Abigail Spanberger wins Virginia governor’s race, AP projects
The Associated Press projects Democrat Abigail Spanberger has won the Virginia governor’s race, defeating Republican Winsome Earle-Sears.
It’s a lightning-fast call in the closely watched race as polls closed just over an hour ago.
All 100 of the seats in Virginia’s House of Delegates are also up for grabs tonight. Democrats currently hold a 51-48 majority in the chamber.
Virginians cast more than 1.1m early in-person votes and nearly 330,000 mail-in ballots before election day, according to AP tallies.
Key events
Chris Stein
From the scene in Richmond, the Guardian’s Chris Stein writes that Spanberger has taken the stage, speaking from a podium where stagehands just posted a sign reading “governor-elect Spanberger”.
Spanberger avoided mentioning Donald Trump on the campaign trail, but began her victory speech with what seems to be a nod to how her election will be interpreted in the context of his first 11 months in office.
“Tonight, we sent a message. We sent a message to every corner of the Commonwealth, a message to our neighbors and our fellow Americans across the country,” she said. “We sent a message to the whole world that in 2025, Virginia chose pragmatism over partisanship. We chose our commonwealth over chaos.”
“Chaos” is doing a lot of work there, but it’s worth keeping in mind that the state is home to many Washington DC suburbs – which are full of federal workers whose jobs have been transformed since Trump came to office, if they’ve been able to keep them at all.
All that being said, Spanberger has taken pains to strike a conciliatory tone to the 40% or so of Virginia voters who did not back her.
“Those who were supporting my opponent are disappointed today. And to those Virginians who did not vote for me, I want you to know that my goal and my intent is to serve all Virginians,” she said.
Spanberger has taken the stage at her victory party in Richmond, where she began by thanking her supporters, who helped elevate her to the state’s highest office, the first female governor in the state’s centuries-long history.
“We sent a message to the whole world that in 202, Virginia chose pragmatism over partisanship,” she said. “We chose our commonwealth over chaos.”
She also thanked her opponent, the Republican Lieutenant governor Winsome Earle-Sears, and vowed to be a governor that listens to Virginians who didn’t vote for her.
“To those Virginians who did not vote for me, I want you to know that my goal and my intent is to serve all Virginians,” she said.
Democrats are celebrating another pair of victories tonight, this time in Georgia, where to Alicia Johnson and Peter Hubbard won their races to serve on the state’s Public Service Commission. The contests were being watched as a bellwether in a swing state ahead of the 2026 midterms.
According to the DNC, Johnson and Hubbard are the first Democrats in Georgia to win a non-federal statewide election in nearly 20 years.
In response to Johnson and Hubbard’s victory in the Georgia Public Service Commission election, DNC chair Ken Martin released the following statement: “This victory is a direct response to Trump’s cost-raising agenda that is squeezing pocketbooks in Georgia and across the country.”
He added: “Costs are too damn high and Trump and Republicans are to blame.”
Chris Stein
The cheers were particularly loud at Abigail Spanberger’s watch party when MSNBC noted that she was outperforming Kamala Harris in Virginia’s Loudoun county.
A year ago, Harris’s underperformance in the Democratic-trending county on Washington DC’s far outskirts was the first sign that she was not going to be the next president. But for Spanberger’s campaign for governor, it’s clearly a different story.
Democrat Aftab Pureval was re-elected as mayor of Cincinnati on Tuesday, beating back a challenge from Republican Cory Bowman, the half-brother of vice-president JD Vance, according to the Associated Press.
Pureval was first elected four years ago, in 2021. Though the office is officially nonpartisan, his party preference is Democratic.
BREAKING: Democrat Aftab Pureval wins Cincinnati mayoral election over Cory Bowman, half-brother of Vice President JD Vance.
Follow AP for live updates. https://t.co/MHLL36mT48
— The Associated Press (@AP) November 5, 2025
Yemeni cafes and beer gardens across Astoria, a neighborhood in Queens, are at capacity as New Yorkers await the results of Tuesday’s mayoral election.
Long lines formed outside Ayat, a Palestinian bistro that just opened a location in Astoria, that was holding a free community dinner in honor of Mamdani.
Adam Gabbatt
I’m at Andrew Cuomo’s election night watch party, at the Ziegeld Ballroom in midtown Manhattan. In its own words, Ziegfeld Ballroom is a “luxury event venue built on Broadway’s golden era”. I do not know what that means.
There are no supporters here yet – they’re due to arrive at 8.30pm. They will be greeted by two bars. I have just confirmed that the booze is free. There are circular tables dotted around the edge of the room, each clad in a long black table cloth, and each with three lit candles in the middle. It’s like they’re preparing for a mass seance.
When I arrived the song Sending Out An SOS was playing. Is the campaign sending out secret messages through music? If it is, the messages are confusing: Blame It on the Boogie was on next.
Polls close in slate of states with closely watched races, including New Jersey and Pennsylvania
It’s just after 8pm eastern time, meaning polls have now closed across many states, including New Jersey, where a tight race for governor is under way, and Pennsylvania.
Polls are also now closed in Georgia, Maine and Michigan, and for one race in Texas to fill the seat of the late congressman Sylvester Turner.
Abigail Spanberger wins Virginia governor’s race, AP projects
The Associated Press projects Democrat Abigail Spanberger has won the Virginia governor’s race, defeating Republican Winsome Earle-Sears.
It’s a lightning-fast call in the closely watched race as polls closed just over an hour ago.
All 100 of the seats in Virginia’s House of Delegates are also up for grabs tonight. Democrats currently hold a 51-48 majority in the chamber.
Virginians cast more than 1.1m early in-person votes and nearly 330,000 mail-in ballots before election day, according to AP tallies.
Chris Stein
As we wait for results from the Virginia gubernatorial race:
At Abigail Spanberger’s watch party in downtown Richmond’s convention center, attenders are watching MSNBC’s election coverage, which shows the Democratic gubernatorial candidate outperforming Kamala Harris in many key counties across Virginia.
The crowd just erupted into an enormous cheer when the network announced that Spanberger had won.
The Associated Press, which is what we rely on for race results, still has not called the race.
Anna Betts
The Mamdani election party is just kicking off at the Brooklyn Paramount as the final ballots are cast.
New Jersey Democrats file suit to keep polls open an extra hour in county with unfounded bomb threats
Democrats in New Jersey have filed a lawsuit to extend polling for one more hour in Passaic County after multiple unfounded bomb threats earlier today.
The Passaic County Democratic party has asked for polls to be extended until 9pm eastern time, with a court hearing expected on the matter imminently, the AP reports.
The county has 340,000 registered voters. It’s the only county not in California where the Justice Department sent election monitors.
We’re entering poll closing crunch time over the next few hours, with the final votes coming in for a slate of key races across the country.
At 8pm eastern, polls will close for New Jersey governor, the three Pennsylvania supreme court justices up for retention, as well as mayoral races in Atlanta, Detroit and Pittsburgh.
At 9pm eastern, polls close for the New York City mayoral race.
And at 11pm eastern, California will finish voting on Proposition 50, the effort to draw new congressional districts.
Polls close in Virginia
Polls have closed in Virginia, where Abigail Spanberger, the former Democratic congresswoman who is the party’s nominee for governor, and the Republican lieutenant governor, Winsome Earle-Sears, are locked in a competitive race.
Tuesday is a big night for California’s term-limited governor who has not been coy about his presidential ambitions.
The Republican-Democratic redistricting fight has catapulted Newsom on to the national stage, and observers believe his political fortunes are tied to the success of the initiative. Here’s our dispatch below:
Gavin Newsom, the California governor, is on the verge of a potentially massive political victory that, just a few months ago, didn’t exist.
In August, a group of Texas Democrats fled their state to block Republicans from approving a rare mid-decade gerrymander to redraw congressional districts at Donald Trump’s urging. Altering the maps in the GOP’s favor would make it even harder for Democrats to take back control of Congress in the midterm elections next year. The Texas Democrats hoped their standoff would be a national call to action.
Newsom answered that call. He and his allies raced to introduce a retaliatory gerrymander, pushing the new congressional maps through the state legislature before sending them to the ballot for a high-stakes special election on Tuesday.
“It took a lot of courage for Governor Newsom to actually push for this,” said Texas state representative Nicole Collier, a leader of the Democrats’ summer walkout. “He worked with his delegation and now they’re taking it to the people and that’s what it looks like to be your brother’s keeper.”
Chris Stein
Voters trickled in and out of the main public library branch in Virginia’s state capital Richmond on Tuesday afternoon, with several saying that they view the state’s elections as a way to send a message to leaders in Washington.
“Voting is one of the ways we can comment on the system, and this is how we can say, hey, we want change,” said voter Rich G, 32. He had voted entirely for Democratic candidates, including Abigail Spanberger, the former congresswoman who is the party’s nominee for governor.
“I think when it comes down to it, people are looking for a lot more competency,” he said, noting he’d like to see more state investments in public housing and education.
In addition to the governor’s race, Virginians are voting for lieutenant governor, attorney general, and members of the house of delegates, among other positions.
Miki Edwards, a 30-year-old anesthesiologist, described a feeling of “uncertainty” with the economy and the direction of the state that pushed her to come out and vote.
“It’s hard to invest right now, it’s hard to set money aside,” she said, adding that she didn’t like to travel abroad any more because of how Americans were being viewed.
An independent who had voted for Republicans in the past, she voted only for Democrats today as a way to send a message to Washington.
“I think most of us are hoping that we’re voting for someone that will stand up for their constituents,” she said. “It does seem like a scary time right now.”
Trump renominates Musk ally to lead Nasa
Donald Trump has announced he is re-nominating Jared Isaacman, an ally of Elon Musk, to head Nasa months after initially pulling his nomination after a “thorough review” of the private astronaut’s “prior associations”.
“This evening, I am pleased to nominate Jared Isaacman, an accomplished business leader, philanthropist, pilot, and astronaut, as Administrator of NASA,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, TruthSocial. “Jared’s passion for Space, astronaut experience, and dedication to pushing the boundaries of exploration, unlocking the mysteries of the universe, and advancing the new Space economy, make him ideally suited to lead NASA into a bold new Era.”
Isaacman, a tech billionaire who has led two private spaceflights, was pulled from consideration earlier this year after a fallout with Musk, who had led the White House’s controversial Doge effort to downsize the US government.
At the time, the White House did not specify what it mean by “prior associations,” though there was some suggestion it was a reference to donations he made to Democrats.
