2025 Virginia lieutenant gubernatorial election


The 2025 Virginia lieutenant gubernatorial election was held on November 4, 2025, to elect the lieutenant governor of Virginia. The incumbent Republican lieutenant governor, Winsome Earle-Sears, did not run for a second term in office, instead choosing to run for governor. Primary elections took place on June 17, 2025. The in-person early voting period ran from September 19 to November 1, 2025. Hashmi won the general election and took office on January 17, 2026.
The Republican nominee was former WRVA radio host John Reid, who would have been Virginia's first openly gay lieutenant governor if elected. The Democratic nominee was state senator Ghazala Hashmi, who became Virginia's first Asian and Muslim lieutenant governor. She is also the first Muslim woman elected to statewide office in US history.

Republican primary

In September 2024, Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears announced her candidacy for governor of Virginia. In January 2025, Fairfax County supervisor Pat Herrity and radio host John Reid announced their candidacies for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor.
On April 21, after the filing deadline, Herrity announced his withdrawal from the race due to health reasons. This made Reid the Republican nominee by default. Four days later, The Richmonder reported that Governor Glenn Youngkin, also a Republican, had asked Reid to withdraw from the race, citing sexually explicit images and posts on a page on the microblogging platform Tumblr which had a username that matched the name Reid uses on other social media accounts. Reid denied making the posts and pledged to remain in the race, arguing the effort to remove him from the ticket was due to his sexual orientation. Reid is Virginia's first openly gay candidate from either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party for statewide office.
Following backlash from within the Republican Party, Youngkin stated he would "support the nominees and their ticket". Youngkin staffer Matt Moran, whom Reid's campaign accused of being behind the effort to remove him from the ticket, resigned as a result of the controversy.
John Curran, a business consultant from James City County, did not qualify for the ballot. Following this, Curran filed as a write-in candidate for the general election and said "I decided to give the voters an option. It's a hard option for me because people actually have to know how to spell your name and write it in. If Virginia wants me, they'll do it."

Candidates

Nominee

Withdrawn

Failed to qualify

  • John Curran, business consultant

Declined

Democratic primary

Six candidates appeared on the ballot for the Democratic primary. Prior to the election, the race was viewed to have three favored frontrunners: state senators Ghazala Hashmi and Aaron Rouse, along with former Richmond mayor Levar Stoney. In a very tight race between the three, Hashmi narrowly secured the nomination over Stoney and Rouse.

Candidates

Nominee

Eliminated in primary

Withdrawn

  • Carl Eggleston, former Farmville councilor ''''

Declined

Independents

Declined

General election

Campaign

Ghazala Hashmi, the Democratic nominee, had declined to participate in a debate with John Reid, the Republican nominee. No debates had been held for lieutenant governor at the previous 2021 election. In response, Reid held a 40-minute debate without the involvement of Hashmi. Hashmi was represented by a computer monitor depicting her face, with responses delivered via artificial intelligence speech synthesis. The Reid campaign stated the responses delivered through speech synthesis were compiled and written by the Reid campaign, through information from interviews and Hashmi's website. The Virginian-Pilot noted that the on-screen attribution for the statements delivered occasionally listed far-right websites such as The Gateway Pundit. Noah Jennings, Reid's campaign manager, stated that they had aimed for a debate that was "fair and accurate to, not campy and overdramatic", while Ava Pitruzzello, a spokesperson for the Hashmi campaign, called it a "failed use of deepfakes" that was "desperate" and "straight out of Donald Trump’s playbook".

Polling

Aggregate polls

Source of poll
aggregation		Dates
administered		Dates
updated		John
Reid 		Ghazala
Hashmi 		Other/Undecided
Margin
Decision Desk HQthrough November 3, 2025November 4, 202544.3%48.9%6.8%Hashmi +4.6%

Poll sourceDate
administered		Sample
size		Margin
of error		John
Reid 		Ghazala
Hashmi 		OtherUndecided
Quantus Insights November 3, 20251,069 ± 2.7%44%52%1%3%
The Trafalgar Group November 1–2, 20251,057 ± 2.9%46%48%–6%
Echelon InsightsOctober 28–31, 2025606 ± 4.7%46%49%–5%
AtlasIntelOctober 25–30, 20251,325 ± 3.0%46%52%1%1%
SoCal Strategies October 28–29, 2025800 –45%47%–8%
State NavigateOctober 26–28, 2025614 ± 4.0%41%53%–6%
Roanoke CollegeOctober 22–27, 20251,041 ± 4.1%40%42%4%14%
A2 InsightsOctober 24–26, 2025776 –45%53%–2%
Christopher Newport UniversityOctober 21–23, 2025803 ± 4.1%45%47%1%7%
Suffolk UniversityOctober 19–21, 2025500 ± 4.4%45%45%2%8%
State NavigateOctober 17–20, 2025694 ± 4.0%42%53%–5%
The Washington Post/Schar SchoolOctober 16–20, 2025927 ± 3.5%44%51%3%2%
The Washington Post/Schar SchoolOctober 16–20, 2025927 ± 3.5%42%48%8%2%
Quantus Insights October 19–20, 20251,302 ± 2.8%45%49%1%5%
Kaplan Strategies October 16–18, 2025556 ± 4.2%41%48%–11%
co/efficient October 15–17, 2025937 ± 3.2%42%47%–11%
Clarity Campaign Labs October 14–17, 2025958 ± 3.2%44%48%–8%
The Trafalgar Group/InsiderAdvantage October 13–15, 20251,039 ± 2.9%46%46%–8%
Virginia Commonwealth UniversityOctober 6–14, 2025842 ± 4.0%43%44%–13%
The Trafalgar Group October 8–10, 20251,034 ± 2.9%46%47%–7%
Christopher Newport UniversitySeptember 29 – October 1, 2025805 ± 3.9%39%48%–12%
The Trafalgar Group September 29 – October 1, 20251,034 ± 2.9%44%48%–8%
The Washington Post/Schar SchoolSeptember 25–29, 20251,002 ± 3.4%45%49%2%3%
The Washington Post/Schar SchoolSeptember 25–29, 20251,002 ± 3.4%42%47%6%4%
A2 InsightsSeptember 16–28, 2025771 –44%49%1%6%
Christopher Newport UniversitySeptember 8–14, 2025808 ± 3.9%37%48%–15%
Pulse Decision Science September 3–5, 2025512 ± 4.4%45%42%–13%
Virginia Commonwealth UniversityAugust 18–28, 2025804 ± 4.1%41%45%–14%
SoCal Strategies August 31 – September 1, 2025700 –41%46%–14%
co/efficient August 23–26, 20251,025 ± 3.1%43%43%–14%
Roanoke CollegeAugust 11–15, 2025702 ± 4.3%35%38%–27%
American Directions Research Group/AARPJune 25 – July 8, 20251,001 ± 3.1%32%47%9%12%
Virginia Commonwealth UniversityJune 19 – July 3, 2025764 ± 4.2%36%45%4%15%

John Reid vs. Generic Democrat

Poll sourceDate
administered		Sample
size		Margin
of error		John
Reid 		Generic
Democrat		OtherUndecided
co/efficient June 8–10, 20251,127 ± 3.1%41%39%2%18%

Results

By county and independent city

Caroline, Nelson, Prince Edward, Spotsylvania, and York counties were won by Reid, despite voting Abigail Spanberger for governor.
Counties and independent cities that flipped from Republican to Democratic

By congressional district

Hashmi won seven of 11 congressional districts, including one held by a Republican.
DistrictReidHashmiRepresentative
51.0%48.8%Rob Wittman
48.4%51.4%Jen Kiggans
29.6%70.1%Bobby Scott
30.7%69.1%Jennifer McClellan
55.1%44.6%John McGuire
59.6%40.1%Ben Cline
44.0%55.8%Eugene Vindman
22.0%77.7%Don Beyer
69.2%30.3%Morgan Griffith
41.8%58.0%Suhas Subramanyam
28.5%71.3%James Walkinshaw