Democrat Ralph Northam Defeats Republican Ed Gillespie in Virginia Governor Race

Democrat Lt. Governor Ralph Northam has defeated Republican Ed Gillespie in the 2017 Virginia governor race, People’s Pundit Daily (PPD) has projected. With 70% reporting (1,798 of 2,566 precincts), Lt. Gov. Northam led Mr. Gillespie with 51.9% to 46.9%.

Democratic candidate Justin Fairfax also defeated Republican Jill Vogel, though by a slimmer margin. Democrat Attorney General Mark Herring was reelected.

As PPD has repeatedly stated, the PPD Battleground State Likely Voter Metrics revealed the Commonwealth of Virginia is the one and only contested state where Democrats have made gains since the 2016 presidential election.

Thus far, Democrats have gained 11 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates: 2, 10, 13, 31, 32, 42, 50, 51, 67, 72 and 73. Worth noting, 10 is a smaller version of the district represented by Barbara Comstock, R-Va., who is an establishment Republican figure. The party believes traditional Republicans can hold support in that region of the state, but clearly they did not tonight.

Big Media has predictably painted the Virginia governor race as a referendum on President Donald J. Trump, which is bogus for numerous reasons. President Trump abandoned campaigning in the Commonwealth of Virginia in 2016 and lost it to Hillary Clinton, by an apparent slimmer margin than Mr. Gillespie will have lost it when all the votes are counted.

Further, as the PPD Election Projection Model noted back in 2013, Virginia had elected a candidate for governor from the opposite party in the White House from 1977 to 2009. That changed in 2013 when the Republican Party abandoned Ken Cuccinelli’s campaign against Governor Terry McAuliffe, and resumed with Mr. Gillespie’s defeat.