Party control at stake in Virginia House of Delegates elections

By

Lara Bonatesta

Welcome to the Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2025, Brew. 

By: Lara Bonatesta

Here’s what’s in store for you as you start your day:

  1. Party control at stake in Virginia House of Delegates elections
  2. Arkansas school board filing deadline would have been today, but election law changed
  3. Seattle school board August 5 primary election results

Party control at stake in Virginia House of Delegates elections

All 100 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates are up for election on Nov. 4. 

Democrats have a 51-49 majority in the Virginia House. The House has changed partisan control in every election since 2019, when it changed from Republican to Democratic control. Republicans regained the majority in 2021, and Democrats regained the majority in 2023. 

Ballotpedia has identified 23 House districts as battlegrounds. In 2023, the margins of victory in seven of these districts were less than 5%.  

Political observers often study Virginia’s off-year elections to forecast national political trends in the following year. 

On June 10, the Virginia Scope’s Brandon Jarvis wrote, “With control of the General Assembly and all three statewide offices up for grabs, both parties are treating November’s elections as an early referendum on national politics — and a preview of voter energy heading into 2026.” Jarvis also recently appeared on Ballotpedia’s On The Ballot to discuss Virginia’s 2025 elections. Click here to listen.

According to the Virginia Public Access Project, House of Delegates candidates of all parties raised more than $28 million combined from Jan. 1, 2024, through June 30, 2025, with Democrats raising $18.7 million and Republicans raising $9.4 million. Total spending across all parties, as of June 30, was $18 million. 

The Republican State Leadership Committee and Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee both announced ad campaigns ahead of the elections. 

The elections may also determine whether the constitutional amendments that the Virginia General Assembly passed in 2025 will appear on the ballot in 2026. In Virginia, constitutional amendments must pass the General Assembly in two successive legislative sessions before being presented to voters. During the 2025 legislative session, Democrats held majorities in both chambers, and the Assembly approved measures on abortion, same-sex marriage, and voting rights for people with felony convictions. If the General Assembly approves any of the three measures during its 2026 legislative session, they will be placed on the November ballot for voter approval.

These are also the state’s first legislative elections since HB 2020 took effect in January 2024, requiring 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, such as conventions, all of which were for Republicans.

Click here to read more about the House of Delegates’ political history. Click here to read more about the battleground districts in the 2025 Virginia House elections.

The Virginia House of Delegates is one of two state legislative chambers with elections this year — the New Jersey General Assembly is the other. There are 99 chambers in the country.

Arkansas school board filing deadline would have been today, but election law changed

Today, Aug. 13, would have been the filing deadline for Arkansas school board candidates to run in the November 2025 election. However, House Bill 1724 (Act 503) ended regular odd-year school board elections in Arkansas and moved all school board elections to the first Tuesday after the first Monday in March of even-numbered years, aligning with the state’s primary elections. 

Had the filing deadline been today, our team would have started collecting, processing, researching, and reaching out to school board candidates in order to provide robust information to voters ahead of the November elections. Instead, back in April — when Act 503 was approved— we adjusted our calendar for Arkansas and are looking ahead to the new Nov. 12 filing deadline for the March 3, 2026, election.

Under Act 503, the Arkansas school board candidate petition circulation period begins on Aug. 14. This means Arkansas candidates have from tomorrow through Nov. 12 to collect 20 signatures, fill out affidavits of eligibility and political practice pledges, and file them with the local election clerk within the one week ahead of the deadline.

Act 503 also made the following changes:

  1. Requires school board elections every two years instead of annually,
  2. Ends the authority of school districts to choose between a spring or fall schedule for elections,
  3. Requires school districts to have board member terms of either four or six years,
  4. Shortens some terms and lengthens others to adjust existing end dates to align with the new election schedule and term lengths,
  5. Directs elections to be organized so that school districts to have as equal as possible a number of board members up for each election, and
  6. Sets the Tuesday after the first Monday in November in even-numbered years as the school board runoff election date if required.

Before Act 503, districts could have school board members who served terms of three, four, or five years. As of 2022, 187 districts (85%) had board members with five-year terms, 18 districts (8%) had board members with four-year terms, and 15 districts (7%) had board members with three-year terms.

The Arkansas Senate passed an amended version of HB 1724 on April 3, and the Arkansas House of Representatives concurred on April 8. The bill was enacted on April 10 and went into effect on Aug. 5.

As we covered last month in Hall Pass, our school board governance and education policy newsletter, some states give school boards authority to choose election dates, the frequency of the elections, the length of terms, whether or not school board elections are staggered (meaning what portion of school board members are elected in a given election), and other aspects of their own elections.

Election timing is typically the largest single variable that determines voter turnout, though the impact of timing on turnout varies by state and jurisdiction. The most significant difference in turnout is between on-cycle — meaning elections aligned with federal elections in November of even-numbered years — and off-cycle elections, with on-cycle elections having higher voter turnout. Factors that further influence turnout during off-cycle elections include:

  1. Whether school board elections happen in tandem with statewide primaries, statewide general elections, or statewide runoffs;
  2. Whether the ballot includes state elections or just local ones; and
  3. Whether there are many other types of local elections also consolidated on the same date.

In most of the country, school boards don’t have authority over election timing:

  1. Forty-three states mandate school board election timing through state law. (Arkansas is now one of these states.)
  2. Six states allow school boards to choose from a set list of dates or to select an election date from within a given range. (Arkansas was one of these states until Act 503.)
  3. Hawaii does not have elected school boards.

State laws determining when school board elections are held more often than not mandate off-cycle elections.

  1. Twenty-five states have school board elections that are mostly held off-cycle from federal elections. This includes both off-year and off-date elections.
  2. Ten of those states have school board elections that are mostly, or at least commonly, held on election dates in November of odd-numbered years.
  3. Sixteen of those states have school board elections mostly, or at least commonly, held on election dates that are not in November.
  4. Fourteen states have school board elections, which are mostly held on the same election dates as federal elections in November of even-numbered years.
  5. Nine states either do not have state laws or overwhelmingly common practices that determine a specific school board election date, or have varying school board election dates.
  6. Hawaii has a single, appointed school board.

Twenty states have passed forty-three bills related to school board elections or election date alignment in 2025 so far. Click here to see where these bills have been passed in Ballotpedia’s election administration legislation tracker.

Seattle school board Aug. 5 primary election results

As we continue our coverage of school board elections, today we’re taking a look at the primary results in Seattle, Washington. 

Four seats on the seven-member Seattle Public Schools school board are up for election this year. There were nonpartisan primaries for Districts 2, 4, and 5 on Aug. 5. The District 7 nonpartisan primary was canceled, and the only two candidates — Jen LaVallee and Carol Rava — advanced to the general election. 

In the Aug. 5 primary:

Primary election voting occurred within each geographic district, but the November general election is citywide.

The races in Districts 2 and 4 featured incumbents Sarah Clark and Joe Mizrahi, respectively. The school board appointed both of them to fill vacancies in April 2024. The vacancies resulted from two resignations over district residency issues. One of the board members who resigned, Vivian Song from District 4, ran in District 5.

The elections follow a number of proposed school closures that were later rescinded. In fall 2024, the district proposed multiple plans to close schools, including one that would have shuttered 21 schools, to address the district’s $94 million budget shortfall. In November, Superintendent Brent Jones announced the district would not close any schools for the 2025-2026 school year and would seek financial help from the state. The board voted unanimously to approve the pause on closures. We covered this situation in more detail in our July 22 edition of the Daily Brew. Click here to see that report.

A parent-led group called All Together for Seattle Schools, which opposed school closures, endorsed the following candidates in the primaries: Sarah Clark (District 2), Joe Mizrahi (District 4), and Vivian Song (District 5). All of those candidates advanced to the general election. The group also endorsed Jen LaVallee, who proceeded directly to the general election, for District 7. The group wrote, “We have an opportunity to elect four board members who will steer the district in a new and better direction. We can reject failed policies such as closing schools, taking away options, rejecting academic rigor, neglecting student safety, abandoning financial oversight, and refusing to treat families as partners in education.”

In 2025, Ballotpedia is covering elections for more than 30,000 school board seats. In 2024, we covered elections for more than 25,000 school board seats. Click here to learn more about our local election coverage in 2025.

Check out our complete article on the race to learn more about the candidates.