Virginia is for lovers of close elections, as one wag put it, and one more is just about to happen.

Next week on Tuesday, Nov. 2, voters will decide who will be Virginia’s 74th governor to succeed Gov. Ralph S. Northam. According to the latest polls, the race is neck and neck.

The contest is mainly a head-to-head matchup between Democrat Terry R. McAuliffe, 64, and Republican Glenn A. Youngkin, 54, both residents of Northern Virginia.

Both men have raised nearly $60 million each to fuel their campaigns, a record in Virginia.

Princess L. Blanding of the Liberation Party, who is running to protest Democratic control of the General Assembly, also is on the ballot. Her campaign has raised just under $35,000, according to the latest campaign finance reports.

Ms. Blanding’s voter support, which is expected to be under 50,000 votes, could become highly significant if the contest ends up being as close as polls indicate.

Viewed as the first major test of party strength ahead of next year’s midterm elections, Virginia’s gubernatorial election has garnered national attention.

Getting voters to turn out remains a problem, particularly for Mr. McAuliffe, who is seeking to build on efforts begun under his first tenure as governor from 2014 to 2018. His campaign has struggled to counter voter apathy and sought to stoke enthusiasm with campaign visits from top Democrats, including President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Obama and voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams of Georgia.

“This is not a persuasion election,” Mr. McAuliffe has said repeatedly. “This is a turn-out election.”

Historically, only about 45 percent of the state’s registered voters participate in the gubernatorial election. That would result in a turnout this year of about 2.7 million of Virginia’s nearly 6 million registered voters. As of Oct. 25,724,965 people have cast ballots early in this election, largely through in-person voting and absentee by mail.

Democrats have held the governor’s mansion for the past eight years. Mr. McAuliffe is seeking to extend the party’s grip on the chief executive post, which has become even more influential with Democrats now holding narrow majorities in the House of Delegates and the state Senate.

Mr. McAuliffe is promising to continue the progress the state has made during his previous term and under Gov. Ralph S. Northam.

If elected, Mr. McAuliffe has promised to pour money into bolstering public education and increasing teacher pay, providing a robust paid leave program for workers, attracting new companies to the state, pushing to create good- paying jobs with expanded workforce training, fighting climate change and promoting development of affordable housing to enable the state to rebound from the pandemic.

But for a man known for enthusiasm and energy to become only the second former governor since 1865 to win election to a second term, Mr. McAuliffe must get by Mr. Youngkin, a Wall Street tycoon who has a far different view of what needs to be done in Virginia.

Given Virginia’s track record of electing a gover- nor from the opposite party of the sitting president, Mr. McAuliffe knows that he needs a huge turnout of Democratic supporters — particularly Black and Latino voters — to win a new term.

He has campaigned at more than 60 Black churches; stumped at historically Black colleges and universities, including at Virginia State University’s homecoming last weekend; and garnered the aid of labor unions and from a Latino group that has knocked on more than 50,000 doors on his behalf.

Mr. Youngkin is aware that Mr. McAuliffe eked out a narrow victory over archconservative Republican Ken Cuccinelli to win his first term in 2013. And Mr. Youngkin, a former co-chief executive officer of the Carlyle Group investment firm, has poured $20 million of his own money into the campaign—including another loan of $3.5 million to his campaign in October—to avoid the problem Mr. Cuccinelli faced, a lack of campaign cash in the closing weeks.

With Republican enthusiasm for him at a fever pitch, Mr. Youngkin’s major challenge has been to navigate between supporters of former President Trump and the moderates and independents he needs to win. Mr. Youngkin has enthusiastically accepted the repeated endorsements of Mr. Trump, but not brought him to Virginia to campaign.

A newcomer to politics, Mr. Youngkin has primarily turned to the Republican playbook in making his key campaign pitches. He has campaigned on a pledge to cut taxes and has relied on a race-based attack to rally white suburban voters who are essential.

While Virginia has been rated the No. 1 state to do business, Mr. Youngkin has described the Commonwealth as an economic basket case that has had no job growth under Democratic rule, most notably since the pandemic.

His proposed cure: Slash state revenue by cutting income taxes, eliminating the tax on groceries and delaying an increase in the gas tax, enabling residents to have more money to spend and invest.

To Mr. McAuliffe, that is a formula for sharply limiting the state’s ability to invest in people-helping services, public safety, education and the workforce and to aggressively recruit new companies and support the growth of existing firms.

Still, Mr. Youngkin is all in on the tax-cutting strategy, despite its failure to deliver economic growth nationally and in several states that have tested the idea.

Mr. Youngkin also has taken a page from the Trump playbook in promising to repeal a major chunk of state government regulations that he claims are strangling business growth. Under Mr. Trump, the repeal allowed companies to pollute, reduced American involvement in tackling climate change and stifled federal activities to protect civil and human rights.

Along with his economic plan, Mr. Youngkin has promised to protect schoolchildren from receiving instruction about critical race theory, even though no public school system offers that instruction in the curriculum.

In a bow to Mr. Trump and his false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, Mr. Youngkin also has made the integrity of Virginia elections an issue. Mr. Youngkin has called for a new audit of election machines in the state, despite a previous state Department of Elections audit showing the counts in Virginia were accurate.

Mr. McAuliffe believes that his positions are more in tune with a majority of Virginians.

Still, Mr. McAuliffe acknowledges that President Biden’s slumping approval ratings and Congress’ failure to pass a $1.9 billion infrastructure plan have created headwinds for him.

For the next few days, Mr. McAuliffe, Mr. Youngkin and Ms. Blanding will be rallying their supporters. Then it will be decision time.