By Jonah Grinkewitz
A survey of Hampton Roads residents suggests Democratic candidate Abigail Spanberger is well positioned to win the governor’s race in Virginia this November.
It also shows identification with major political parties has rebounded to its highest level in recent years — especially for Democrats — after a low in 2024.
These are among the findings in the 2025 Life in Hampton Roads Survey regarding politics and political opinions. This is one of the chapters in the 16th annual edition of the survey conducted by Old ֱ University's Social Science Research Center and funded by the Dragas Center for Economic Analysis and Policy at ODU.
As opposed to most years, this edition of the survey was conducted entirely online, with a total of 718 web-based surveys completed between July 7 and July 24.
The political section of the survey focused on four topics: baseline party identification and job approval; the governor’s race; the House of Delegates election; and ethical perceptions and trust and confidence of government officials.
Affiliation with the Democratic and Republican parties jumped from 26 to 37% and 20 to 24%, respectively. Still, the number of respondents identifying as independents was substantial at nearly 27%, reflecting the failure of both parties to win the support of a large portion of the population, write the report’s authors.
In the governor’s race, nearly 48% of respondents said they planned to vote for the Democratic candidate, Abigail Spanberger, with less than 27% showing preference for the Republican candidate, Winsome Earle-Sears.
By comparison, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe only received 42% of support among Hampton Roads residents in the 2021 Life in Hampton Roads Survey. That race resulted in Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin winning by a narrow margin.
While both candidates do well among their respective parties, the survey shows Spanberger has substantially stronger support among voters who do not identify as Democrat or Republican and more support among cross-party voters. She receives 45.5% of independent voter support (versus Earle-Sear’s 20.6%) and 44% of support from those who identify with some other party (versus Earle-Sear's 16%).
The survey’s results also suggest approval ratings for President Donald Trump and Governor Glenn Youngkin could play a role in this year’s gubernatorial election. Both Republicans received less than 50% job approval, but Youngkin fared much better with 47.6% versus only 33.4% for Trump.
While most respondents who approve of Trump plan to vote for Earle-Sears, 16% who disapprove of the president also plan to vote for her. This means “closer connection to Trump could weaken Earle-Sear's support among a key voting group” writes report author Jesse Richman, associate professor of Political Science at Old ֱ University.
Reinforcing this possibility is the fact that 12.5% of respondents who previously voted for Trump now disapprove or strongly disapprove of the job he is doing as president.
In addition, Earle-Sears seems to suffer from disapproval of Youngkin without benefitting equally from approval, write the report’s authors.
She receives 82% support among those who strongly approve of the governor, but only 40% support among those who approve of him (but not strongly), with 30% indicating they would vote for Spanberger.
On the flip side, only 8% of those who disapprove of Youngkin plan to vote for Earle-Sears, and less than 1% of those who strongly disapprove of Youngkin plan to vote for Earle-Sears.
“A key challenge for Earle-Sears would seem to be finding a way to garner much higher levels of support from Virginians who approve of Youngkin even while they might not approve of Trump,” Richman wrote.
In the House of Delegates — where all 100 seats are up for election — slightly more than 50% of respondents said they planned to vote for the Democratic candidate while about one quarter showed preference for the Republican candidate.
Although Republicans are polling far behind the margins they had when they previously won control of the House of Delegates in 2021 (when they had 45.8% support in that year’s Life in Hampton Roads Survey), the report’s authors suggest that they could outperform in this year’s election.
That is because the survey results this year mirror those in 2023 when Democrats barely won control with 51 seats to Republicans 49.
In the last section of the politics chapter, a higher percentage of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that their city officials had high ethical standards (59.4 %) compared to Virginia elected officials (56.1%) or members of Congress (35.1%).
Respondents in Norfolk, Virginia Beach and Suffolk were the most likely to believe elected officials in their city had high ethical standards (agree and strongly agree) and Portsmouth was the only city where most respondents selected the disagree or strongly disagree options.
More than one-third of respondents indicated they had no trust or confidence in the executive branch headed by the president (36.7%) and almost one in five expressed no trust or confidence in the judicial branch headed by the Supreme Court (23.2%) or the legislative branch headed by the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives (24%).
Respondents had a more favorable view of their local government when it comes to handling local problems with 55.4% indicating a great deal or fair amount of trust. As with ethics, however, there was variation across cities, with more than 50 percent of respondents from Chesapeake, Norfolk, Suffolk and Virginia Beach expressing at least a fair amount of trust and confidence, while less than 50 percent of respondents from Portsmouth, Newport News and Hampton expressed at least a fair amount of trust and confidence in their local government to handle local problems.
You can read the full politics and political opinions chapter on the SSRC website.
The Life in Hampton Roads survey is designed to gain insight into residents’ perceptions of the quality of life in the region as well as other topics of local interest, such as perceptions of police, the economy, education and health. The remainder of the survey will be released in the coming months.