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Republican Beats Expectations but Concedes Virginia Senate Race

Ed Gillespie hugged a supporter after conceding defeat in the Virginia Senate race on Friday.Credit...Cliff Owen/Associated Press

Ed Gillespie, the Republican candidate in Virginia who surprised nearly everyone by running a photo-finish race with Senator Mark R. Warner, conceded defeat on Friday, saying the gap of 16,700 votes was too great to make up in a recount.

Mr. Warner’s narrow win, after he was considered a prohibitive favorite, has been intensely analyzed by political strategists. Among the questions: why polls badly failed to show the race to be so close, and why Mr. Warner, a popular former governor who positioned himself as a “radical centrist,” did not inspire more support.

Although Mr. Warner declared victory just after midnight Tuesday, the Gillespie campaign said it would await the results of a canvassing of precincts to decide whether to request a recount, which it was entitled to if the margin was less than 1 percent.

The state board of elections showed Mr. Gillespie with 48.36 percent to Mr. Warner’s 49.12 percent on Friday. But Mr. Gillespie, who was making his first run for office after having worked as an aide to President George W. Bush and as a Washington lobbyist, said the gap could not be closed.

“It would be wrong to put my fellow Virginians through a recount when in my head and in my heart, I know that a change in outcome is not possible,” he said.

As concession speeches go, it was an upbeat affair, with Mr. Gillespie breaking into broad smiles and laughter. He had begun the race 29 points behind in a January poll from Roanoke College. He is now being talked about as a possible candidate for governor. His campaign tied Mr. Warner to President Obama, and he benefited from the president’s unpopularity even in Virginia, a state he won twice, and whose economy is closely tied to the federal government. 

Analysts said part of Mr. Warner’s weakness was his failure to excite more of the voters who re-elected the president in 2012, including in the northern suburbs, whose growth has nudged the state from a Republican bastion into a battleground. 

Voter turnout fell more steeply in Virginia compared with 2012, especially in Democratic-leaning areas, than in any other state with a competitive Senate race this year. Public polls before the election, including two by Virginia colleges, showed Mr. Warner leading by seven to 12 points. 

“On Tuesday, we surprised the experts, but I know that we didn’t surprise you,” Mr. Gillespie told supporters in Springfield, Va. Out of 2.1 million ballots cast, he said, “a shift of 9,000 votes could have could have changed the outcome of this election.”  

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 14 of the New York edition with the headline: Republican Beats Expectations but Concedes Senate Race. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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