(Photo by Kevin Wolfe)

There was an election in Virginia Tuesday that many pundits saw as a bellwether of post 2016-politics. Virginia Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam decisively beat out Tom Periello, a one-term Congressman, for the Democratic nomination. Ed Gillespie, a former RNC chairman, won a narrow victory over Corey Stewart, the fired Virginia state campaign chairman for Donald Trump.

Justin Fairfax and Jill Holtzman Vogel respectively won the Democratic and Republican nominations for lieutenant governor.

Northam and Periello were scheduled to appear at a “unity rally” today, which has been cancelled in light of the shooting in Alexandria. Gillespie prayed for Scalise this morning, and cancelled the day’s remaining events.

The Democrat race had been frequently billed as a repeat of the presidential primary, with a Berniecrat versus the Establishment, but that narrative doesn’t fully align with reality.

While Periello ran on progressive economic issues (pledging free community college and a $15 minimum wage) with support from Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren—and is rightly credited with pushing the lieutenant governor left—he also earned a high rating from the NRA and backed an amendment limiting abortion funding during his time in Congress.

While Northam was certainly the establishment candidate of the Virginia state Democratic party, Periello had strong support from the national Democratic establishment (see this long list of Obama staffers on board).

Meanwhile, the Republican race was a surprising squeaker.

Corey Stewart—a man who has blamed the left for rising anti-Semitism, spent much of the campaign concerned about the fate of Confederate statues, ran an ad featuring Kathy Griffin and a bloody Trump mask, called Gillespie a “cuckservative,” and had been fired as Trump’s state campaign chairman—was just 5,000 votes shy of beating out Gillespie. In remarks, he eschewed the traditional promise of party unity, pledging “to continue the revolution that Donald Trump started.”

State Sen. Frank Wagner—who the Washington Post endorsed as “down-to-earth, substantive, principled, and well-versed in policy and the ways of Richmond”—won a mere 14 percent of the vote.

Looking towards the general election in November, Northam had a 44 – 33 percent lead over Gillespie in poll conducted in April, and he’ll benefit from significant Democratic energy: nearly 200,000 more people voted in the Democratic primary than in the Republican.

This post has been updated.