Democrat Tim Kaine won re-election to a third term in the U.S. Senate, and Virginia Democrats also appear poised to retain their 6-5 majority in the state’s U.S. House delegation.
Kaine ended up defeating Republican nominee Hung Cao by 8.3 points, getting 54.1 percent of the vote to Cao’s 45.8 percent.
The raw-vote totals had Kaine outpolling Cao by 352,000 votes out of the 4.2 million votes cast statewide.
Kaine, a former Virginia governor who was elected to the Senate in 2018 and re-elected in 2018, had maintained a lead in the low double-digits for most of the 2024 cycle, with the race tightening slightly in the final week – his lead in the final round of nonpartisan polls ranged from nine to 12 points, with one outlier, from Chism Strategies, showing Kaine with just a two-point lead on Cao.
Republicans will regain control of the Senate, with at least 51 members, and several races still too close to call at this writing, at 4:15 a.m. ET.
Democrats still have a decent chance to regain control of the U.S. House, which would be an odd occurrence in an election cycle that has seen Donald Trump elected to a second term and Republicans having success in the Senate.
If the Ds do end up getting what would almost certainly be a single-digit majority, should one materialize, it could be that two tight races in the Northern Virginia and Central Virginia exurbs could be why.
In the 10th District, which includes the Republican portions of Fairfax County and Loudoun County, and Democrat vote-rich Loudoun County, Suhas Subramanyam defeated Republican nominee Mike Clancy by 4.2 points and 17,000 votes to retain a seat that had been held by Democrat Jennifer Wexton.
Down in the adjoining Seventh District, a seat held by Democrat Abigail Spanberger, who didn’t run for re-election in 2024 to focus on a campaign for governor in the 2025 cycle, the Democratic nominee, Eugene Vindman, leads Republican Derrick Anderson by a 2.2-point margin and 8,300 raw votes with the Virginia Department of Elections saying at 4:15 a.m. ET that all of the precincts in the district have reported their results.
Vindman has claimed victory, but Anderson has not conceded, and the Associated Press has not called the race, despite the margin.
Not sure what’s up there.
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Chris Graham
