The News
No seats changed hands in the first special elections of 2025, with Democrats easily holding two Virginia legislative districts and Republicans holding a third.
The wins helped Democrats retain razor-thin majorities in Richmond and answered a post-election question: Whether liberals were so depressed about their defeat that their Biden-era turnout operation would suffer.
Democrat Kannan Srinivasan took the state Senate seat of now-Rep. Suhas Subramanyam by 23 points, a slight improvement over Kamala Harris in the exurban DC district; Democrat JJ Singh won Srinivasan’s state delegate seat by the same margin. Republican Luther Cifers prevailed in the central Virginia seat vacated by now-Rep. John McGuire, but strong Democratic turnout shrunk the GOP advantage; Trump carried the seat by 29 points, and Cifers by 18.
“While we celebrate tonight, our focus is already on November,” said Heather Williams, the president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which helped defend the northern Virginia seats.