The Virginia gubernatorial race between Republican Winsome Earle-Sears and Democrat Abigail Spanberger has already been won by the latter if one takes the polls seriously. Yet, actual ballots cast during the first week of early voting suggest that the electorate is ignoring the polls. Early voting for the 2025 general election began on September 19 and, according to the Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP), turnout is twice what it was in 2021 and it has been particularly high in heavily Republican areas of the Commonwealth. This is remarkably similar to the early voting pattern that prevailed last year in the crucial swing states and took most political “experts” by surprise.
Earle-Sears has made it clear she’s opposed to biologically male students using female private spaces at school and competing in women’s sports.
To be more specific about the numbers, Virginia voters cast 147,244 ballots during the first week of early voting in the current cycle compared to 69,242 early votes cast during the same period in 2021. How do we know that turnout is up in Republican strongholds? In addition to tracking early votes in the aggregate, VPAP also provides totals by congressional district. There are eleven U.S. House districts in Virginia — five held by Republicans and six held by Democrats. According to the VPAP data, 83,548 early votes were cast in GOP districts, while 63,696 were cast in Democrat districts. In other words, 57 percent of the early votes were cast in Republican districts, while only 43 percent of early votes were cast in Democrat districts.
It is, of course, far too early to say these lopsided percentages portend an Earle-Sears victory, but it does make it clear that Virginia Republicans have learned the most important electoral lesson of the 2024 presidential cycle. Last year the GOP finally realized that getting voters out early — particularly in person — was the key to winning the swing states. Virginia Republicans are definitely following the same strategy in 2025 according to Mark Peake, Chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia. He told the Virginia Mercury, “It’s definitely a Republican strategy … We can’t wait until Election Day and give the Democrats 45 days of early voting.” The early voting results seem to confirm the wisdom of pursuing this strategy.
As important as the GOTV effort is, however, it’s impossible to discount the effect Winsome Earle-Sears and Abigail Spanberger have had on the early turnout numbers. The former has done an excellent job of trapping the latter on a 90-10 issue that will be lethal for her candidacy no matter how she deals with it. Earle-Sears has made it clear she’s opposed to biologically male students using female private spaces at school and competing in women’s sports. Spanberger has been running from the issue. ABC7 reporter Nick Minock recently asked her, “So can you tell us directly, do you support biological males, who say they’re women, using women’s locker rooms and bathrooms and competing in women’s sports?” This is what she said:
The circumstance as this legal case plays out is really one of we’ve had court cases settled or judged here in Virginia in the fourth district, the former Gavin Grimm case related to bathroom usage. And in fact, the argument is the assessment is there needs to be much clearer guidance in terms of what is an executive order’s binding assessment of Title IX versus what has been a decision of a court. But ultimately, the real impact here is, once again, it is the Trump administration taking dollars away from Virginia. Threatening education dollars to our public schools is an attack on Virginia’s kids. It’s an attack on our economy. It’s an attack on Virginians.
This made Kamala Harris sound like Margaret Thatcher, and her campaign staff knew it. So, when Minock tried to ask a follow-up question, they interrupted him. When Minock caught up with Spanberger and asked the question for a third time, she refused to answer and went to her car. Ironically, this kind of evasion will not endear Spanberger to her Democrat base. Many of them want her to say that she does indeed support biological males using women’s locker rooms and competing in women’s sports. If she says that aloud, however, it will have the same effect on normal voters — including many Democrats — as Terry McAuliffe’s deadly 2021 debate blunder: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
All of which brings us back to the early vote. Another way of looking at the turnout disparity between Republicans and Democrats involves the ratio of in-person votes to mail-in votes. It is hardly a secret that Republicans in general are wary of mail-in ballots, while 83 percent of Democrats tend to have faith in the USPS to handle them correctly. During the first week of early voting in Virginia 124,530 voters cast their ballots in person, while 22,714 mailed their ballots in. That means 85 percent bestirred themselves to vote, while 15 percent let the mailman do it. Who do you think dominated early voting in Virginia last week?
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