'Parental Rights' on the Ballot

VPAP identified 17 school board races across Virginia where at least one candidate made the parental rights agenda championed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin the centerpiece of their campaign. In rural districts, all six parental rights candidates won, while results were mixed in suburban districts or small cities. One race was too close to call.

Methodology: VPAP read newspaper articles and reviewed web sites and social media about candidates running in school board elections on the November 2022 ballot. We identified "parents' rights" candidates as those who prioritized giving parents a say in masking, opposing critical race theory and notifying parents if their child wants to change gender pronouns or check out books from the school library. We chose races where these parental rights advocates were running against candidates who emphasized more traditional issues such as adequate school funding, class size, teacher pay and career/technical education. We eliminated any election where we could not find online information about one or more of the candidates or there was more than one parental rights candidate running for each seat on the ballot.

Caveats: VPAP acknowledges its staff has limited knowledge of many of the races listed on this page and that the possibility that the outcome turned on issues other than parental rights. In addition, we may have missed some races that fit the criteria for this list.

Sources: Election results from the state Department of Elections.