Democratic candidate Abigail Spanberger will defeat Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears in the Virginia gubernatorial race, CBS News projected Tuesday, marking one of Democrats’ first major victories since President Trump’s win last year.
Spanberger will be Virginia’s first female governor.
Virginia’s off-year gubernatorial race tends to serve as a referendum on the president who was elected a year prior — and historically, the president’s party has almost always lost.
National politics were a throughline in this year’s race, especially the Trump administration’s sweeping federal layoffs and the still-unresolved month-long government shutdown, which has forced most federal workers to go without pay. Both issues are potent in Virginia, which has nearly 150,000 federal civilian jobs and is home to scores of military personnel.
Spanberger, a former CIA officer and congresswoman, positioned herself as an adversary of the Trump administration and sought to link Earle-Sears to Mr. Trump. She frequently tried to capitalize on frustration over federal layoffs and Mr. Trump’s tariffs.
Virginia has moved leftward in recent years, driven by shifts in the fast-growing suburbs of Washington, D.C., though Democrats lost ground last year, with Mr. Trump boosting his share of the statewide vote from 44% in 2020 to 46.1% in 2024.
A year later, however, the president’s approval rating in Virginia stands at 45%, with 54% disapproving, according to an Emerson College poll of likely voters taken last week, a possible liability for Republicans.
But the race also follows months of uncertainty for the Democratic Party, which was stung by its 2024 loss and is still riven by disagreements between its moderate and progressive factions on the party’s strategy moving forward. Meanwhile, just 34% of U.S. adults hold a favorable view of the party, compared to 41% for the GOP, according to a CBS News poll from last month.
Earle-Sears, a Marine Corps veteran and former state lawmaker, took aim at Spanberger over immigration and the participation of transgender students in school sports.
In recent weeks, the race has been dominated by a scandal in the usually lower-profile Virginia attorney general election, after text messages surfaced showing Democratic nominee Jay Jones used violent and incendiary language toward Republicans. Spanberger condemned the messages, but Earle-Sears pressed her to call for Jones to drop out of the race.
Spanberger campaigned in the closing stretch with high-profile Democrats like former President Barack Obama, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
Earle-Sears drew on support from Virginia’s popular but term-limited incumbent Gov. Glenn Youngkin, whose economic record Earle-Sears has touted.
But the Republican candidate wasn’t explicitly endorsed by Mr. Trump, the leader of her party, even though the president gave his “complete and total endorsement” to the GOP nominees in Virginia’s attorney general race and New Jersey’s gubernatorial race. Mr. Trump has offered some support for Earle-Sears — but not by name.
“I think the Republican candidate is very good, and I think she should win because the Democrat candidate’s a disaster,” he told reporters two weeks ago, adding, “I haven’t been too much involved in Virginia.”
