Nearly four months after the death of U.S. Rep. Gerry Connolly, voters will head to the polls to determine his successor.
Tomorrow (Tuesday) is Election Day for Virginia’s 11th Congressional District, which covers most of Fairfax County and Fairfax City.
Voters will be able to cast ballots starting at 6 a.m., with polls slated to close at 7 p.m.
Here’s what to know if you’re headed to the polls.
Who are the candidates?
Tuesday’s election pits a Fairfax County legislator who has built his campaign on promises to keep “standing up” to President Donald Trump against a political newcomer who has said that he supports the president “a hundred percent.”
Democrat James Walkinshaw has spent the past five years representing the Braddock District on the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. Before being elected in 2019, he spent more than a decade serving as Connolly’s chief of staff in Congress.
“We kept our campaign focused on my record of delivering results, and my record of standing up to Trump, because my bet was that’s what voters wanted to know about all of us who are running,” Walkinshaw told FFXnow.
He’s contested by Republican Stewart Whitson, a former FBI agent and current director of federal affairs for a conservative think tank.
“Sometimes conservatives in a district where there are a lot of people that support these radical policies are afraid to stand up against these policies, but I’m not,” Whitson said.
According to the Associated Press, Walkinshaw has held a financial advantage throughout the abbreviated campaign, raising about $1.1 million in contributions, compared with about $225,000 for Whitson. Walkinshaw’s campaign had about $139,000 in the bank as of Aug. 20, more than double Whitson’s $57,000.
Voters will also have the ability to write in a candidate of their choosing, though no formal write-in campaigns have been organized.
How can I vote?
Unlike in June’s primary elections for this seat, voters will cast their ballots at 183 precincts across Fairfax County and Fairfax City. Voters can look up their polling place and other voting information online.
Voters must bring an accepted form of identification in order to cast a regular ballot, such as a Virginia drivers’ license or passport. Without that, voters can sign “an ID statement affirming your identity,” according to the Virginia Department of Elections.
Those who do not bring ID and do not sign the ID statement can vote a provisional ballot, which is used when additional verification of voter eligibility is required.
When will we have results?
Shortly after the 7 p.m. poll closing, unofficial results will begin to populate online via the Virginia Department of Elections. The link to those results can be found here.
A total of 59,818 ballots were cast during early voting, which ended on Saturday (Sept. 6). That amounts to nearly 11% turnout of the district’s 549,357 registered voters. Under Virginia law, absentee ballots “shall be processed … prior to the closing of the polls.”
Given the district’s longstanding support of Democratic candidates, the election’s outcome is expected to become clear early in the evening. The AP took only 38 minutes after polls closed to report that Connolly was reelected to a ninth term in Congress in the 2024 general election.
However, last year’s presidential election, which saw support for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris soften a little in Fairfax County and Virginia overall, demonstrated that anything can still happen.
