Voters arrive at a polling location in Virginia, on Tuesday. Win McNamee / Getty Images
The swing areas of Virginia will be key to the results. Sixteen of Virginia’s 139 counties and independent cities voted both for Democrat Abigail Spanberger and Republican Glenn Youngkin in the last two gubernatorial elections.
These localities vary in size, geography and demographics, but their results collectively will provide a valuable gauge tonight. Given that Youngkin’s statewide margin was narrow (2 points), they represent the kinds of politically marginal areas that are close to a must-win for any statewide Republican campaign effort.
Reinforcing this point is what happened in last year’s attorney general election, in which Democrat Jay Jones significantly underperformed Spanberger because of a scandal surrounding violent text messages he had sent. Even amid that controversy, Jones still narrowly carried 10 of these 16 localities. Overall, he won his election by 6 points, compared with 15 for Spanberger. So if the “no” side isn’t sweeping all of these places tonight, or coming very close to it, then the referendum will probably pass.
And in some of these places, the “no” side doesn’t just need to win — it needs to win by a healthy margin. Virginia Beach, with a population of about 450,000, is the largest of the Spanberger/Youngkin localities, and Youngkin carried it by 8 points. The “no” side can probably afford to carry Virginia Beach by a little less than that, but not much. The same is true in next-door Chesapeake, a city of about 250,000 that Youngkin won by 6 points.
The single-best bellwether tonight is probably in the suburbs south of Richmond, in fast-growing Chesterfield County. With nearly 400,000 residents — the fifth-largest of Virginia’s counties and cities — Chesterfield is a heavyweight in every statewide election. Youngkin did manage to carry it in 2021, but that was five years ago. The county is growing and diversifying fast, which has created a clear blue trend. In fact, Chesterfield is one of the few large counties in America where Kamala Harris actually performed better in 2024 (a 9-point win) than Joe Biden did in 2020 (a 6-point win).
So while Youngkin was able to carry Chesterfield by 4 points in 2021, the county’s ongoing political transformation has landed it in a place where tonight it’s probably the break-even county for either side. As it goes, so very well may go the entire referendum.