Kamala Harris will narrowly capture the commonwealth of Virginia, keeping Democrats’ hopes alive for a Harris electoral college victory.
Harris held a four-point lead over former President Donald Trump with 83 percent of the vote in, leading the Associated Press (AP) to call the race for Harris.
The win gives Harris 13 electoral votes. It also allows Democrats to breathe a collective sigh of relief after moving millions of dollars in the final weeks to keep the blue-tinted state in their column as Donald Trump rose in the polls. A loss in Virginia almost certainly would have spelled doom for Democrats.
Yet Trump’s performance and the tight margins in the reliably Democrat state are a dark harbinger for Democrats’ chances in several yet-to-be-called swing states — and their odds of hanging on to the White House.
The commonwealth has shifted towards Democrats in recent elections, but Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s (R) victory in 2021 and polling gains by Donald Trump in the final weeks of the campaign gave Republicans hope to turn the state red. Ultimately, those hopes were dashed against Virginia’s fast-growing Washington, DC, suburbs.
There was additional drama in Virginia in the final weeks of the campaign. The Biden-Harris Department of Justice (DOJ) sued the state over Youngkin’s enforcement of a measure aimed at culling noncitizens from the voter rolls — a law introduced by former governor and now-Sen. Tim Kaine (D), which the DOJ previously approved.
Youngkin issued Executive Order 35 on August 7, directing election officials to remove the names of people who are “unable to verify that they are citizens” to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).
The DOJ sued Youngkin, claiming that the 90-day “quiet period” in the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA, or “Motor Voter”) does not allow these removals for three months prior to Election Day.
Days before Election Day, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered that federal law allows Youngkin to stop noncitizens from voting, handing a massive win to Trump, Republicans, and election integrity supporters.
But it appears that ruling was too little, too late.
Kaine was on the ballot this year as well, running against Republican Hung Cao, a Navy veteran who immigrated to the United States as a refugee as a child. The Associated Press called the race for Kaine late Tuesday night.
Bradley Jaye is a Capitol Hill Correspondent for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter at @BradleyAJaye.
