No incumbents were defeated in the Virginia House of Delegates primary elections on Tuesday, June 17, 2025. Three incumbents ran in contested primaries, 3.1% of the 96 incumbents running for re-election.
This is the third time the chamber’s primaries have produced no incumbent defeats since 2011. The first was 2011, and the second was 2017. In the other five cycles since 2011, an average of 2.4 incumbents were defeated in the Virginia House.
These are the state’s first legislative elections since HB 2020, also called Helmer’s law after the bill’s sponsor Dan Helmer (D), took effect in January 2024. That law requires that absentee voters have an opportunity to engage in the party nomination process.
The Virginia Mercury‘s Markus Schmidt wrote, “This requirement has effectively eliminated firehouse primaries, mass meetings, and conventions as nomination methods in Virginia, as these processes would make it impossible to accommodate absentee voters.” In the 2023 primaries in Virginia, Ballotpedia identified 55 districts that held non-primary nominating contests, all of which were for Republicans.
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