Gillespie concedes Virginia Senate race

Republican Ed Gillespie announced Friday that he has conceded the Virginia Senate race to the Democratic incumbent, Mark Warner.

Gillespie said he would not seek a recount in the extremely tight race even though state law entitles him to one.

“The votes just aren’t there,” the former chairman of the Republican National Committee and advisor to President George W. Bush told supporters at an event today in Springfield, Va. “If I believed there were any conceivable way we could find a viable path to win through a recount, I’d fight as hard now as I have for the past 10 months of this campaign for our policies and for our principles.”

The latest numbers from the State Board of Elections show Warner leading by more than 16,000 votes, or nearly 1 percentage point, out of more than 2 million ballots cast. Warner has 49 percent of the vote, Gillespie 48 percent, and Libertarian Robert Sarvis 2 percent.

Gillespie said he called Warner and wished him well and told those at today’s event that he was proud of the efforts of his campaign.

“I loved every minute of it … well, maybe not this one so much,” Gillespie said, according to a report in The Washington Times.

Warner was expected to win a second term easily, but Gillespie surprised many and performed much better than preelection polls predicted, some of which early on showed him as much as 29 percentage points behind.

Gillespie’s concession doesn’t change the balance of power in the Senate. Tuesday’s elections put Republicans in control with at least 52 of the 100 seats.

The Alaska race between Democratic Sen. Mark Begich and GOP challenger Dan Sullivan remains uncalled, and in Louisiana, neither Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu nor Republican Bill Cassidy received a majority of votes Tuesday and will compete in a runoff on Dec. 6.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.