Republican Senate candidate Ed Gillespie announced Friday that is conceding the Virginia Senate race to incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Warner.
Pre-election polling projected Warner to win the election easily, however Gillespie lead Warner for most of the night as precinct results trickled in. Gillespie ended up trailing by less than a percentage point by the end of the night.
Unofficial results show Warner leading by about 16,000 votes out of the more than 2.1 million cast.
“If I believed there were any conceivable way to find a viable path to win through a recount, I would fight as hard now as I have for the last 10 months of this campaign,” Gillespie said in a press conference in Washington, D.C. today. “It would be wrong to put my fellow Virginians through a recount, when in my head and in my heart, I know that changing the outcome is not possible."
The win gives the Democrats at least 46 Senate seats in the next Congress, in which both houses will be controlled by the Republicans.
“I’ve called Mark Warner this morning to congratulate him on his reelection, to thank him for his public service for our Commonwealth,” Gillespie said at the press conference.
Gillespie also took the time to state that he will not run for governor in the 2017 race.
In a statement following Gillespie's announcement, Warner thanked the former Republican National Committee Chairman for a hard-fought campaign and said he is looking forward to returning to the Senate.
"I will spend every day working to get the Senate back in the business of solving problems and not simply scoring political points," he said in the statement. "I will work with anyone, Republican or Democrat, to shake-up this dysfunctional Congress and move us toward common ground."
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