Virginia narrowly approves partisan redistricting effort

Just over 51% of Virginia voters on Tuesday approved an amendment to the state constitution allowing legislators to temporarily adopt new U.S. congressional districts, according to unofficial vote counts Wednesday morning. The Virginia constitution currently prohibits redistricting from occurring more frequently than the standard 10-year cycle. The Tuesday ballot asked voters to decide whether the state should temporarily adopt new congressional districts to “restore fairness” in upcoming elections, while standard redistricting processes would resume after the 2030 census.

Virginia Democrats previously passed a bill proposing the redrawn districts in the hope of securing several more seats for their own party in Congress, as part of a nationwide Democratic response to President Donald Trump’s push for more Republican seats. After Texas modified its maps to lean Republican in August 2025, several state governors, including in California, Florida, and Virginia, launched their own mid-cycle partisan redistricting plans. The new Virginia maps are projected to result in 10 Democratic districts and one Republican district. The state currently has six Democratic and five Republican representatives in Congress.

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, on Tuesday night said voters pushed back against a president who felt entitled to more Republican seats in Congress. While some other states chose to redraw maps without voter input, Virginia used the ballot box, she said.

What have opponents of the measure had to say? Virginia’s former Republican attorney general, Jason Miyares, issued a statement on Wednesday calling the vote a merely pyrrhic victory for state Democrats. He went on to accuse Spanberger of lying to her constituents and state Democrats in general of wrongfully silencing millions of conservative voices.

Litigation surrounding the constitutional amendment vote is still ongoing in the Virginia Supreme Court. Several plaintiffs, including the Republican National Committee, argued that Virginia’s legislature bypassed standard procedure and used misleading wording on the ballot. But the court ruled in March that the election could go forward, saying that the court would determine later whether the procedure was lawful.

Dig deeper: Read Leo Briceno’s explanation of the ruckus over mid-cycle redistricting.