Virginia special elections are early test of Democratic enthusiasm after Trump victory

By Arit John, CNN

(CNN) — Two months after Democrats were locked out of power at the federal level, a pair of special elections in a part of northern Virginia where Donald Trump dramatically improved his performance in November will offer the first signs of how voters view the political landscape as the president-elect prepares to return to office.

Virginia Democrats are poised to hold on to a state House and Senate seat in Loudoun County, a Washington, DC, exurb, as well as their razor-thin majorities in both chambers.

Republicans are also favored to hold a Senate seat west of Richmond.

The question will be whether either party overperforms, providing an early test of enthusiasm for each ahead of this year’s Virginia gubernatorial race and next year’s midterm elections. The results could either suggest that voters are pushing back on Trump’s victory, as Virginia Democrats did in 2017 when they made large statewide gains, or that the wide-ranging coalition the incoming president built is as strong as it was in November.

“Margins, of course, will matter a great deal,” said Mark Rozell, dean of the George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government.

The special legislative elections come after Trump made gains with virtually every part of the Democratic coalition. In Loudoun County, the president-elect won 10,000 more votes in 2024 than he did four years earlier, while Harris received 9,092 fewer votes than President Joe Biden did in 2020.

Republicans are banking on continued voter frustration over the economy trickling down to the state level and have highlighted proposals from Trump, such as ending taxes on tips. Democrats have framed state legislative control as a potential check on his power in the face of complete GOP control of Congress — which was a key Democratic argument fueling their electoral success after Trump’s 2016 victory.

“This is the first opportunity after the presidential to send a strong message that Virginia is not going back,” said Democratic state Rep. Kannan Srinivasan, who is running for the open state Senate seat in Loudoun County. Srinivasan is competing against Republican Tumay Harding to replace Suhas Subramanyam, the Democrat elected to represent Virginia’s 10th Congressional District in November.

Democrat JJ Singh and Republican Ram Venkatachalam are running for Srinivasan’s state House seat. If no seats flip, Democrats will have a 21-19 seat majority in the Senate and a 51-49 seat majority in the House of Delegates.

In 2023, Democrats won both Loudoun County seats with about 61% of the vote, and the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project has categorized them as “strong Democratic” seats. (Republicans are expected to hold the state Senate seat vacated by US Rep. John McGuire, a district where voters backed Trump by 29 points in 2024, according to the VPAP.)

“It is a blue seat, but I don’t take anything for granted,” Srinivasan told CNN about the open Senate seat he’s seeking. “It’s a local election so we always need to be focused. That’s what I’m doing.”

Democrats have pointed to their efforts to advance a trio of proposed ballot initiatives that would enshrine abortion rights, voting rights for formerly incarcerated people convicted of felonies, and same-sex marriage into the state Constitution. The proposals, which would not need to be approved by the governor before being sent to voters, have advanced out of a state House committee but must pass the full legislature twice, with an election in between the two votes. Democrats hope to pass the measures this year and to put the question to voters on the November 2026 ballot.

“It’s a district that we need to be focused on because of the stakes — the stakes are enormous,” Singh said, pointing to the fate of the ballot initiatives.

Both parties view the Loudoun County seats as competitive and unpredictable. The county has a higher than average number of college-educated residents and federal workers, voters who are “really tuned into the issues,” said Ken Nunnenkamp, the executive director of the Republican Party of Virginia.

Nunnenkamp added that Loudoun, and neighboring Fairfax County, “are subject to more dramatic shifts” and respond to what is happening nationally. He pointed to the 2018 midterm elections, when Democrats ran against Trump’s record during his first two years in office and picked up more than 40 US House seats, including that of former Republican Rep. Barbara Comstock. She lost Loudoun County by 33,000 votes that year, after losing it by just 165 votes in 2016, when she held the seat.

“If you look at what happened in November of 2024, it’s pretty clear that people were fed up with the policies of the Biden administration,” Nunnenkamp said.

Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin has endorsed Harding, a former teacher and activist in the parental rights movement, which helped fuel the governor’s own 2021 election, and Venkatachalam, an IT consultant.

Youngkin described Harding and Venkatachalam in a statement to CNN as “commonsense conservative leaders” who would be partners on efforts to “provide further tax relief for Virginia families, address the most hated car tax, protect our communities from dangerous sanctuary city policies, and keep parents at the head seat of the table in their children’s lives.”

Harding and Venkatachalam did not respond to requests for comment.

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which helps elect Democrats in state legislative seats, has named Srinivasan and Singh to its spotlight candidate list. The organization also invested $100,000 into the state Democratic Party.

“These are the first elections of the new year and are a huge priority as the Democratic firewall in the states has never been more important,” Heather Williams, the president of the DLCC, said in a statement to CNN. “We are focused on securing these wins and laying the groundwork and infrastructure to be competitive in Virginia’s elections later this year.”

Several prominent Virginia Democrats campaigned with their candidates in the final days of the race, including Sen. Tim Kaine, gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger, and US Reps. Jennifer McClellan and Suhas Subramanyam.

The special elections serve as a precursor to the state’s odd-year November election cycle, when both parties will compete for control of the general assembly and the governorship.

If historic trends hold, Trump’s election could be a boon for Democrats in Virginia. During his first term in office, Democrats won the 2017 governor’s race and flipped control of the legislature, winning their first trifecta in more than two decades.

“The anti-Trump backlash showed in Virginia immediately in 2017,” Rozell said. “Democrats may be wondering if they can repeat the same success that they had when Trump first was president.”

Those gains were short-lived. In 2021, Youngkin won the governorship while campaigning on parental rights and debates over what should be taught in schools, and Republicans won back the House. Two years later, the House swung back to Democrats.

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