RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia voters approved a plan to temporarily redraw the Commonwealth's 11 congressional districts ahead of November's midterm elections in Tuesday's referendum, the Associated Press projects.
Virginia Politics
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The constitutional amendment asked voters to suspend a voter-approved bipartisan redistricting commission. The current map gives Democrats a 6-5 advantage in the U.S. House of Representatives, while the proposed new map would favor Democrats 10-1. The commission would resume its work after the next census.
Democrats say the change is a response to Republican-led states doing the same thing. The referendum tests Democrats' ability to push back against President Donald Trump, who started the gerrymandering competition between states after successfully urging Texas Republicans to redraw congressional districts in their favor last year. Virginia would be the second state, after California last fall, to put the question to voters.
“Virginia just changed the trajectory of the 2026 midterms,” Democratic state House Speaker Don Scott said in a statement. “At a moment when Trump and his allies are trying to lock in power before voters have a say, Virginians stepped up and leveled the playing field for the entire country.”
Republicans say the measure ignores the voter-approved commission and is a return to gerrymandering.
"Tonight marks the end of the campaign. It does not mark the end of this fight," stated Virginia House GOP Leader Terry Kilgore. "We will continue to stand for fair maps, transparent process, and equal representation for every Virginian.”
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Voters share voices on Virginia referendum to change congressional maps
Virginia vote is part of a national redistricting battle
The redistricting in Texas led to a burst of redistricting nationwide. So far, Republicans believe they can win up to nine more House seats in newly redrawn districts in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio. Democrats think they can win up to five more seats in California, where voters approved a similar mid-decade redistricting effort last November, and one more seat under new court-imposed districts in Utah.
Democrats hope to offset the rest of that gap in Virginia, where they decisively flipped 13 seats in the state House and won back the governor’s office last year.
But the back-and-forth battle is continuing in Florida, where the Republican-led Legislature is to convene April 28 for a special session that could result in more favorable congressional districts for Republicans.
Voters focus on fairness, with different perspectives
The campaign over Virginia’s redistricting referendum focused heavily on fairness.
Republicans argued that it was unfair to gerrymander Virginia’s districts to Democrats’ advantage. But Democrats argued that they were creating a fairer election landscape nationally by counteracting Republican gerrymandering elsewhere.
A lobster-like district could aid Democratic efforts
In Virginia, Democrats currently hold six of the 11 U.S. House seats under districts that were imposed by the state Supreme Court in 2021 after a bipartisan commission failed to agree on a map based on the latest census data.
The new plan could help Democrats win as many as 10 seats. Five seats are anchored in the Democratic stronghold of northern Virginia, including one stretching out like a lobster to consume Republican-leaning rural areas. Revisions to four other districts across Richmond, southern Virginia and Hampton Roads dilute the voting power of conservative blocs in those areas. And a reshaped district in parts of western Virginia lumps together three Democratic-leaning college towns to offset other Republican voters.
Virginia court weighs whether lawmakers acted illegally
Congressional redistricting typically is done once a decade after each census.
In 2020, Virginia voters approved a constitutional amendment meant to diminish political gamesmanship by shifting redistricting responsibilities away from the legislature.
But lawmakers endorsed a new constitutional amendment allowing mid-decade redistricting last fall, then passed it again in January as part of a two-step process that requires an intervening election in order for an amendment to be placed on the ballot. The measure allows lawmakers to redistrict until returning the task to a bipartisan commission after the 2030 census.
In February, they passed a new U.S. House map to take effect pending the outcome of the redistricting referendum.
Republicans have filed multiple legal challenges against the redistricting effort.
A Tazewell County judge ruled that the redistricting push was illegal for several reasons. Circuit Court Judge Jack Hurley Jr. said lawmakers failed to follow their own rules for adding the redistricting amendment to a special session. He ruled that their initial vote failed to occur before the public began casting ballots in last year’s general election and thus didn’t count toward the two-step process. And he ruled that the state failed to publish the amendment three months before that election, as required by law.
If the state Supreme Court agrees with the lower court, the referendum results could be rendered moot.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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