Virginia’s redistricting vote is nearing a conclusion. How is it shaping up?
Polling shows the Democratic-backed plan with a modest edge
Voting on whether to redraw Virginia’s congressional maps to produce a 10-1 Democratic edge closes in less than a week. The evidence suggests that Democrats have a better shot at winning, but the party’s margins won’t come close to those the party put together in last November’s gubernatorial and legislative elections, when they had huge victories.
Two recent polls — one by George Mason University for the Washington Post and the other by the independent firm State Navigate — find the pro-redistricting, pro-Democratic “yes” vote leading “no” by about five points.
The plan would produce a map that lasts for the rest of the decade, at which point the state’s commission system would return to draw new maps based on the 2030 Census.
Virginia is the latest state to undertake mid-decade redistricting; Texas, urged by President Donald Trump, did it first, followed by California. North Carolina and Ohio made more modest changes, while a Utah remap was ordered by the courts. Missouri also redrew its map, though it could be overturned by voters this fall. And Florida is weighing a remap.
“The Democrats’ argument that Virginians need to fight back against Trump’s power grab seems to be salient to a lot of Virginians,” said Rich Meagher, a Randolph-Macon College political scientist.
But a five-point margin would be well below what Democrat Abigail Spanberger won the governorship by in November 2025, which was 15 points. It would also lag the 64% approval of a new map by California voters last year.
Republicans were pleased by strong turnout in redder, rural areas early in the campaign.
Rural voters “see this as a partisan power-grab that will effectively disenfranchise them in House elections in the future, and it is hard to imagine that any of them believes that the mid-decade map will only be a temporary one,” said Mark J. Rozell, a George Mason University political scientist. The George Mason poll showed greater intensity on the “no” side.
Hampering the “yes” vote is that both the George Mason and State Navigate polls showed Spanberger now only treading water in popularity — the worst approval results among recent Virginia governors at this point in their tenure. Spanberger had initially preferred a proposal with a more modest Democratic lean, but she gave in after her party’s legislators favored the more aggressive plan.
Spanberger’s huge win six months ago gives Democrats some cushion to fall — and more recently, turnout in bluer urban and suburban areas has rebounded, according to an analysis by the firm L2 for CNN.
Helping the “yes” side has been a favorable balance in resources.
“The ‘yes’ side has raised far more money and is spending a lot on TV ads,” said Stephen J. Farnsworth, a University of Mary Washington political scientist. “The ‘no’ side hasn’t had as much money, and as a result has focused on social media and a few public events.”
Farnsworth said Republicans may come to regret a failure to spend more aggressively.
“National Republicans have raised far more money than Democrats for the congressional elections overall,” he said. “Directing more of the fall 2026 midterm Republican cash haul to this spring referendum campaign — which may well determine overall control of the House next year — seems like a very worthwhile investment for the party.”