What happened
Democrats’ efforts to reclaim the U.S. House of Representatives got a major assist last week, after voters in Virginia approved an aggressively gerrymandered electoral map that could gain the party four more seats in the chamber. By 51% to 49%, Virginians voted to allow the state legislature to redraw the state’s representative districts in a way that likely gives Democrats 10 out of its 11 seats—up from six now—until at least after the 2030 census. President Trump immediately claimed without evidence the result was “rigged.”
Virginia’s redrawn map could still be scrapped by the state Supreme Court, which is still considering Republican claims that Democrats illegally organized the redistricting effort. Republicans could also gain as many as five more seats from Florida, which will hold a special session on redistricting next week. The U.S. Supreme Court, meanwhile, has delayed a ruling on a case that could overturn the 1965 Voting Rights Act’s prohibition of racial gerrymandering, which could encourage legislatures in multiple Southern states to redraw their maps before the midterms.
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What the columnists said
Carving up Virginia into “salamander-like” districts “wasn’t an easy sell,” said William Kristol in The Bulwark. As Virginia Republicans emphasized in attack ads, Democrats such as Barack Obama and Gov. Abigail Spanberger once condemned gerrymandering. But now that Trump has forced the issue, Democrats—often “thought to be hapless competitors” in this dirtier political age—finally “stepped up and fought back.”
Now they can “spare us the false sanctimony about democratic norms,” said The Washington Post in an editorial. Some 46% of Virginians voted for Trump in 2024; this outrageously gerrymandered map would reduce their House representation to barely 9%. We can blame “Trump’s original foolhardy and suicidal decision to goad Texas into mid-decade redistricting,” said Jeffrey Blehar in National Review. But it’s still unjust to turn purple Virginia “into almost a one-party state.”
This was a “less resounding” win for Democrats than the party might suggest, said Aaron Blake in CNN.com. Spanberger won the Virginia governorship by 15 percentage points in November; this map squeezed by with 2. It also may have cost her politically. The centrist Spanberger, a potential presidential candidate, faced complaints of hypocrisy from the Right and criticism from the Left for not advocating for the referendum strongly enough. “The lesson of the current redistricting war” is that pragmatism doesn’t pay; you need to “take whatever advantage you can, whenever you can.”