Democrats start to sweat over Virginia’s redistricting referendum

After putting an aggressive redraw of the state’s congressional map before voters, some Virginia Democrats are growing uneasy about its prospects for passage one month out from the special election.

Virginia Democrats entered 2026 riding a wave of momentum, comfortably flipping the governorship and expanding their majority in the state House in last fall’s elections. And heading into the April contest, they hold massive fundraising and ad spending advantages.

But recently, the realities of waging a unique campaign in a state that isn’t nearly as Democratic as California, where voters approved a redrawn map through a similar process last year, have begun to set in.

Some supporters of the Virginia referendum acknowledge the challenge of convincing voters to back a gerrymandered map when Democrats, who several years ago backed the formation of the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission, have criticized Republicans for similar moves.

Virginia voters are also not accustomed to going to the polls in April, when Democrats scheduled the special election, making turnout particularly unpredictable.

And recent polling showing mixed views of the ballot referendum and some favorable early voting numbers for Republicans has only added to Democrats’ anxieties.

“It’s not a done deal by any means,” said Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va. “We have to effectively make the case that even though this seems unfair in Virginia, it’s totally fair for America, for those of us who believe that taking back the House is the most significant thing we can do to stop Donald Trump.”

Under the proposed map in Virginia, Democrats would be in a position to gain as many as four of the five seats currently held by Republicans in this fall’s midterm elections, when control of the narrowly divided House is up for grabs.

By comparison, Democrats in deep-blue California are hoping to pick up five of the eight Republican-controlled seats with their new congressional boundaries.

“It’s very easy to say, ‘Well, California just did this, and therefore the same thing is going to happen in Virginia. But that ignores the reality that Virginia is a purple state,” said one Democratic operative close to the campaign supporting the measure who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “There’s a lot of factors you can’t control about who’s going to be an active participant in this election until the last minute. It’s a random April election. We’re talking about reaching voters who are taught to check out around this time of year and check back in the summer.”

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The April election is the latest front in the unusually active mid-decade redistricting battle. The push in Virginia came in response to President Donald Trump pressuring GOP-led states to redraw their maps to shore up the party’s narrow House majority. Six states — including Texas, Missouri and North Carolina on the GOP side — enacted new maps last year, while the biggest Democratic counterattack came in California.

The process in Virginia has been especially complex: Before putting it on the ballot, lawmakers were required to pass a constitutional amendment to temporarily bypass the state’s redistricting commission during two separate legislative sessions, with an election in between.

But voters may not even have the final say on the matter. While the Virginia Supreme Court has allowed the special election to move forward, it also reserved the right to rule on the legality of the measure after the race.

Still, the main group supporting the redistricting referendum has established a significant financial advantage.

That group, called Virginians for Fair Elections, has already spent or reserved $17.2 million on ads from Jan. 1 through April 21, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact. Meanwhile, the primary group opposing the effort, Virginians for Fair Maps, has spent or reserved $1 million over the same period.

The measure’s supporters have used many of their ads to argue the change to the map-drawing process became necessary after Trump’s redistricting pushes in Republican-led states.

One Virginians for Fair Elections ad features former President Barack Obama saying that “Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to rig the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years,” adding, “but you can stop them.”

In another spot, a narrator highlights that Trump “told Texas to rig their congressional maps” — and that “we can stop Trump by voting for fair elections.” Notably, the ad paints the Virginia measure as a “temporary fix to level the playing field.” And another casts “MAGA Republicans redrawing congressional maps” as “one of the biggest threats to democracy ever.”

The proposed constitutional amendment would return congressional mapmaking powers to the bipartisan commission after the 2030 census.

Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger, who approached the issue cautiously during her winning campaign last fall, also recorded a video expressing her support for the redistricting push.

In a statement to NBC News, she said she saw the referendum as a “temporary, responsive action to address the redistricting efforts of other states” and that “Virginia voters deserve the opportunity to respond to the President’s nationwide pressure campaign.”

Ads run by Virginians for Fair Maps have hammered the process used by Democratic lawmakers and have connected it to an effort to oppose Trump and Republicans on immigration.

“Richmond politicians are drawing new congressional districts to rig the game for themselves,” a narrator says in one ad, adding that the move would “protect sanctuary city policies that put dangerous criminal aliens back on our streets.”

Another spot highlights how voters passed a constitutional amendment that created the bipartisan redistricting commission in 2020 by nearly a 2-to-1 margin.

“Republicans and Democrats worked together to get politicians out of the business of picking their own voters,” the narrator says in that spot, adding that a win would “end competitive elections in Virginia and silence your voice.”

Meanwhile, another group opposed to the measure sent out mailers targeting Black voters with Jim Crow-era images, sparking an outcry.

Recent polling has shown that Virginians back the bipartisan redistricting commission, but are less certain about the Democratic-backed referendum.

A Roanoke College poll of Virginia residents conducted in mid-February found that 62% supported the state’s current method of drawing congressional maps. Asked about the constitutional amendment, 44% said they’d vote to approve it, while 52% said they’d prefer to keep the current process.

A mid-January poll of Virginia registered voters from Christopher Newport University similarly found that 63% were in favor of the current map-drawing process. But this survey showed a slight majority, 51%, also backed the temporary constitutional amendment, while 43% opposed it.

Threading the needle of not completely dismissing the commission while pushing for a more partisan map represents a big hurdle for the referendum’s supporters — one underscored by the fact that some Democrats are aggressively opposed to the amendment.

“There’s a big group of people that don’t like Donald Trump — like me — that are worried about him stealing the midterms and ruining our democracy — like me — but who don’t think this is a smart way to fight back, or that we even need to do this in Virginia,” said Brian Cannon, a Democratic operative in Virginia who advocated for passage of the bipartisan redistricting commission.

Cannon, who now works for the nonpartisan election reform organization FairVote and helps to lead the group No Gerrymandering Virginia, asked: “As we fight Trump, are we becoming what we abhor?”

That sentiment is one of several dynamics leading Republicans and opponents of the redistricting measure to feel bullish.

“We have seen a marked increase in energy and, frankly, anger on the part of the voters who are starting to realize what’s going on,” said former Republican Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, a co-chair of Virginians for Fair Maps. “And I do feel that that anger is a strong motivator for people to turn out for a vote in April.”

Pointing to a Virginia Public Access Project analysis of the early vote, which kicked off March 6, Cantor said those totals were trending “our way, especially in Republican areas.”

“We feel really good about where we are,” he said.

Democrats say they have their work cut out for them in the closing weeks of the campaign.

Beyer, who represents a solidly Democratic northern Virginia district, said they will need to persuade voters to “hold their nose on gerrymandering because this is a response to Trump’s gerrymandering.”

“We don’t like doing it. It is temporary, and the alternative is to roll over and let the bad guys cheat,” he added.

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