WASHINGTON — Democratic former Rep. Abigail Spanberger was projected to defeat Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears in the Virginia governor’s race Tuesday, ending an increasingly rare term of GOP control in the commonwealth ushered in by Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s upset victory over Terry McAuliffe in 2021.

With more than three-quarters of the expected vote in, Spanberger — who will become the first female governor in Virginia’s history — led Earle-Sears by 11.8 percentage points, more than double Kamala Harris’ margin of victory over Donald Trump in the state’s presidential election 12 months ago.

Further down the ticket, Democratic Lt. Gov. candidate Ghazala Hashmi became the first Muslim elected to a Virginia statewide office when she defeated the GOP nominee, John Reid.

“We sent a message to the whole world that in 2025, Virginia chose pragmatism over partisanship,” Spanberger declared in her victory message to supporters.

“We chose our Commonwealth over chaos. You all chose leadership that will focus relentlessly on what matters most: lowering costs, keeping our communities safe and strengthening our economy, for every Virginian — leadership that will focus on problem solving, not stoking division.”

“We turned a page. We turned that page by listening to our neighbors, focusing on practical results,” she added, pledging to put “Virginia first” through policies that would increase energy production and “take politics out of our schools” — a reference to the Youngkin administration’s aggressive moves against allowing transgender women in girls’ spaces and on girls’ sports teams.

The 46-year-old New Jersey-born Spanberger, a former CIA officer, campaigned on endorsements from past House GOP colleagues that emphasized her “integrity” and “bipartisan” appeal, while attacking Earle-Sears’ support for the Trump administration — including its layoffs of federal workers, many of whom live in deep-blue Northern Virginia.

“I am lucky to be your mother,” Spanberger told her family in the speech, before confronting one of her daughters about having “not clean[ed] your room today, as you promised me.”

“I’m working on it!” her 10-year-old Catherine piped up from behind the lectern.

“If I was working on it, we wouldn’t have won this election!” Spanberger said.

“I would like to thank my opponent for a hard-fought race,” she also said, in reference to Earle-Sears’ “military service and her years of service here in Virginia [that] deserve our respect and our gratitude.”

The Jamaica-born Earle-Sears, 61, ran hard on social issues like keeping trans women out of female sports, opposition to abortion, support for law enforcement and school choice — while seeking to tie Spanberger to far-left Democrats like “Squad” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on issues such as immigration and antisemitism.

With Republicans holding the presidency and both chambers of Congress, Spanberger consistently led Earle-Sears in public polling.

In the end, Spanberger was even able to overcome a scandal involving Jay Jones, the Democratic nominee for Virginia attorney general, who had ranted in August 2022 text messages to a GOP colleague that the former Republican speaker of the House of Delegates deserved “two bullets to the head”.

Earle-Sears had pressed Spanberger in their Oct. 9 debate: “Abigail, when are you gonna take Jay Jones and say to him, ‘You must leave the race?’”

“He has said he wants to murder his political opponent, and not only that — his opponent’s children,” added the Republican candidate, prompting silence from Spanberger after she was asked again by one of the debate’s moderators.

“The comments that Jay Jones made are absolutely abhorrent. I denounced them when I learned of them,” the Democrat finally said, before appearing to remove Jones’ name from her campaign bus in the final days of the race.

Spanberger also refused to answer questions about whether she supported biological men participating in women’s sports or using sex-segregated spaces like bathrooms and locker rooms, an issue that handed Youngkin, Earle-Sears and AG Jason Miyares a GOP trifecta four years ago.

The shoe will likely be on the other foot in January, with Democrats favored to take all three statewide offices and expand their majority in the Virginia House of Delegates — though the race between Jones and Miyares remained too close to call as of 9 p.m. ET Tuesday.

The GOP recriminations had already begun Tuesday night, with a Virginia Republican source telling The Post: “Glenn Youngkin owns Winsome Sears and this outcome. He pushed and supported a never Trumper who tanked the ticket.”

Former Trump co-campaign manager, Chris LaCivita, publicly trashed Earle-Sears on social media, calling her a “bad candidate” who ran a “bad campaign.”

Trump never formally endorsed Earle-Sears, but former Virginia Republican Gov. Jim Gilmore, who left office in 2002, told Washington TV station WUSA that Spanberger’s easy win “may be an opportunity for her — maybe she ought to reach across the aisle a little bit and show herself to be the bipartisan person that she ran as.”

“I think she can begin to lobby people to get [the federal government] back going again, getting open again. And she would be a real heroine if she did that,” Gilmore said.

Spanberger was first elected to Congress in 2018, part of the “blue wave” that saw Democrats gain 41 seats in the House, their best performance in decades. She would serve three terms before opting not to run for re-election to pursue her successful run for governor.