Virginia Democrats on Thursday released a long-awaited congressional map that is more favorable to their party, following a week of intraparty fighting over how many and which districts to gerrymander.
Lawmakers in both chambers of the state’s General Assembly reportedly disagreed over how districts should be broken up, and Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s office also tried to water it down. But the party eventually lined up around a map that has 10 congressional districts friendlier to Democrats, which could net them up to four more seats in the House of Representatives.
“These are not ordinary times, and Virginia will not sit on the sidelines while this happens,” state Sen. L. Louise Lucas, the president pro tempore, told reporters Thursday morning. “We made a promise to level the playing field, and today, we are keeping our promise. Our maps are ready, Virginia is ready, we said 10-1, and we meant it.”
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Under the existing map, the state has five Republican and six Democratic members of the House in its congressional delegation. If the constitutional amendment survives legal challenges and voters approve the new map in a special election, only one of the districts would be Republican-leaning, and two currently Republican-leaning districts would now have a slight Democratic lean.
Virginia Democrats’ redistricting effort is the largest Democratic-led effort to gain their party seats after California’s Proposition 50 ballot measure, which passed overwhelmingly in a November special election and was upheld Wednesday by the Supreme Court. Blue states began pushing for new maps to counter Republican redistricting efforts in Texas, North Carolina, and Ohio, part of an effort spearheaded by President Donald Trump to try and keep control of the House in the 2026 midterms.
The push for redistricting in Virginia, which state lawmakers announced in October, has been rocky.
Punchbowl News reported that state legislators were in a dispute over whether to create a map that would elevate members of their own chambers to Congress. Spanberger’s office, which was involved in the effort behind the scenes, also called state legislators and pushed for a less aggressive map that would create nine districts friendly to Democrats and two that are friendly to Republicans, according to the Virginia Scope.
Her office did not respond to a request for comment.
Spanberger’s team warned Virginia Democrats that a 10-1 map would create split jurisdictions and precincts, leading to headaches for local officials who oversee elections, the National Review reported. The governor also expressed concern in December, before she was sworn in as governor, that a 10-1 map would create more toss-up districts, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported.
The new Virginia map still faces a legal challenge. The state’s Republicans swiftly filed suit following the January passage of the maps in the state General Assembly. A Tazewell county judge agreed with Republicans that the process that the state Democratic lawmakers used to redistrict was invalid. Democrats appealed.
The case is now before the state Supreme Court, after Virginia’s Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday said the case is of “such imperative public importance as to justify the deviation from normal appellate practice and to require prompt decision in the Supreme Court.”
Virginia legislators have continued to plow ahead with their redistricting efforts as they wait for a final ruling. The redistricting referendum now awaits Spanberger’s signature. Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates Don Scott said on Thursday that he believes the governor is “on board.”
Spanberger has until Feb. 11 to sign off on the redistricting referendum.
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