate can get a better turnout.
Introduction
In my previous article, I reviewed the prospects for the House of Delegates in Virginia’s 2025 General Election and concluded that Democrats have a preliminary advantage. This may be surprising, considering that Democrats did poorly nationally in the 2024 General Election and that the Democratic Party is now at a nadir of its popularity since at least 2008.
In addition to the House of Delegates, Virginia will elect a new Governor in 2025. For several reasons, this tends to get more national coverage than other gubernatorial races. Virginia elects a new Governor in the year after the election of the U.S. President, and this occurs in an odd-numbered year with few other major elections. Furthermore, Virginia’s electoral politics are very close.
The current Governor is Glenn Youngkin, a Republican. He won the 2021 election with 50.6% of the vote against Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat who won 48.6%. However, by law, the Governor of Virginia cannot run for reelection.
The presumptive candidates are Republican Winsome Earle-Sears, the current Vice Governor, and Democrat Abigail Spanberger, a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Merle Rutledge has announced his intent to seek the Republican nomination for Governor in the 2025 election, so there will at least be a Republican primary.
Polls Thus Far
Five polls thus far have asked Virginians about their intentions in the 2025 gubernatorial election.
Christopher Newport University (CNU) Wason Center for Civic Leadership
Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs
Today’s polls tend to have abysmal response rates, making it critical that the results are weighted to demographic totals known from external sources. I could not find detailed methodology or results for the Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy poll, and the Virginia Mercury article reporting the poll’s results does not mention weighting, so I discarded the poll from consideration.2
Only one of the four polls dared to report its response rate — the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs poll. It had a 6.4% response rate for landlines and an 8.9% response rate for mobile phones. I suspect that the other polls had similar response rates.
The other four polls weighted their results by the variables of age, gender, education, race, and region. In addition, the co/efficient and Emerson College poll results were weighted by party affiliation, whereas the VCU and CNU polls were not. This may have been a conscious decision for the VCU poll since its target population is adult Virginians rather than registered or likely voters. However, this seems to have been an oversight for the CNU poll, which was supposed to target registered voters.
Other than these differences, the four polls are similar. All four are telephone-based polls that targeted both mobile phones and landlines. In addition, the Emerson College poll supplemented its telephone-based sample with an online panel.3
Results
Sears vs. Spanberger
Two of the polls report that the proportion of respondents intending to vote for Winsome Earle-Sears (R) and Abigail Spanberger (D) are within the poll’s margins of error of each other.
In the Emerson College poll, 41.8% of respondents would vote for Spanberger, and 41.0% would vote for Sears. This is within the poll’s margin of error of 3 percentage points and far less than the 13.1% of respondents who are still undecided.
The co/efficient poll reported that Spanberger and Sears were tied in the results at 40%, with 15% of respondents still undecided.
However, the other two polls reported a preference for Spanberger.
The CNU poll reports that 44% of respondents would vote for Spanberger versus 39% who would vote for Sears. The 5 percentage point difference is greater than the reported margin of error of 3.6. Still, the difference is less than the 16% of respondents who are still undecided.
The VCU poll found the largest lead for Spanberger at 10 percentage points, with 44% of respondents expressing intent to vote for Spanberger versus 34% intending to vote for Sears. This is larger than the reported margin of error of 4.73 percentage points but smaller than the proportion of undecided responses at 17%.
Discussion
Two polls report a dead heat between Sears and Spanberger (Emerson and co/efficient), and two report a lead for Spanberger (VCU and CNU). How do we resolve this?
To start with, recall that the VCU and CNU polls did not weigh for partisan affiliation. I looked for the unweighted counts of respondents by partisan affiliation for these two polls.
The VCU poll had 343 respondents who consider themselves Republicans, 375 who consider themselves Democrats, and 74 who consider themselves independents. The result of the VCU poll (a 10 percentage point advantage for Spanberger) is likely due to interviewing more Democrats than Republicans coupled with a lack of weight adjustments by partisan affiliation.4
The CNU poll also did not do weight adjustments by partisan affiliation, so it is also vulnerable to this same problem. However, the CNU poll didn’t report unweighted counts of respondents, so I cannot be sure about the partisan affiliations of its respondents.
Even if we give the CNU poll the benefit of the doubt, we have two polls that report a dead heat between Sears and Spanberger and one that reports a slight lead for Spanberger (5 percentage points) and is potentially flawed.
The only sound conclusion we can draw at this point is that it looks like Virginia’s 2025 gubernatorial election will be another very close one.
Breakdown by Party
As expected, there is a strong partisan difference in candidate preference.
All four polls report that few Republicans will vote for Spanberger, and few Democrats will vote for Sears. Independent voters are evenly split between the two major candidates.
The last gubernatorial election was the 2021 General Election, which had a turnout of 54.9%. In other words, of all the registered voters in Virginia, about half actually voted in 2021.
Like many American elections, the 2024 election for Governor of Virginia will likely be decided by which candidate can get the highest turnout out of her constituency.
Approval of Youngkin
Typically, the approval of the incumbent is an indicator of the direction of an upcoming election. As previously stated, the Governor of Virginia is limited to one concurrent term, so incumbent approval is less relevant in Virginia gubernatorial elections.
Nonetheless, the presumptive Republican candidate is the Lieutenant Governor, so the perception of the Governor can affect the candidate’s chances. A similar phenomenon occurred in 2024 when U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris ran for President after Joe Biden stepped aside.
The Emerson College poll reports that 48.3% of respondents have a favorable view of Glenn Youngkin versus 35.1% who have an unfavorable view. For comparison, the Emerson College poll found that President Biden had 43.4% approval versus 50.2% disapproval among registered voters in Virginia.
The co/efficient poll reports 59% approval of Youngkin’s job versus 41% disapproval.
The CNU poll found a result of 53% approval of Youngkin’s job versus 33% disapproval.
Even the VCU poll, which had more respondents who considered themselves Democrats than Republicans, found 51% approval for Youngkin versus 38% disapproval.
Therefore, disapproval of the incumbent Governor Youngkin is likely not a drag on the campaign of Vice Governor Earle-Sears in the same way that disapproval of President Biden was a drag on Vice President Harris’ campaign.
Conclusion
Early polls of voters in Virginia found that the presumptive candidates for Governor — Abigail Spanberger (D) and Winsome Earle-Sears (R) — are essentially tied.
All of the polls find a heavy partisan valence in voter preference. Very few Republicans will vote for Spanberger, and very few Democrats will vote for Earle-Sears. The last gubernatorial election had only 54.9% turnout. Therefore, which candidate’s constituency turns out at a higher rate will likely determine the 2025 election for Governor of Virginia.
Governor Youngkin’s approval ratings remain relatively good, and the perception of the current Governor is unlikely to harm Vice Governor Earle-Sears’ campaign.
The race for Governor appears to be a toss-up, and Democrats enjoy an advantage in the election for the House of Delegates. Because Democrats already have a majority in the Virginia Senate, which is not up for election in 2025, they have an opportunity to control all three elected bodies in the Virginia government, much as Republicans did after the 2021 General Election.
However, Republicans could just as easily keep the Governorship. Republicans could also win a majority in the House of Delegates, though they would have to win more competitive districts than Democrats. A trifecta is not on the table for Republicans because the Senate is controlled by Democrats. However, winning either the Governorship or the House of Delegates would spoil a Democratic trifecta.
co/efficient is a pollster for the Northern Virginia Republican Business Forum. I don’t exclude polls due to partisan affiliation as long as they meet my methodological standards.
For the record, the Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy poll found the difference in the proportion of respondents intending to vote for Spanberger versus Sears to be within the margin of error of the poll, so is consistent with the conclusion of this article.
For any fan of Bayesian statistics out there, the Emerson College poll was also unique in that it apparently had a Bayesian statistician do its survey work. The results were reported as a credible interval instead of a confidence interval.
Recall that the VCU poll’s target population — unlike the other three polls — is all adult Virginians, not likely or registered voters. This might have to do with the VCU poll’s lack of adjustment by partisan affiliation.
I personally still think that Spanberger is the (slight?) favorite because she's a moderate Democrat. She spoke out against the Defund the Police movement after the Democrats lost seats in the House in 2020, for instance.