Preview only: Virginia's own model is not built yet. The county or city groups, map, what-if scenarios and past-race numbers on this page are Texas's, used as stand-ins. The polls and results are Virginia's.
The forecast
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Numbers as a table
Things to know
The race in two minutes
Read by Maren Holt, Pollitrack's anchor · Recorded October 25
Read the transcript
I'm Maren Holt, and this is your Pollitrack digest on the Senate race in Virginia.
On November 3, Virginia decides who holds this seat for the next six years. On the ballot, in the order Virginia's drawing set: Democrat Mark Warner, the senator seeking a fourth term, and Republican Bert Mizusawa, a retired Army major general.
Virginia has had only two polls of this race, and the newer one ended in June. Together they have Warner ahead by 22 points. Virginia polls have missed in both directions about equally, so Pollitrack's forecast takes nothing off. That leaves Warner ahead by 22, with a better than ninety-nine in a hundred chance of finishing first.
Polls this old and this few can be far off. Even so, a gap this wide would take an unusually large miss to close.
Virginians have been able to vote early since September 18, without needing a reason, and early voting ends on Saturday, October 31. So far, about 942 thousand have voted early in person or by mail. Pollitrack has no same-day count from past years to compare it with.
On election night, Pollitrack reads five bellwethers, each standing in for a part of the state: Newport News for the biggest group, with Northern Virginia, Richmond and the Hampton Roads cities; Fauquier County for the outer suburbs; Louisa County for the small towns and rural Virginia; Manassas City for the diverse cities; and Montgomery County, home to Virginia Tech, for the closely split places.
Polls close at 7 pm Eastern. Each locality posts its early, Election Day and mail votes separately, and they can arrive in either order. Scroll down to explore each place, or switch to What-if mode and play out your own night. I'm Maren Holt. See you on election night.
The recording plays on the Pollitrack site. The transcript is above.
Early voting
How to read this: the line adds up early votes day by day, in person and by mail. The amber line is 2026; the gray lines are past years on the same day of early voting, so a 2026 line above them means more early votes than then. Refreshed every morning and afternoon from the Virginia Department of Elections' early-vote counts.Numbers as a table
Numbers as a table
Cumulative early votes, in person and by mail, against the same day in 2022 and 2024.
In the news
How to read this: the headlines free news sources carry about this race, newest first, with who published each. The counts are how many stories named each candidate in the last seven days. Pollitrack reads the headlines; it does not judge them and they do not change the forecast.
The newest headlines about this race, refreshed twice a day.
This week: 17 stories name Warner, 16 name Mizusawa, 2 name both.
- Mizusawa: better someone Trump listens to than a Senate opponent
- Meet the Candidates: Mark Warner
- 71-year-old Sen. Mark Warner says this is his last time running for Congress
- Virginia state Sen . L . Louise Lucas charged with drug trafficking and money laundering : DOJ
- Virginia lawmakers respond after state Sen. L. Louise Lucas charged in alleged racketeering scheme
- Virginia man charged with sledgehammering , severely damaging Iwo Jima memorial in Quantico
Five county or city groups
How to read this: every county or city joins the group whose bellwether county or city it has moved most like since 2016. The color is the group's margin in the view you pick: where its bellwether lands if the polls are right, its 2024 President result, or, on election night, how far each county or city has shifted since 2024. Darker means a bigger lead: 15 points or more, 5 to 15, or under 5. Tap a group or a county or city to light up its group.
Every county or city joins the bellwether it has voted most like since 2016.
Pick a group to light up its counties and cities.
500 possible election nights
How to read this: the forecast is replayed 500 times, each with a different random draw of its uncertainty. Each dot is five possible nights, stacked by the statewide margin in 1-point steps: blue dots are Warner wins and red dots are Mizusawa wins. The more dots on one side of the tie line, the likelier that candidate wins.
The forecast replayed 500 times, with every county or city group free to miss.
Wins per 100 nights · each dot = 5 nights
The five bellwethers
How to read this: each row is one county or city, on a scale from a big Mizusawa lead (left) to a big Warner lead (right). The amber mark is the tie line: if every part of Virginia shifted as much as this county or city did, a result there would mean a statewide tie. A dot to the right of it is good news for Warner, and to the left for Mizusawa; the colored bar shows how far each county or city is from the tie line, and toward whom. The gray ticks are the 2024 and 2018 results. The dot is where the polling average points until results post, then the real result. Drag a dot, tap anywhere on a row, or use the arrow keys to try your own numbers; the dot clicks onto the marks when you get close.
Drag a dot, or pick a scenario, to see who wins Virginia.
Fine-tune the assumptions
County or city guides
Why each county or city was picked and what to watch.
Suburb test
Fauquier CountyTie line: Mizusawa +27.3 · stands in for the Richmond and Fredericksburg suburbs, the outer Washington exurbs and Roanoke County, 21% of the vote
- 2024 President
- Trump +21.5
- 2025 Governor
- Earle-Sears +15.3
- 2018 Senate
- Stewart +12.6
- Compared with Virginia
- 27–31 points more Republican in every race since 2016
Why this county or city
Fauquier County (Warrenton), on the outer edge of the Washington area, leads 22 counties and cities that cast 20.5% of the 2024 vote, which Trump won by 10.6. They are the suburbs that ring Richmond (Chesterfield, Hanover, Goochland), Fredericksburg (Stafford, Spotsylvania), Williamsburg (James City, York) and Roanoke, plus fast-growing exurbs from Frederick to Culpeper and Orange. Every point of swing here is worth about a fifth of a point statewide. Fauquier has tracked the group's swing most closely in the eight races the model was tested on; Orange (0.5 points off on average), Frederick and Culpeper (0.5 each) and Hanover (0.6) come close and are available as stand-ins.
What to look for
The tie line here is Mizusawa +27.3: a wider Mizusawa margin favors Mizusawa, a narrower one Warner. Trump won Fauquier by 21.5 in 2024 and Earle-Sears by 15.3 in 2025; it has voted 27 to 31 points to the right of Virginia in every race since 2016. Hanover's tie line is Mizusawa +31.4; Chesterfield, the group's biggest county, has one of Warner +3.1.
When results come in
Polls close at 7 pm. The page reads Fauquier's count from the Department of Elections' results site every few minutes; to watch Hanover or Chesterfield instead, pick it as the group's county. A locality's early and mail votes and its Election Day votes can come in at different times, and early and mail votes have leaned Democratic: in Fauquier the final count was 7 points more Republican than its early and mail votes in recent races, and the page allows for that while only those are in.
Signals so far
By October 22 that was 37% of all the ballots Fauquier cast early or by mail in 2024 and 59% of 2025's (Virginia: 40% and 63%), with 1,455 mail ballots still out, by the Department of Elections' count. Chesterfield, the group's biggest county: 49,141 ballots, 39% of its 2024 total. Virginia doesn't register voters by party, so these counts say how many have voted, not for whom. For scale: Fauquier cast 34,566 votes in the 2025 governor's race and Chesterfield 170,910.
Small-town test
Louisa CountyTie line: Mizusawa +31.9 · stands in for Southside, the Shenandoah Valley, the Southwest and the rural Piedmont, 20% of the vote
- 2024 President
- Trump +26.1
- 2025 Governor
- Earle-Sears +19.3
- 2018 Senate
- Stewart +15.6
- Compared with Virginia
- 30–35 points more Republican in every race since 2016
Why this county or city
Louisa County, between Richmond and Charlottesville, leads the most localities: 67 counties and small cities that cast 20.1% of the 2024 vote, which Trump won by 40.4. They run from the coalfields of the Southwest (Wise, Tazewell, Russell) through the Shenandoah Valley (Augusta, Shenandoah, Page) and Southside (Pittsylvania, Halifax, Mecklenburg) to the Northern Neck and the Eastern Shore. Louisa has tracked the group's swing most closely; Warren (0.5 points off on average), Isle of Wight (0.6), Gloucester and Shenandoah (0.7) come close and are available as stand-ins.
What to look for
The tie line here is Mizusawa +31.9: a wider Mizusawa margin favors Mizusawa, a narrower one Warner. Trump won Louisa by 26.1 in 2024; Stewart won it by 15.6 in 2018 while losing the state by 16.0. Warren's tie line is Mizusawa +43.2 and Isle of Wight's Mizusawa +25.5.
When results come in
Small localities often finish first, so the statewide running total can show Mizusawa ahead early. The page reads Louisa's count as it reports. In recent races Louisa's final count was about 13 points more Republican than its early and mail votes, the biggest gap of the five bellwethers.
Signals so far
By October 22 that was 46% of Louisa's 2024 early and mail ballots and 67% of 2025's, ahead of the state (40% and 63%). Virginia doesn't register voters by party. For scale: Louisa cast 18,951 votes in the 2025 governor's race; most of the group's localities are smaller still.
Diverse-city test
Manassas CityTie line: Warner +9.0 · stands in for Prince William, Manassas, Lynchburg, Danville and the small Southside cities, 7% of the vote
- 2024 President
- Harris +14.8
- 2025 Governor
- Spanberger +31.0
- 2018 Senate
- Kaine +28.1
- Compared with Virginia
- 6–16 points more Democratic in every race since 2016, least in 2017 and 2024
Why this county or city
Manassas, an independent city surrounded by Prince William County, leads nine localities that cast 7.3% of the 2024 vote, which Harris won by 14.6: Prince William County (most of the group's vote) and Manassas Park, where Hispanic, Black and Asian American residents together are the majority, and the small cities of Lynchburg, Danville, Hopewell, Martinsville and Emporia. Their common thread is the direction they moved: less Democratic against the state in 2024 than before. Manassas has tracked the group's swing most closely; Prince William (0.4 points off on average) and Manassas Park (0.4) come close and are available as stand-ins.
What to look for
The tie line here is Warner +9.0: a result above it favors Warner, below it Mizusawa. Harris won Manassas by 14.8 in 2024, down from Biden's 24.1 in 2020; Spanberger won it by 31.0 in 2025. Whether the 2024 move holds is the question this group answers. Prince William's tie line is Warner +12.1 and Manassas Park's Warner +14.1.
When results come in
The page reads Manassas's count as it reports; to watch Prince William instead, pick it as the group's county. Manassas cast 16,100 votes in 2024 and Prince William 228,712, so Prince William is the steadier number to watch.
Signals so far
By October 22 that was 42% of Manassas's 2024 early and mail ballots and 65% of 2025's (Virginia: 40% and 63%). Prince William: 49,231 ballots, 38% of its 2024 total, with 12,310 mail ballots still out. Virginia doesn't register voters by party. For scale: Manassas cast 11,725 votes in the 2025 governor's race and Prince William 165,888.
Swing test
Montgomery CountyTie line: Mizusawa +2.3 · stands in for Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Blacksburg and the closely split localities, 10% of the vote
- 2024 President
- Harris +3.5
- 2025 Governor
- Spanberger +16.9
- 2018 Senate
- Kaine +16.1
- Compared with Virginia
- Within 4.4 points of the state in every race since 2016
Why this county or city
Montgomery County (Blacksburg and Virginia Tech, Christiansburg) leads 12 localities that cast 10.4% of the 2024 vote, which Trump won by 0.2: Virginia Beach and Chesapeake in Hampton Roads cast most of it, with Caroline, Nelson, Rappahannock, Northampton, the college cities of Radford and Lexington and the coalfield counties of Buchanan and Dickenson. Montgomery itself is close to a statewide bellwether: it has voted within 4.4 points of Virginia in every race since 2016. Radford (0.5 points off on average) and Virginia Beach (0.6) come close and are available as stand-ins.
What to look for
The tie line here is Mizusawa +2.3: a result above it (a Mizusawa margin under 2.3, or any Warner lead) favors Warner, below it Mizusawa. Harris won Montgomery by 3.5 in 2024 while carrying the state by 5.8; Kaine and Spanberger won it by about 16. Virginia Beach's tie line is Mizusawa +3.1: Harris won it by 2.6 and Spanberger by 11.4.
When results come in
The page reads Montgomery's count as it reports; to watch Virginia Beach instead, pick it as the group's county. Virginia Beach is the bigger count to wait for: 228,771 votes in 2024 against Montgomery's 47,053.
Signals so far
By October 22 that was 42% of Montgomery's 2024 early and mail ballots and 64% of 2025's (Virginia: 40% and 63%). Virginia Beach: 42,962 ballots, 34% of its 2024 total, with 12,265 mail ballots still out. Virginia doesn't register voters by party. For scale: Montgomery cast 36,732 votes in the 2025 governor's race and Virginia Beach 169,621.
Biggest vote source
Newport News CityTie line: Warner +22.9 · stands in for Northern Virginia, Richmond, the Hampton Roads cities and the college towns, 42% of the vote
- 2024 President
- Harris +28.7
- 2025 Governor
- Spanberger +38.0
- 2018 Senate
- Kaine +36.9
- Compared with Virginia
- 21–23 points more Democratic in every race since 2016
Why this county or city
Newport News leads the biggest group: 23 localities that cast 41.6% of the 2024 vote, which Harris won by 36.1. They are Northern Virginia (Fairfax, Loudoun, Arlington, Alexandria and the small cities inside them), Richmond and Henrico, the Hampton Roads cities of Norfolk, Newport News, Hampton, Portsmouth and Suffolk, Roanoke, and the college towns of Charlottesville, Albemarle, Harrisonburg and Williamsburg. Every point of swing here is worth more than four tenths of a point statewide. Newport News has stayed 21 to 23 points to the left of Virginia in every race since 2016; Henrico (0.8 points off on average), Suffolk and Richmond (0.9) come close and are available as stand-ins.
What to look for
The tie line here is Warner +22.9: a result above it favors Warner, below it Mizusawa. Harris won Newport News by 28.7 in 2024 and Spanberger by 38.0 in 2025. Henrico's tie line is Warner +23.0, Richmond's Warner +60.1 and Fairfax's Warner +28.9; Fairfax casts more votes than any other locality (589,427 in 2024) but has moved more than the group, so it makes a weaker stand-in.
When results come in
The page reads Newport News's count as it reports; to watch Henrico instead, pick it as the group's county. The big Northern Virginia counts can take until late in the night, and their early and mail votes and Election Day precincts may arrive in either order.
Signals so far
By October 22 that was 37% of Newport News's 2024 early and mail ballots and 67% of 2025's (Virginia: 40% and 63%). Fairfax: 107,656 ballots, 32% of its 2024 total and the lowest share of any big county, with 39,475 mail ballots still out; Henrico: 42,689, 48%. Virginia doesn't register voters by party. For scale: Newport News cast 56,489 votes in the 2025 governor's race, Henrico 149,446 and Fairfax 447,252.
Timeline
When results usually arrive, Eastern time.
Early and mail voting. Virginians have been able to vote early in person at their registrar's office and satellite sites since September 18, without needing a reason; early voting ends on Saturday, October 31. Mail ballot applications closed at 5 pm on October 23. A mail ballot postmarked by Election Day counts if it arrives by noon on Friday, November 6. By October 22, 942,150 ballots had come back, 681,266 in person and 260,884 by mail or drop-off, by the Department of Elections' count, and 199,522 mail ballots were still out. That is 40% of the early and mail ballots cast in 2024 and 63% of 2025's. Virginia doesn't register voters by party; the county and city counts are in each bellwether's guide.
Polls close statewide. Polls are open from 6 am to 7 pm, and anyone in line by 7 pm can still vote; voters can also register at their polling place and vote a provisional ballot. Each locality posts its count to the Department of Elections' results site, split into early votes, Election Day votes and mail votes, and the parts can arrive in either order. In recent races early and mail votes have leaned Democratic: in 2024 they went to Harris by 15.1 points, the whole count by 5.8.
Northern Virginia and the big cities fill in. Small rural localities tend to finish first and lean Republican, so the statewide running total can swing as Fairfax, Prince William, Loudoun and the Hampton Roads cities report. This page reads each locality's count every few minutes; judge each bellwether against its tie line (Newport News's is Warner +22.9), not by the running total.
Late mail ballots and the local canvass. Mail ballots postmarked by Election Day keep arriving until noon on Friday, November 6, and voters who cast a provisional ballot have until then to show the documents it needs. Each locality's electoral board then checks its count and certifies it within seven days of the election.
State certification. The State Board of Elections certifies the result at its meeting on the third Monday in November, November 16. Virginia has no automatic recount: if the margin is 1% or less, the trailing candidate can ask for one, at public expense if it is half a percent or less. The page doesn't model a recount.
Times are Eastern time. Each county and city posts its early, Election Day and mail votes as separate parts, in either order. The method in six steps, then its track record on past races.
- All 133 counties and cities are grouped by how they have moved relative to the statewide margin across nine statewide races (2016–2025). Each group is tied to one bellwether county or city.
- When a bellwether reports, its change from its 2024 President margin (Harris vs. Trump) is applied to every county or city in its group, and each group is weighted by its share of the vote.
- Early-vote readings are moved toward the expected final count. That uses each county or city's 2024–2025 early-versus-final record plus the 2026 Election Day tilt, scaled by how much is still uncounted. Counties and cities not yet in borrow the average change of those that are, pulled slightly toward the polls.
- Uncertainty combines the minimum uncertainty, how much of each county or city is still uncounted, and which counties and cities haven't reported. The win chance and the 500 simulated nights both come from that.
- Until results post, the forecast is the polling average minus an allowance for how Virginia polls have leaned (zero unless you change it), with a 5-point spread, the typical size of a final Virginia poll-average miss since 2018. Where early votes are coming from trims nothing off it by default: each point the early electorate leans more Democratic than at the same point in 2024, measured by county or city, counts for the weight you set under "Fine-tune the assumptions", and in 2022 and 2024, measured against the election two years earlier, that lean did not predict how the polls missed. The five counties and cities only start to matter on election night.
- Scheduled jobs in the cloud pull a Wikipedia poll table every morning and afternoon, the Department of Elections' early-vote file every weekday and, on election night, its results every few minutes, and write to this page's data store, which updates open copies of the page without a reload.
Track record: past races predicted from these five counties and cities alone
| Race predicted | Baseline race | Actual | Model | Miss |
|---|
These misses flatter the model. The five localities were picked by searching for the set that best fits these same eight races. Tested on races it had not seen, the same search missed by about 1.2 points.
What's different in 2026
The model is built on 2016–2024. Here is what could make this race break from those patterns, and how the model handles each.
| Factor | What it could do | How the model handles it |
|---|---|---|
| Counties and independent cities | Virginia counts its votes in 133 localities: 95 counties and 38 independent cities, which belong to no county. Four names belong to both (Fairfax, Franklin, Richmond and Roanoke), and some cities, like Falls Church and Manassas Park, are a few square miles. | The page treats each county and city as its own unit and names them in full ("Fairfax County", "Fairfax City"). The smallest cities are specks on the map; their tooltips still work. |
| A three-term incumbent | Mark Warner has held the seat since 2009 and won it by 31.3 in 2008, 0.8 in 2014 and 12.1 in 2020. Bert Mizusawa, a retired Army major general, won the August 4 Republican primary with 51.5% over David Williams and Kim Farington; Warner had no primary opponent. Two proposed debates were canceled. | Before results, the forecast is the polling average less Virginia's allowance. The starting point for every county and city is the 2024 presidential race (Harris +5.8), so each one's swing measures how much better or worse Warner runs than Harris did there. |
| Governors elected in odd years | Virginia elects its governor the year after each presidential race, and those races have swung the most: McAuliffe lost by 1.9 in 2021, a year after Biden won by 10.1, and Spanberger won by 15.4 in 2025. No statewide race shares the 2026 ballot with the Senate. | The model is tested on eight races since 2017, three of them governor's races. Pick a turnout pattern under "Fine-tune the assumptions" ("Like 2025" or "Like 2018"). The "2018 again" what-if replays each group's swing from Kaine's 2018 Senate race, the last midterm. |
| Results split by how the vote was cast | For 2024 and 2025 the Department of Elections' results site splits each locality's count into early votes, Election Day votes and mail votes. Early and mail votes have leaned Democratic: in 2024 they went to Harris by 15.1 points and the whole count by 5.8; in 2025 to Spanberger by 23.5 and the whole count by 15.4. | The page knows how far each county and city's final count moved from its early and mail votes in 2024 and 2025. On election night it reads each locality's parts as they post: while a county or city has only early and mail votes in, the page expects its margin to move toward Mizusawa by about that much. |
| No party registration | Virginians don't register by party, so the early votes say how many people have voted, not for whom. | The page tracks each county and city's early and mail ballots from the Department of Elections' daily file. No dated copy of that file exists for 2024 or 2025, so the guides compare 2026 with those years' final counts, not the same day. The early-vote adjustment stays at zero, as in every state. |
| Polls and Virginia's record | The page's average had Warner ahead by 22.0 on October 24, from the only two general-election polls in its table: The Public Sentiment Institute's, in May (Warner +26, for the Virginia Project, a Republican group) and June (Warner +18), both before the August 4 primary. | Virginia's final poll averages, taken the way this page takes them, have missed both ways: they understated the Democrat by 6.5 points in the 2017 governor's race and 6.4 in 2025, overstated them by 3.2 and 3.9 points in the 2020 presidential and Senate races, and came within 1.7 points in 2021 and 2024. Virginia's own average miss is close to zero, so there is no allowance by default. The spread around the polling average is 5 points, and the allowance is adjustable under "Fine-tune the assumptions." |
- County and city returns 2016–2025: the Virginia Department of Elections' results files (2016 to 2021, by precinct) and its results site's exports (2024 and 2025, by locality and vote type). Every race adds up to the Department's official statewide count exactly.
- County and city boundaries: us-atlas (Census cartographic boundaries; each independent city is its own unit)
- Early and mail-vote turnout: the Department of Elections' results site, whose absentee file has every county and city's ballots cast in person and by mail, posted each weekday; compared with the same file's final counts for 2024 and 2025.
- Polling average: Wikipedia, 2026 United States Senate election in Virginia (poll table)
- Election-night results: the Department of Elections' results site (its export of every county and city's count, by vote type), read every few minutes.
- In the news: headlines and links from Google News, GDELT and the state's own news outlets, read twice a day. Pollitrack never fetches or stores the articles themselves.