RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia Democrats preserved their Statehouse majority on Tuesday in the first test of voters’ energy since President-elect Donald Trump’s win in November, which left many party members across the country reckoning with their losses in federal elections.
Tuesday’s races were the first official elections in Virginia since November’s presidential contest. State Senate Democrats had a narrow 20-18 majority, making the special elections key to the party’s efforts to preserve a majority in both chambers during Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s last year in office. In the House of Delegates, Democrats had a 50-49 lead.
In northern Loudoun County, Democrat Kannan Srinivasan defeated Republican Tumay Harding in the race to succeed Suhas Subramanyam, a Democrat elected to the U.S. House in November. In an overlapping House of Delegates district, Democrat JJ Singh bested Republican Ram Venkatachalam in an election to replace Srinivasan, who vacated his House of Delegates seat after becoming a nominee for the special Senate election.
In central Goochland County, Republican Luther Cifers defeated Democrat Jack Trammell in the race to succeed U.S. Rep. John McGuire. McGuire clinched Virginia’s 5th Congressional District after narrowly defeating former U.S. Rep. Bob Good by less than a percentage point in a bitter primary, which led to a recount last August.
Srinivasan, the first Indian American immigrant elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, and Singh, a Virginia native and son of Indian immigrants, hoped to hold the Democratic seats in a county where data shows that Vice President Kamala Harris received 57% of the vote in her failed bid against Trump. Both Singh and Srinivasan had largely centered their campaigns around abortion rights in Virginia as Democrats are working to enshrine a constitutional right to abortion in the state.
Harding, the daughter of Turkish Uzbek immigrants, and Venkatachalam, an Indian American immigrant, vied to flip the Senate and House seats from Democrats. Both candidates, who each unsuccessfully ran for the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors in 2023, centered their state campaigns along party lines, such as parents’ rights, crime and the economy.
In the 10th District, conservatives put their weight behind Cifers to succeed McGuire following a lengthy, multi-ballot primary among Republican voters last month. Cifers, a Prince Edward County resident and president of a Virginia-based kayaking business, said he never envisioned himself running for office but wanted to bring a different perspective to the legislature, particularly regarding housing and the economy.
Trammell, who unsuccessfully ran for the 7th U.S. House District in 2014, hoped to flip the Republican stronghold, which supported Trump by more than 25 points in November, according to the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project. Trammell said he partly decided to run for office because he believed his community should have a competitive electoral process.
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