Central Virginia’s voter turnout tells a bigger story about who showed up for this year’s election

You might’ve heard: Virginia just saw a full-on Democratic sweep. Governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and House majority are all blue after the Nov. 4 elections.

How this happened has been the talk of the nation. Many national publications have linked the Democratic surge to Northern Virginia, where voters — many facing job losses from federal spending cuts — turned out en masse. (Here’s an article from Politico I found particularly useful to understand Virginia’s election and what it could mean nationally.) And that is true.

But it doesn’t tell the whole story.

A week later, central Virginia’s voter turnout tells a bigger story about who showed up for this year’s election — and maybe why.

“I think Democrats were enthusiastic because they were excited about [Gov.-elect Abigail] Spanberger, because they wanted to build a margin in the House of Delegates, and because this was the first opportunity after Trump’s win in 2024 to send a signal that this is not the direction that they want the country going in,” said Jennifer Lawless, a politics professor at the University of Virginia who studies voter behavior and political ambition. “Republicans, I think, were not particularly enthusiastic about their candidates.”

Results are still preliminary (provisional ballots cast by folks not registered to vote on Election Day are still being counted in many counties), but these early numbers show Republicans lost ground in even some of the the reddest counties.

Take Buckingham County. During the last governor’s election in 2021, Republican Glenn Youngkin secured nearly 64% of votes there. This year? Preliminary numbers show the Republican candidate Winsome Earle-Sears took just 59%.

The Republican lead dropped elsewhere in central Virginia, too. In Fluvanna County, Youngkin won 57% of voters in 2021. This year, just six votes separate Earle-Sears and Spanberger. The Republican candidate held a 0.04% lead.

And in at least one historically Republican central Virginia county, the tables turned completely. Nelson County voters, who backed Youngkin with 57% of votes in 2021, swung blue this year. Democrat Spanberger received just over 50% of the vote.

Down the ticket, the decline in Republican votes extended to the lieutenant governor and attorney general races, though the margins were not as large as the governor’s race.

This was particularly true for the attorney general’s race, which was the closest of the three top seats.

“The Republicans didn’t have the kind of enthusiasm for Winsome Earle-Sears as would have generated really record turnout,” Lawless said. “But because [Attorney General-elect] Jay Jones looked vulnerable, I think that people did turn out for [Attorney General Jason] Miyares.”

Lawless was referring to the national backlash in October, after text messages from 2022 emerged in which Jones suggested House Speaker Todd Gilbert should be shot and described a scenario where Gilbert’s wife would witness their children die in a school shooting. (You can read more reporting on the messages and the fallout from Virginia Mercury).

That could explain why the margins were closest in the attorney general race. But it wasn’t enough to overcome the blue wave.

“Spanberger’s message resonated in a way that a Republican message just was not going to resonate at this time,” Lawless said. “Focusing on affordability was a really big deal, especially amid the government shutdown, when you’ve got in Northern Virginia thousands and thousands of people who are working for no pay.”

Also, as a side note, voter turnout was fairly strong in central Virginia, with all of the counties we cover in the Central Virginia Voter Guide coming in at around a 60% turnout rate. Those numbers are roughly on par with previous governor elections.

So, thanks for voting, everyone!
Jessie Higgins, Democracy Editor