Virginia Election Results: Democrats Near Disaster As Republicans On Verge Of Clean Sweep

Glenn Youngkin, a career private equity executive running his first campaign, is poised to defeat former Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) in Tuesday’s election for Virginia governor, notching what would be the first statewide victory for a Republican there since 2009 and dealing a major blow to the national Democratic Party. Vote tallies in the races for lieutenant governor and state attorney general suggest a GOP sweep for all three offices.

The Associated Press has not called the race, but Youngkin is racking up large wins in rural counties and appears to have bested Donald Trump’s margins in enough Democratic and suburban counties to be headed for victory. 

Youngkin branded himself early in the race as a moderate outsider and targeted swing voters with ads that focused on tax cuts, charter schools and raises for teachers and police officers. 

But he and Virginia Republicans leaned in to the conservative culture war in the closing stages of the contest, staking the campaign on false claims that Democrats had helped spread the teaching of “critical race theory” throughout Virginia public schools, mischaracterizing the alleged sexual assault of a Virginia school student to stoke anti-trans hysteria and peddling some of Donald Trump’s favorite lies about voter fraud and “election integrity.”

In the end, the effort to embrace the issues that would drive up turnout among conservatives while still pitching himself as something else to voters in the middle appeared to have worked.

McAuliffe came out and spoke to his supporters gathered at his headquarters at roughly 10:15 p.m. Tuesday, refusing to concede despite the numbers appearing to swing against him. “We’re going to continue to count the votes, because every single Virginian deserves to have their vote counted,” he said to cheers from the crowd.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.