The Republican Party won a majority of the votes in Virginia’s rural areas in this week’s gubernatorial election, but the margin dropped significantly compared to both the 2021 election and the 2024 presidential race, a Daily Yonder analysis shows.
Rural voters in Virginia were part of a statewide shift toward the Democratic Party since the last gubernatorial election in 2021, according to a Daily Yonder analysis.
Democrat Abigail Spanberger defeated Republican Winsome Earle-Sears by 15 points this week, a marked turnaround from the 2021 governor’s race when Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated Democrat Terry McAuliffe by 2 points.
Rural Virginia moved 12 points toward the Democratic Party compared to 2021, from a Republican advantage of 40 points in 2021 to a Republican margin of 28 points in this week’s election. In the 2024 presidential election, rural Virginians supported Republican Donald Trump by 34 points.
The Democratic shift in voter preferences occurred statewide but was largest in the state’s metropolitan areas, especially the Northern Virginia suburbs outside Washington, D.C., and the Tidewater region.
In large metropolitan areas, voters shifted toward the Democratic Party by about 17 points from 2021 to 2025.
Voters in the state’s small metros moved 16.1 percentage points toward the Democrats, the largest shift outside the major metropolitan counties. This group of cities – including Fairfax, Harrisonburg, Radford, and Staunton – gave 44.3% of their vote to Democrats in 2021. Democrats earned 52.4% of the small city vote.
Turnout was a major factor in the shift toward the Democratic side of the ticket. Democrats turned out more voters in 2025 than they did four years ago in every type of county. Democrats saw their biggest turnout gain (24%) in small metropolitan areas. Republicans, meanwhile, had fewer voters in 2025 than in 2021 in every category of county, with the biggest loss (20%) in the core counties of major metropolitan areas.
A similar pattern in turnout was apparent when comparing the 2025 governor’s race to the 2024 presidential election. (Turnout is always lower in off-year gubernatorial races in Virginia than in the preceding year’s presidential election, so the numbers are negative.)
Republican turnout statewide in 2025 was 30% lower than in the 2024 presidential election, while Democrat turnout was just 16% lower.
