The Daily Populous Wednesday April 22nd, 2026 evening edition
Authored by nbcnews.com and submitted by RockPaperOwFire

Virginia voters on Tuesday approved a Democratic redistricting plan that could allow the party to pick up as many as four new seats in the midterm elections, NBC News projects.

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With 97% of the vote in, the "yes" vote on the ballot referendum held a narrow lead of 3 percentage points.

The special election is a major victory for Democrats as they seek to gain control of the narrowly divided House this fall. Democrats have now won statewide votes in California and Virginia to redraw congressional maps as part of a mid-decade redistricting arms race that began last year when President Donald Trump urged GOP-led states to alter their district lines.

Republicans had hoped they could insulate their three-seat House majority, but the result of the redistricting back and forth may end up being close to a wash.

The constitutional amendment that was on the Virginia ballot Tuesday sought to authorize the Democratic-controlled Legislature to bypass the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission and implement a new congressional map through the end of the decade.

Democrats’ proposed map is designed to leave just one solidly Republican district out of 11 in the state. Currently, Virginia is represented by six Democrats and five Republicans in the House.

After Republicans enacted new maps last year in Texas, Missouri and North Carolina, Virginia offered a rare, seat-rich prize for Democrats — who control the redistricting process in fewer states — as they sought to respond.

"Virginia just changed the trajectory of the 2026 midterms," Virginia 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."

In a statement, Gov. Abigail Spanberger said she was looking forward to campaigning with candidates to win the new newly drawn congressional seats and said she was committed to returning to the state's bipartisan redistricting after the 2030 census.

"Virginia voters have spoken, and tonight they approved a temporary measure to push back against a President who claims he is 'entitled' to more Republican seats in Congress," she said. "Virginians watched other states go along with those demands without voter input — and we refused to let that stand. We responded the right way: at the ballot box."

Unlike in some states, where regular legislation can change maps, Virginia Democrats were required to pass the proposed amendment in two different legislative sessions, with a general election in between, before sending it to voters for approval. Democrats also successfully urged voters to approve a new congressional map in California last year that could allow the party to gain five new seats.

Supporters of the measure flooded the zone with early ads, putting former President Barack Obama front and center. Spanberger did not enthusiastically embrace the redistricting effort as a candidate last year, but as governor she hit the campaign trail in support of the referendum, as did other national figures like House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.

But when a public poll in early April gave Republicans some hope for their campaign backing a “no” vote, they ramped up spending. In the last month, they narrowed a massive 17-to-1 spending gap in the campaign to a 3-to-1 Democratic advantage, according to ad-tracking data from AdImpact.

The group that organized against the referendum mobilized former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and tried to spur rural voters to turn out. Trump, meanwhile, stayed silent on the race until Monday night, when he added a tele-rally to his schedule at the last minute and called into a conservative radio show in Virginia.

While Virginia is a blue-leaning state, and one where Spanberger won by 15 points in last fall’s election, Democrats faced challenges as a party that had long been opposed to partisan gerrymandering in selling a map made up of jagged districts radiating messily from northern Virginia throughout the rest of the state.

Some Republicans took the massive swing in Tuesday's results compared to 2025 as a moral victory, even as they stared down the prospect of losing congressional seats this fall.

"This basically says, 'Hey, Republican Party, we're not dead yet,'" said Brian Kirwin, a Republican strategist based in Virginia. "Reports of our demise have been exaggerated."

But the fight over Virginia’s map — and the broader redistricting battle — won’t end Tuesday.

Republicans have challenged the legality of Democrats’ rushed constitutional amendment. The Virginia Supreme Court ruled to allow the special election to move forward, while simultaneously reserving the right to rule after the race on questions surrounding the measure.

Virginia House Republican Leader Terry Kilgore said in a statement that "serious legal questions remain about both the wording of this referendum and the process used to put it before voters."

“Tonight marks the end of the campaign," he said. "It does not mark the end of this fight."

Six states — Texas, North Carolina, Missouri, Ohio, Utah and California — enacted new maps in the last year, giving Republicans as many as nine new seats and Democrats up to six new seats. Once Virginia enacts the map authorized by Tuesday’s election, Democrats could win as many as 10 new House seats due to redistricting.

Republicans could still add to their total in Florida, where lawmakers have discussed drawing two to five new seats that would favor the party in a special legislative session next week.

Still, both parties will still need to actually win the redrawn districts they’ve created at the ballot box, and election results are not always consistent from year to year. Democrats have outperformed past results in special elections last year and this year, and if that trend extends into the midterm elections, it could erode some of the districts drawn to be more Republican-friendly in states like Texas.

johnn48 on April 22nd, 2026 at 02:16 UTC »

Texas’s redistricting plan seems to have backfired on the Republicans. What seemed like a bold move emboldened California and other states to take proactive steps to prevent the Republicans from gerrymandering their state’s in order to prevent a blue wave in the midterms.

PartyWithSlurmz on April 22nd, 2026 at 01:45 UTC »

Incoming GOP lawsuit that will of course fail. I bet it boils their bottoms that Dems are following their lead on gerrymandering mandering.

Hrekires on April 22nd, 2026 at 01:35 UTC »

We need a national ban on partisan gerrymandering, but every time Democrats have tried to enact one, Republicans blocked it.

Seems like the only way to get Republicans to come to the table on the issue is for them to be impacted by gerrymandering just as much as Democrats have been.

(And throw in a ban on racial gerrymandering too given that the Supreme Court seems likely to decide that actually, the Voting Rights Act is racist against white people so we need to throw it out)