Election Night Live updates: Democrat Abigail Spanberger is elected Virginia’s first female governor

Former Virginia congresswoman Abigail Spanberger defeated Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, who was outraised by the Democrat and failed to earn the endorsement of President Donald Trump.

The win flips control of the commonwealth’s governor’s mansion. While local issues and the biographies of the candidates played a strong role in the race, the results also reflect a contest where Trump’s presence loomed.
Virginia has a concentration of federal workers in the north and has deeply felt both the impact of the president cutting the workforce and of the government shutdown.

Virginia was one of two states, along with New Jersey, where voters were picking a governor on Tuesday. Voters were also selecting a new mayor in New York City, and in California, were deciding whether to approve a new congressional map that is designed to help Democrats win five more U.S. House seats in next year’s midterm elections.

Here’s what to know about Election Night 2025:

• Impact on national politics next year and beyond: The one contest on Tuesday that may do the most to shape national politics going forward is a measure on the ballot in California, where voters will decide whether to approve a new congressional map that could flip as many as five Republican-held U.S. House seats to Democratic control in the 2026 midterm elections. California’s Proposition 50 is a response to Trump’s gerrymandering push to keep the U.S. House under Republican control in the 2026 midterms.
• New York City’s mayoral race: The race to lead New York City features Democratic state legislator and democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, whose rising political star has generated excitement from the party’s more progressive wing and apprehension among the party establishment. He is facing former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent and attempting a comeback after resigning four years ago. Meanwhile, Republican Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels crime patrol group, is hoping a divide in the electorate between Mamdani and Cuomo will give him a long-shot opportunity in the heavily Democratic city. Trump has already turned Mamdani into a foil and falsely branded him as a “communist” while urging people to vote for Cuomo and dismissing Sliwa as “not exactly prime time.”
• How the AP calls races: The AP takes a careful and thorough analysis of the latest available vote tallies and a variety of other election data, with the goal of answering this question: Is there any circumstance in which the trailing candidate can catch up? If the answer is no, then the leading candidate has won. Read more here about how it is done.