Virginia approved a referendum Tuesday to redraw its congressional districts, potentially flipping four Republican-held House seats to Democrats ahead of November midterms.
10:24 PM
Virginia voters approved a referendum Tuesday to redraw the state's congressional map, according to The Associated Press, allowing Democrats to flip as many as four Republican-held seats in the U.S. House.
The statewide referendum enacts a map drawn by Democratic state legislators and approved by Gov. Abigail Spanberger. The new lines are intended to deliver 10 of Virginia's 11 House seats to Democrats, up from the six they currently control. The Democratic-backed "Yes" side of the referendum was narrowly leading on Tuesday night, with votes still arriving from liberal strongholds.
Under the new map, Democrats are favored to win in 10 of Virginia's 11 districts. According to a New York Times analysis of 2024 presidential results, the map draws eight safely Democratic districts and two competitive districts that lean Democratic. It leaves just one safe Republican seat, compared with the five seats the Republican Party holds on the current map.
The new congressional map eliminates three Republican-held seats in part by slicing the densely populated suburbs in Arlington and Fairfax Counties and reallocating their overwhelmingly Democratic voters into five congressional districts, some stretching more than a hundred miles into Republican areas.
The referendum bypasses a redistricting commission made up of both Democrats and Republicans and allows the new map drawn by the state's Democrat-majority General Assembly to take effect.
The outcome represents the latest development in a series of mid-decade redistricting battles across the country. The tit-for-tat redistricting began last year after Trump pressed Texas's Republican-controlled legislature to redraw that state's congressional maps in a bid to oust as many as five Democratic House lawmakers in the November midterm elections. California voters subsequently approved new maps that could flip five Republican-held seats.
Republicans currently hold a slim 217-seat majority in the House of Representatives, while Democrats have 213 seats. The Virginia referendum could help Democrats win four additional House seats in November's midterm elections.
Don Scott, speaker of the lower house of the state's legislature, said in a statement that "Virginia just changed the trajectory of the 2026 midterms." President Donald Trump had urged Virginians to vote against the measure.
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