Republican Glenn Youngkin narrowly defeated Democrat Terry McAuliffe in Tuesday’s election for governor, a major upset on a night that saw the Virginia GOP make sweeping gains after a nearly decade-long losing streak in statewide elections. Several news outlets called the race for Youngkin shortly after 12:30 a.m.

Republicans Winsome Sears and Jason Miyares also held leads over their opponents in the races for lieutenant governor and attorney general and the GOP appeared on pace to take the House of Delegates, where they lost their majority just two years ago, according to preliminary results.  The GOP appears to have captured 52 seats, obliterating Democrats’ 55-45 majority.

Youngkin, a Northern Virginia businessman few had heard of a year ago, seized on parents’ various frustrations over K-12 schools, including hyping the incursion of “critical race theory” to overtake McAuliffe, a well-connected former governor who sought to win a second term largely by stoking fears about the lingering presence of former President Donald Trump.

Speaking to a crowd of supporters at a hotel in Chantilly, Youngkin said his victory is a defining moment in Virginia politics.

“Together we will change the trajectory of this commonwealth, and friends, we are going to start that transformation on day one,” he said. “Our kids can’t wait. We work in real-people time, not government time.”

Youngkin pledged to invest in education, including promting school choice, and “reestablish excellence in our schools.”

He hit on campaign promises to eliminate the grocery tax, cut taxes on retirement income of Virginia’s veterans and raise salaries for police as well protecting qualified immunity, which critics contend protects law enforcement from consequences of misconduct and abuse.

“This is our Virginia to build together, and we are going to work on day one,” he said. “Together we can build a new day, a new day for Virginia for yes, we soar, and we never settle.”

As the race for governor comes to a close, here’s a look back at the stances Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin have staked out on major policy issues.

Education

Public education has become the dominant issue of Virginia’s gubernatorial race. But in the last weeks of the campaign, both candidates have focused less on funding formulas and school construction — some of the most pressing needs facing schools across the commonwealth — and more on controversial literature and other cultural flashpoints.

First, the basics. At the start of his campaign, McAuliffe released a six-page plan pledging “the largest increase in education investment in the history of Virginia.” He’s promised more funding to raise teacher salaries above the national average, expand access to preschool and fully adopt the Standards of Quality recommended by the Virginia Board of Education — guidance for staffing ratios, class size and other school resources.

Youngkin’s “Day One” plan offers less detail, but he’s committed to building at least 20 charter schools across Virginia to “provide choice” to parents. He’s also called for every school in the state to place a law enforcement officer on campus or lose out on state funding.

Donald Hillard, a 49-year-old retired military veteran, says he identifies as a Republican and voted for George W. Bush twice. But he was never on board with the “madness” of former President Donald Trump. And it’s the lingering specter of Trumpism on the right that led him to vote for Virginia’s Democratic ticket this year.

“I disagree with how they’re allowing this stuff with Trump to just fester and keep going on. The whole election fraud stuff. It’s garbage. It’s over with,” Hillard said. “The people that are running that are Republicans still want to institute his policies. And they want to find a way to get this guy back in there.”

Wes Williams, a 44-year-old truck driver who said he voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 but switched to Trump in 2020, said he voted for the Republican ticket this year out of opposition to a “crazy” Democratic agenda he sees as increasingly detached from common sense. He pointed specifically to a recent controversy in Loudoun County, where school officials are under fire for allegedly mishandling a female student’s report of a sexual assault in a high-school bathroom during a politically contentious local debate over transgender-inclusive bathroom policies.

“Screw safety. We’re worried about feelings,” Williams said of the mindset he sees in Loudoun. “Life doesn’t work that way.”

The two men were echoing both major parties’ closing arguments as they cast ballots early in Chesterfield County outside Richmond, the type of suburban battleground that could decide the closely watched gubernatorial contest between Democrat Terry McAuliffe, a former governor and prodigious political fundraiser, and Republican Glenn Youngkin, a wealthy former private equity executive making his first run for office.

Recent polls have shown the race in a statistical dead heat, giving Republicans hope Youngkin could be the candidate to break their decade-long losing streak and flip the state red, despite the party’s steep numerical disadvantages in deep-blue Northern Virginia.

Virginia’s bellwether race for governor remains close in the final stretch of a campaign that is testing President Joe Biden’s sagging approval numbers going into the 2022 midterms.

Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin are tied at roughly 45% each, according to a USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll released Tuesday. But roughly 5% of likely voters say they are still undecided a week before the Nov. 2 vote.

David Paleologos, director of Suffolk University Political Research Center, said the race is simply a “dead heat” and will boil down to which party can get out its voters.

“It’s down to turnout,” Paleologos said.

The race is much closer than Democrats had hoped after winning two straight Virginia governor’s races, including a victory by McAuliffe in 2013, and Biden carrying the state by 10 percentage points over Donald Trump last year.

The neck-and-neck race for Virginia governor has entered its final week, with Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin nationalizing their campaigns in markedly different ways.

For McAuliffe, a steady stream of high-profile Democratic surrogates has turned the race into a referendum about the past eight years of Democratic leadership in the commonwealth as well as the first year of President Joe Biden’s term. Biden will make his second trip across the Potomac River to rally support for McAuliffe on Tuesday evening in Arlington, following a July visit there to boost McAuliffe after the former governor clinched the Democratic nomination.

McAuliffe is closing the campaign much like he opened it: by looking to tie Youngkin to former President Donald Trump.

“There could not be a more stark difference” in the race, McAuliffe said Sunday in Charlottesville. “I am running against someone who has been endorsed by Donald Trump, not once, not twice, not three times, not four times, not five times — six times endorsed by Donald Trump.”

For Youngkin, the push to nationalize the race has not come in the form of top Republican surrogates — the candidate has largely campaigned on his own and has been careful about how he has related himself to Trump. Instead, he has made the case in his stump speech, repeatedly telling Virginians that the race is about more than just their commonwealth.

“Our nation’s future rests in Virginia’s present,” the businessman and political newcomer told an audience in Henrico on Saturday. “All eyes are on Virginia.”

Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin are deadlocked in the state’s governor’s race, according to a new poll from Monmouth University, as the Republican gains in the closing weeks of the race.

The poll shows both men with 46 percent support among registered voters. McAuliffe has lost ground since the last poll from the university in September, in which he held a narrow, 5-point lead. Two percent of voters prefer another candidate, and 7 percent are undecided.

Various modeling of the potential electorate from the pollster found anywhere from a 3-point lead for the former governor to a 3-point lead for Youngkin, a first-time candidate and private equity executive, the first time he has had a lead in any of Monmouth’s modeling in the state.

The two men have seen their support flip among independent voters. Youngkin leads 48 percent to 39 percent in this month’s poll, compared to a 46 percent to 37 percent lead for McAuliffe in the September poll. Notably, McAuliffe’s lead among women has shrunk from a 14-point lead last month, down to a 4-point lead in the poll now.

“Suburban women, especially in Northern Virginia, have been crucial to the sizable victories Democrats have enjoyed in the commonwealth since 2017,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute, in a release accompanying the poll.

“However, their support is not registering at the same level this time around,” he continued. “This is due partly to a shift in key issues important to these voters and partly to dampened enthusiasm among the party faithful.”

HENRICO, Va. (AP) — When Planned Parenthood canvassers stopped by Megan Ortiz’s house, the 32-year-old therapist was getting ready to head out and too distracted to talk for long.

But after they left, she thought better of it. She jumped in her minivan and drove the streets of her suburban Richmond neighborhood until she tracked down the canvassers. “I want to volunteer for you!” she proclaimed, eliciting cheers.

What changed her mind? Texas, she said.

“It’s just really scary, ” Ortiz said, of the state’s new law that bans most abortion. “It’s important that women’s voices be heard.”

Democrat Terry McAuliffe has spent months trying to get Virginia voters to focus on abortion, part of his effort to drive the Democratic turnout he needs to win the state’s closely watched governor’s race. Pointing to the Texas law, and with a majority-conservative Supreme Court taking up a case that could overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, McAuliffe and his allies argue that the issue may matter more now than at any previous time in a half century.

But breaking through to Democratic voters who are weary of politics in general and more focused on the pandemic, the fragile economy and other issues has been a struggle. McAuliffe’s battle with Republican former business executive Glenn Youngkin appears headed to the wire, even in Virginia, where Republicans have not won statewide office in 12 years and women, especially those in the suburbs, have turned away from the GOP in droves during the Trump administration.

In a hotly contested gubernatorial race, few issues have been depicted in such stark contrast by the campaigns as jobs creation and Virginia’s business climate.

Democrat Terry McAuliffe, who was governor from 2014 to 2018,  paints himself as the jobs guy. He claims that during his term he helped create 200,000 jobs, raised personal income by 14 percent and cut unemployment to 3.3 percent.

His campaign staff says he intends to defeat COVID-19, create more good-paying jobs, including ones in clean energy, and raise the state minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Republican Glenn Youngkin has a far gloomier view.  “Virginia has had zero job growth from the day Terry McAuliffe took office until the end of 2020,” Youngkin wrote in an email to the Mercury. The former co-CEO of the large private equity firm Carlyle Group claims that Virginia has few job opportunities and more than 500,000 Virginians have left for work in other states.

So who’s right? It depends on which economist you ask.

Neither candidate’s statements reflect Virginia’s dependence upon federal spending, especially the military, which is beyond the authority of any governor.

With polls showing a tight race between former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe and GOP challenger Glenn Youngkin, first lady Jill Biden stumped for McAuliffe in Henrico, one of several high profile Democrats scheduled to campaign in Virginia between now and Election Day.

At Dorey Park Friday night, Biden vouched for McAuliffe’s ability to lead in a bipartisan way.

“He knows how to bring people together because that’s the only way to get things done,” she said. “So today, Virginia, I’m asking you to vote for Terry McAuliffe and the Democrats on the ballot.”

Less than a minute into her remarks, a group of protesters holding a sign that said “Reject pipelines and protect the future” interrupted the first lady’s speech. Other attendees chanted “Terry” in response while Biden tried to continue speaking.

Once the protesters had left, Biden said that she “loved democracy” and carried on with highlighting McAuliffe’s past accomplishments as governor, citing investments in education and transportation and the drop in unemployment rate.

“I love the energy of this crowd,” Biden said. “When you’re around, it’s impossible not to feel optimistic.”

Democratic former Gov. Terry McAuliffe lambasted Republican Glenn Youngkin on Tuesday night over his opposition to mandating Covid-19 vaccines for state workers in the second and final debate of the Virginia governor’s race.

The candidates’ split on vaccines — McAuliffe would require them for students, teachers and health care workers and would support businesses that imposed mandates; Youngkin says he encourages everyone to be vaccinated but opposes mandates — has emerged as a central issue in 2021’s marquee governor’s race.

“He’s going to send a child to a school where a teacher’s not wearing a mask and a teacher’s not vaccinated? That is disqualifying to be governor,” McAuliffe said.

Youngkin, meanwhile, maintained that McAuliffe’s characterization of his stance on vaccines is “the most egregious untruth my opponent continues to say about me.”

“I’ve gotten the vaccine; my family has gotten the vaccine. It’s the best way for people to keep themselves safe. And I in fact have asked everyone in Virginia to please get the vaccine. But I don’t think we should mandate it,” Youngkin said.

He said he does not want to run teachers and health care workers who oppose being vaccinated out of their jobs. “We need those health care workers. We need people on the job. To make their life difficult, that’s no way to go serve Virginians,” he said.

If it didn’t count as a banned weapon, she would have brought her sledgehammer, anti-abortion activist Victoria Cobb told the March for Life crowd Friday from the steps of the Virginia Capitol.

The hammer, she said, is a symbol of what the pro-life movement hopes to do to former Gov. Terry McAulffe’s “brick wall” for abortion rights.

“You are going to break down that wall,” Cobb, president of the socially conservative Family Foundation, told the group gathered on Capitol Square. “You are going to be the ones that do whatever it takes.”

Legal developments outside Virginia have pushed abortion to the forefront of this year’s elections, with activists on both sides stressing the high stakes in the gubernatorial contest between McAuliffe, a Democrat, and Republican Glenn Youngkin.

Three Republican lawmakers spoke at the third annual March for Life in Richmond, where marchers shouted chants against the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that established abortion as a constitutional right and booed at the mention of recent Democratic governors. The Family Foundation described the crowd as being in the thousands. Capitol Police estimated there were 600 attendees.

None of the three Republicans running for statewide office this year spoke at the event, forgoing a chance to speak to a sizable crowd to campaign elsewhere. Earlier this year, Youngkin was caught on camera expressing sympathy for the anti-abortion cause but adding he couldn’t press the issue to avoid turning off independent voters.

Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin met Thursday in southwest Virginia for the commonwealth’s first gubernatorial debate of the general election season.

Much of the exchange between McAuliffe, a longtime Democratic Party fundraiser who is seeking a rare second term as governor, and Youngkin, a former business executive and political newcomer, dealt with vaccine mandates and abortion policy.

Here is a look at some other topics the candidates sparred over during the hourlong debate in a race that is being closely watched ahead of next year’s midterms:

Virginia gubernatorial candidates Terry McAuliffe and Glenn Youngkin each raised more than $11 million in the last two months, but Youngkin loaned his campaign an additional $4.5 million to give himself a significant advantage, according to the most recent campaign-finance reports.

The $4.5 million Youngkin, a GOP businessman making his first run for office, loaned his campaign is on top of $11.2 million he had already lent.

McAuliffe and other Democrats have long expressed fears that Youngkin, who made his fortune as an executive with The Carlyle Group investment firm, will be able to use his personal wealth to give his campaign an edge.

The reports, which were due Wednesday, cover the months of July and August. McAuliffe raised $11.5 million. Youngkin raised $11.2 million, not including the $4.5 million loan.

Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin sparred over COVID-19 vaccine mandates, abortion rights, tax policy and more during the first debate of Virginia’s governor’s race on Thursday night.

A new 8News/Emerson College poll released ahead of the debate showed the candidates are neck and neck.

On the night before early voting for the November 2 election begins in Virginia, the candidates made their key differences clear on the debate stage.

Thursday’s debate, which was held at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, was moderated by Susan Page, the Washington bureau chief of USA Today, with panelists Bob Holsworth, a Virginia political analyst, and WTVR-TV anchor Candace Burns.

California’s recall election has understandably dominated headlines, but there are two other gubernatorial elections this November that might tell us more about the national environment: Virginia and New Jersey.

To be sure, President Joe Biden carried both of these states by double-digit margins in 2020, and neither state has been terribly hospitable to Republicans since former President Trump won the 2016 election. But in recent weeks, Biden’s approval rating has taken a sizable hit as the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated and the delta variant of COVID-19 has complicated his efforts to steer the country out of the pandemic. In fact, Biden’s approval rating has fallen to about its lowest point (about 46 percent), while his disapproval rating is up to 49 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight’s presidential approval tracker. The upshot is that Biden’s worsening ratings could improve the GOP’s chances of winning these gubernatorial races, particularly in Virginia, which is a more competitive state than New Jersey and doesn’t have an incumbent seeking reelection. Here is the state of play in these two elections a little less than two months before November:

A new Monmouth University poll shows the former Democratic governor slightly ahead of his GOP opponent, Glenn Youngkin.