With (waves hands) all the things going on in the world right now, this is a tough moment to focus on state-legislatures – but we should! In this post, we’ll explain why Virginia Dems may be missing some promising opportunities in 2025 to pick up seats in the House of Delegates and widen their slim majority.
Why should you care about state legislature races?
As we’ve said over and over, many crucial rights are best protected and expanded in state legislatures, not least voting rights which will be key to the attempt retake the house and Senate in 2026 and the presidency in 2028.
Another reason for Dems to focus on upcoming state legislature contests is that we may have the wind at our backs in upcoming races. Team Blue has over-performed in several special elections since the 2024 general, and although this could be due in part to peculiarities of special election turnout, it may also reflect a broader preference shift toward Dems. We think the latter is at least somewhat contributory and likely to grow in importance.
The next big test for Dems will be off-cycle state legislature races in 2025 – especially in Virginia, where we hold a slim 51-49 majority in Virginia’s House of Delegates. With the 2025 contests in Old Dominion less than 6 months away, now is the right time to identify races where Team Blue could prevail with the right mix of funding and high-quality candidates.
Which VA state legislature seats are flippable in 2025?
Because we think there will be a “blue bump” in upcoming races, we used our demographic model (technical details here) to look for slight long-shots in VA’s lower chamber. We started our search in districts where the D candidate in the past few statewide and federal elections has gotten between 35% and 45% of the vote. We further filtered to places where our demographic model says a D win is plausible (i.e., projected D share at least ~49%). Finally, we narrowed our focus to districts with above mean college graduation rates among white voters, because we think this subgroup is most likely to switch from R to D in the current environment.
This analysis led us to identify 4 “slight long-shots” in the VA House of Delegates, shown in the table below. For each one, we’ve provided the historical D share and our modeled median D-lean based on the district’s underlying demographics.
| District | Historical D share | Median D share in our model |
| VA HOD 40 | 44.0% | 48.9% |
| VA HOD 73 | 44.6% | 51.0% |
| VA HOD 90 | 38.7% | 52.4% |
| VA HOD 98 | 39.8% | 50.5% |
Of these, two (HD-40 and HD-73) have been fairly competitive historically. We are hopeful that high-quality candidates will emerge from the contested primaries in June, and expect the winners will be well funded in November.
But the other two, HD-90 and HD-98, are more interesting for Team Blue. If you just used historical data, these would look like Republican layups. But according to our model, Dems have reasonable shots – although we may be on the verge of squandering them.
In HD-98, just south of Virginia Beach, retired teacher and first-time candidate Cheryl Smith will face Barry Knight, who has held the seat since 2009. Knight seems very well-funded, but we can’t find records of Smith’s fundraising on the official VA State Board of Elections site.
In Chesapeake-area HD-90, Rodney Nickens will take on another long-time incumbent Republican, Jay Leftwich. A lawyer and political consultant, Nickens doesn’t have an official website and the “Friends of Rodney Nickens” organization reported $0 raised as of April ‘25.
Closing thoughts
We don’t know anything specifically about these candidates or races, but based on our analysis, we think both deserve a hard look from local Dems. Smith and Nickens are both political newcomers facing experienced opponents, and it’s unclear how well-organized or well-resourced their campaigns are. If they’re credible, they likely need support to take advantage of what we see as potent tailwinds that could propel them into the House of Delegates — or at least help them make a good showing, leading to better prospects for future D candidates in those districts.
We’ll be following these 4 VA House of Delegates districts closely as candidates emerge, but in the meantime, we hope state and local Dems, non-profits, PACs, and donors devote serious – and immediate! – attention to them so we have the best chance of picking up these seats. Go Team Blue!
Image: Tesco.com