Virginia voters will crunch through the snow and ice on Tuesday and head to the polls in three special elections that will decide which party controls the General Assembly.
Two of those elections are happening in Loudoun County.
Voters will choose replacements for seats that were vacated by Democratic state Sen. Suhas Subramanyam and Democratic state Del. Kannan Srinivasan.
Democrats hold the slimmest of majorities in Richmond, controlling the Senate 21-19 and the House of Delegates 51-49.
If they lost the Senate seat, Republicans would effectively have the majority in the chamber as Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears serves as the tiebreaker on votes.
In the event that Democrats were to lose the House seat, the balance of power there would be 50-50, and the two parties would likely need to work out a power-sharing arrangement.
“Right now, you have a situation where the Democrats can block anything that the governor would want and they don’t like,” said political analyst Bob Holsworth. “That would change fairly dramatically if the Republicans were able to pull an upset.”
Democrats are favored to hold on to their seats, but surprises are known to happen in special elections that have relatively low turnout.
The turnout was expected to be low even before the big snowstorm hit the region on Monday morning.
“Almost everyone believes that Democrats are very strong favorites here, but no one wants to take anything for granted given how close these margins are,” Holsworth said. “We really don’t know how low the turnout will be.”
Subramanyam’s election to Congress in November triggered a special election for his seat in state Senate District 32, as well as in state House District 26, where the Democratic incumbent — Kannan Srinivasan — resigned in order to run for Subramanyam’s seat.
The nominees to replace Subramanyam are Srinivasan and Republican Tumay Harding.
Running to replace Srinivasan in the House of Delegates are Democrat JJ Singh and Republican Ram Venkatachalam.
The third special election is west of Richmond in state Senate District 10, where voters will choose a replacement for the seat vacated by Republican State Sen. John McGuire, who was elected to Congress.
The nominees are Republican Luther Cifers and Democrat Jack Trammell.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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