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Political party affiliation among respondents to the survey continued to lean substantially toward the Democratic Party, in line with past Life in Hampton Roads’ surveys, and overall partisanship has rebounded. Nearly 37 percent of respondents (up from less than 26 percent of respondents last year) said they felt closest to the Democratic party when asked the question “Do you generally feel closer to the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, or do you consider yourself to be an independent or something else?” But the Republican party also made some gains. Approximately 24 percent (up from 20 percent) identified with the Republican Party. Affiliation with both parties is now near the highest levels seen in recent years, rebounding from last year’s lows.

These resurgent partisan affiliations may play an important role in shaping voter choices later this year in November – people who affiliate with a particular political party tend to vote for that party’s candidates. That said, the portion of independents remains substantial, reflecting the failure of both parties to win the support of a large portion of the population, and the important role those without a major party affiliation play in shaping election outcomes.

The survey asked respondents to indicate whether they approved or disapproved of the job performance of Donald Trump as President and Glenn Youngkin as Governor. Both Republican politicians received less than 50 percent job approval, which is hardly surprising given the tendency of the Hampton Roads region to support Democratic politicians in statewide and national elections. But there is nonetheless a substantial contrast between the two. Almost half of respondents (47.6 percent) indicated that they approved or strongly approved of Youngkin, while only 33.4 percent indicated that they approved or strongly approved of Trump.

Approval of Youngkin in the 2025 survey was similar to the rate observed in previous LIHR surveys, although a change in the way refusal options were made available in the survey appears to have led to a substantial decrease in these types of options in favor of disapprove and strongly disapprove responses¹.

¹ In previous years in which a telephone survey methodology was used, respondents were provided an explicit “don’t know” and “refused” option. For the web-based survey, respondents were allowed to skip over questions without providing a response thus resulting in missing values. For this section of analysis, when comparing 2025 data to previous years, those “missing” responses are reported as “don’t know/refused”.

In 2025, Virginia will elect a new governor, with Democratic candidate Abigail Spanberger facing off against Republican candidate Winsome Earle-Sears. The last time Virginia elected a governor, Republican Glenn Younkin won statewide by a narrow margin, winning 50.6 percent of the vote versus 48.6 percent of the vote won by Democrat Terry McAuliffe. Within the seven Hampton Roads cities, Youngkin won 45.7 percent of the two-party vote, while McAuliffe won 54.3 percent. The 2025 survey asked respondents about their preferences in the upcoming governor’s race. Overall, the results suggest that the Spanberger campaign is poised to win Hampton Roads, with a position much stronger than that of McAuliffe in the 2021 election. Nearly 48 percent of all respondents indicated that they planned to vote for the Democratic candidate (64 percent of those who expressed a two-party preference), while less than 27 percent indicated that they would vote for the Republican candidate (35.7 percent of those with a two-party preference). Overall, these results seem to suggest Spanberger is positioned to perform substantially better than McAuliffe in the Hampton Roads region of Virginia. In the 2021 LIHR survey, McAuliffe was supported by only 42 percent of survey respondents compared to Spanberger’s 47.9%. Roughly a quarter of respondents (25.5 percent) indicated that they currently would vote for someone else, would not vote, did not know who they would vote for, or refused to answer the question.²

² The figure above includes all survey respondents, including non-registered voters. A concern related to the above analysis of the gubernatorial race is the possibility that so-called “shy Trump voters” might be missed in the analysis. As a result of these concerns, some polls in the 2024 Presidential election weighted respondents based upon who they said they had voted for in the 2020 Presidential election. If Trump supporters are less likely to respond to the Life in Hampton Roads survey and are more likely to support Winsome Earle-Sears for Governor, then our results could be skewed against Earle-Sears. To check for this possibility, this year’s survey included a question asking respondents who they voted for in the 2024 Presidential election. This comparison does raise some concern about underrepresentation of Trump voters in the 2025 survey sample. Of respondents who indicated a two-party preference, 37.6 percent said they voted for Donald Trump, but Trump won 41.2 percent of the two-party vote in the 2024 election in the seven Hampton Roads cities. This suggests that difficulties sampling Trump supporters might be biasing Spanberger’s numbers upwards, and biasing Earle-Sears’ numbers downwards by approximately 3.5 percentages points respectively. However, such a bias in the survey sample would be insufficient to put Sears in a comparable position to Youngkin in 2021 – she would still be under 40 percent of the two-party vote in Hampton Roads. Overall, this analysis suggests that even if Trump voters were less likely to respond to the LIHR survey, the resulting bias would be modest.

The survey results suggest that both candidates have done a fairly good job of building support among those who identify with their party, but Spanberger has substantially stronger support among voters who do not identify as Democrat or Republican, and more support among cross-party voters. Earle-Sears has the support of 82.4% of Republican Party identifiers (versus Spanberger’s 6.5%). Spanberger has the support of 84.9% of Democratic Party identifiers (versus Earle-Sears 2.3%). Spanberger has the support of 45.5% of Independents, while Earle-Sears has the support of only 20.6%. And among those who identify with some other party, Spanberger wins 44% versus only 16% for Earle-Sears.

In July and August 2025 Donald Trump came under pressure to more explicitly endorse Earle-Sears, a step he had largely avoided to that point, perhaps because of critical statements made by Earle-Sears after Trump lost the 2020 Presidential election and the events of January 6th, 2021. This raises an important set of questions about whether Trump supporters are backing Earle-Sears in the governor’s race. Does Earle-Sears’ slightly weaker performance among Republicans reflect lack of support among Trump voters or among those who supported Trump? 

Earle-Sears does seem to be struggling to re-assemble Trump’s support coalition in Virginia. Among respondents who said they voted for Trump in 2024, Earle-Sears wins the support of 78.1%, with 9.7% indicating they would vote for Spanberger. Among respondents who said they voted for Harris in 2024, Spanberger wins 84.1%, with 4.7 % voting for Earle-Sears. Thus, Earle-Sears is performing worse among Trump voters than Spanberger is performing among Harris voters. Complicating the challenge for Earle- Sears is that Trump himself is struggling to retain approval among a portion of those who voted for him – according to the survey, 12.5% of Trump voters now disapprove or strongly disapprove of the job Trump is doing as President.

Trump job approval / disapproval strongly predicts gubernatorial election vote-choice among survey respondents. Among respondents who strongly approve of Trump, almost all are already planning to vote for Earle-Sears (85% for Earle-Sears, 2% for Spanberger). Respondents who approve of Trump mostly are planning to vote for Earle-Sears as well (55% for Earle-Sears, 13% for Spanberger), with the large portion not planning to vote for either candidate this could be a potential resource for Earle-Sears. But there are also risks for Earle-Sears of being too closely associated with Trump. Because 16% of those who disapprove of Trump say they would vote for Earle-Sears, closer connection with Trump could weaken Earle-Sears’ level of support among a key voting group. Closer support from Trump (who has lost Virginia in each of his three presidential runs) could cut into Earle-Sears ability to win support from those who disapprove of and/or haven’t voted for Trump.

As noted above, a substantial number of respondents hold more negative views of President Donald Trump than they do of Governor Glenn Youngkin. How does approval of Youngkin translate into support for Sears and Spanberger in the Gubernatorial election? Overall, Earle-Sears seems to suffer from disapproval of Youngkin without benefitting equally from approval. Among respondents who strongly approved of Youngkin, 82 percent indicated that they would vote for Earle-Sears (and 12 percent indicated that they would vote for Spanberger), and among those who approved (but not strongly) of Youngkin, only 40 percent indicated that they would vote for Earle-Sears (compared with 30 percent who indicated they would vote for Spanberger). Thus, many respondents who think well of Youngkin do not plan to vote for his lieutenant governor in her quest to ascend to the governor’s office. Despite the loose connection between approval of Youngkin and support for Earle-Sears, there was a tight connection between disapproval of Youngkin and a plan to not vote for Earle-Sears. Only eight percent of those who disapproved of Youngkin planned to vote for Earle-Sears, and less than one percent of those who strongly disapproved of Youngkin indicated that they planned to vote for Earle-Sears. Thus, Earle-Sears could gain substantially from stronger support among residents who approve of Youngkin.

Overall, the results suggest that unless a significant change in the dynamics of the race takes place, Spanberger will remain well positioned to win the 2025 Gubernatorial election in Virginia. 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.

In 2025, Virginians will also elect all members of the House of Delegates. Consequently, the survey included a question asking respondents to indicate whether and for which party they would vote in the House of Delegates elections. Slightly more than 50 percent of respondents indicated that they planned to vote for the Democratic candidate, while about one quarter of respondents indicated that they would vote for the Republican candidate. Thus, Republicans polling is slightly worse in the House of Delegates contests than in the Gubernatorial contest.

The last time Republicans won control of the House of Delegates (in 2021) the party’s candidates won 45.8 percent of the House of Delegates vote in the 7 cities included in the Life in Hampton Roads Survey, while Democrats won 53.7 percent of the vote. Thus, Republicans appear to be polling far behind the margins they would need to prevail. That said, the proportions in this year’s survey are very similar to those we observed in the 2023 LIHR survey which was the last time the House of Delegates was up for election. In the 2023 survey, 33.1 percent of respondents who expressed a two-party preference indicated that they would vote for Republicans, and in 2025 34.0 percent of respondents indicated that they would vote for Republicans. Given that Democrats went on to narrowly win a majority in the House of Delegates with 51 seats to Republicans 49, perhaps Republicans could again out-perform what the LIHR survey results currently indicate. Overall, while either party could prevail in the contest for control of the House of Delegates in November, the results of the survey appear to give the edge to the Democrats in the Hampton Roads region.

Respondents were asked a series of questions about the ethical standards of various elected officials and were asked to what extent they agreed or disagreed that: elected officials in their city, elected officials in Virginia state government, and members of Congress have high ethical standards. As can be seen below, a higher percentage of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that their city elected officials had high ethical standards (59.4%) compared to Virginia elected officials (56.1%) or members of Congress (35.1%). About one in five respondents strongly disagreed that members of Congress have high ethical standards.

Belief in the extent to which city officials had high ethical standards varied by city. Respondents in Norfolk, Virginia Beach, and Suffolk were the most likely to believe that elected officials in their city had high ethical standards (agree and strongly agree) and Portsmouth was the only city where a majority of respondents selected the Disagree or Strongly Disagree options.

Respondents were also asked how much trust and confidence they have at this time in the various branches of the federal government. More than one-third of respondents indicated that they had no trust/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 US Senate and House of Representatives (24%). More than one-third of respondents (37.6%) indicated that they had a great deal or a fair amount of trust/confident in the judicial branch. 

With Republican / Republican appointed majorities in all three branches of the Federal Government, all three trust and confidence questions had a strong partisan association. Among those who responded to both the party identification and trust question, 85.8 percent of Republicans expressed a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the executive branch, 76.3 percent expressed a great deal of a fair amount of confidence in the judicial branch, and 62.1 percent expressed a great deal of confidence in the legislative branch. By contrast, only 23.5 percent of Democrats and 25.1 percent of other respondents expressed confidence in the executive branch, only 23.5 percent of Democrats and 27.7 percent of other respondents expressed confidence in the courts, and 26.1 percent of Democrats and 19.5 percent of other respondents expressed confidence in the legislative branch.

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 confidence, while less than 50 percent of respondents from Portsmouth, Newport News, and Hampton expressed at least a fair amount of confidence.