2025 Virginia Governor’s Race Odds: Which Party Will Win?
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Jason Lake
- February 12, 2025
Is the Virginia gubernatorial race a toss-up? Or does Democratic Party candidate Abigail Spanberger enjoy a comfortable lead over the Republican nominee, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears? Enquiring bettors at some of the top-rated sportsbooks want to know.
The answer you get depends on who you talk to. According to the politics odds at BetOnline (visit our BetOnline Review), the Democrats are favored at –275 to win this open seat as we go to press, with most pollsters showing Spanberger ahead; it’s hardly unanimous, though, and the Cook Report suggests the GOP (+215) should be closer to a pick’em.
We’re coming off a 2024 U.S. election where the polls over-estimated public support for Kamala Harris and the Dems. Is the same thing happening in the Old Dominion? Maybe, but not for all the same reasons.
Virginia Governor’s Race Odds
| Political Party | Price | Offered by |
|---|---|---|
| Democrats | -275 | |
| Republicans | +215 |
Who Is Abigail Spanberger?
Spanberger is the former U.S. representative for Virginia’s 7th congressional district (the Fightin’ 7th!), having unseated incumbent Dave Brat (R) in 2018 after 38 years of GOP control. Previous to that, Spanberger was an operations officer at the CIA for eight years before joining the private sector in 2014. She is now 45 years old, born in New Jersey with European descent but raised in Virginia from the age of 13.
Politically, Spanberger is considered a centrist Democrat, ranked the fifth most bi-partisan member of the House by the Lugar Center at Georgetown University before giving up her seat to run for governor. She still voted along party lines in all 73 bills and resolutions listed at FiveThirtyEight, but has voiced stronger concern when it comes to the southern border and fentanyl.
Who Is Winsome Earle-Sears?
Earle-Sears is the 42nd Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, the first woman and the first Jamaican-American to hold any state office in the Commonwealth. Now 60, Earle-Sears came to America at age 6 and grew up in the Bronx before getting her BA at Old Dominion University, and her MA at Regent University, a private Christian school in Virginia Beach founded in 1977 by Pat Robertson.
After serving three years as an electrician in the U.S. Marines, Earle-Sears eventually gave politics a shot; her big break came in 2001 when she beat Dem incumbent Billy Robinson for the 90th district seat in the Virginia House of Delegates. Her 2004 bid for the 3rd congressional district was unsuccessful, as were other attempts to climb the ladder, but Earle-Sears rode the Glenn Youngkin train to power in 2021, serving under the Governor and hoping for an unbroken line of succession in 2025.
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Is This Race Close?
It might be closer than the polls suggest.
Cook Report warned about the same thing happening in the 2024 U.S. election, where most pollsters had Harris and the Democrats marginally ahead. But it’s a bit harder to pin down what’s happening on the ground here; other would-be candidates have until April 3 to throw their names in the hat for the June primaries, so this race is still in the early stages of development.
Having said that, we’re about to find out whether we’re truly living in an age of anti-incubmency, or something closer to electoral autocracy. Across the world, we’ve seen governments – some on the right, but mostly on the left – get toppled by populist movements over the past year or so. Now that Youngkin is in power at the state level, with Donald Trump and the Republicans in the White House, are Virginia voters happy with their choices, or will they boot the incumbents out again?
We’re guessing the latter here at the home office, but with the requisite shrug of the shoulders. Virginia has generally chosen governors from whichever party is in opposition at the federal level. The only time since 1977 that it didn’t happen was 2013, when Terry Mcauliffe (D) won the gubernatorial race when Barack Obama was president. But then Youngkin surfed the populist wave in 2021 and ended McAuliffe’s hopes of serving a second term.
Said term would have been non-consecutive, of course; that’s the law in Virginia, which is why Youngkin isn’t running for re-election. Perhaps history will repeat itself on two levels here, with voters electing a governor to counterbalance Trump (which they did in 2017, when Ralph Northam beat Ed Gillespie by nine points) while also giving Earle-Sears the Kamala Harris treatment.
Bet accordingly.
*The line and/or odds on picks in this article might have moved since the content was commissioned. For updated line movements, visit BMR’s free betting odds product.
