Policy and Electoral Implications of Democratic Women Candidates’ Wins in Virginia 2025 Elections

The historic elections of former U.S. Representative Abigail Spanberger as the first woman governor of Virginia and Virginia State Senator Ghazala Hashmi as the first Muslim woman elected to a statewide position (lieutenant governor) in the country tell only part of the story about the remarkable electoral gains posted by Democratic women in last week’s elections. In the 2025 Virginia House of Delegates elections, women Democrats won ten of the 13 seats Democrats flipped to expand the Party’s majority in the 100 seat legislature from a narrow 51 to a decisive 64-seat majority that will convene in a new General Assembly session in January 2026. (Democrats will retain the 21-19 seat majority in the State Senate, whose members were not up for re-election this cycle.) If history repeats itself, multiple wins by Democratic women in Virginia this year could hold the promise of important policy changes in the Commonwealth for the coming legislative session and also gains in the number of women running for office at the federal level in the forthcoming 2026 midterm elections.

For some election observers, the Virginia 2025 elections are deja-vu all over again. In 2017, Democrats won all three state-wide races and flipped 15 seats in the state House races, with women Democrats winning 11 of those seats. Democrats fell one seat short of winning a majority when a Democratic woman lost the election to the Republican incumbent after their tied race was decided by drawing slips of paper from a bowl. Democrats gained the majority in both the House of Delegates and State Senate after the 2019 elections and gave Democrats a trifecta in state government. Following these two elections, Democratic women state legislators accounted for nearly half of the Democrats’ caucus in the House of Delegates, and women held key leadership and committee chair positions in both chambers in the 2020 and 2021 Virginia General Assembly sessions. Democratic women – many of whom are women of color – were central to legislative victories in these sessions including the symbolic ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, passage of multiple election laws to make voting more accessible, and expanded reproductive rights.

When the Virginia General Assembly convenes in 2026, it will do so with a Democratic trifecta with Abigail Spanberger serving as Governor, Lieutenant Governor Ghazala Hashmi serving as presiding officer of the State Senate, where she had previously served as a senator, a Democratic majority in the State Senate, and a super-majority in the House of Delegates, where Democratic women will comprise 58% of the party’s caucus. During the gubernatorial campaign, Spanberger emphasized her track record in Congress as a pragmatic problem-solver and touted an “Affordable Virginia Plan” to reduce housing, energy, and prescription drug costs to Virginia residents. She also pledged to defend reproductive rights, including rights to contraception, and codifying reproductive rights in the state’s constitution. In these policy areas, and especially regarding reproductive rights, Governor-elect Spanberger can expect strong support from Democratic women legislators who have introduced legislation in recent legislative sessions to guarantee contraception access (vetoed by current Governor Glenn Youngkin) and also a constitutional amendment for reproductive freedom that passed in the 2025 General Assembly.

Reproductive rights advocates in Virginia are especially hopeful about their chances that the state will amend its constitution to guarantee reproductive rights. Per Virginia law, the bill seeking to amend Virginia’s constitution must be passed in a second consecutive legislative session before the measure would be added to the November 2026 Virginia ballot. The amendment is expected to pass in the 2026 General Assembly session, and, should voters approve the amendment, Virginia would be the only Southern U.S. state to protect abortion rights.

Advocates for more women’s representation among officeholders are also hoping that womens’ electoral wins in Virginia in 2025 portend increases in the number of women running for Congress in 2026, as was the case from 2017 to 2018 when an unprecedented number of women ran for and won election to Congress. It is important to note that gains in women’s officeholding in Virginia and also in Congress in these elections have been party specific with the majority of these wins coming from Democratic women candidates and have further expanded the party gap in representation among Democratic and Republican women legislators. Whether women’s electoral gains in Virginia serve as a bellwether for the 2026 midterms and women’s political candidacy remains to be seen. For Virginia residents, however, it foretells a busy 2026 state legislative session that could bring substantive policy change to the Commonwealth.