Democrats push forward with 2026 redistricting

Democrats in Virginia plan to put a constitutional modification before voters to use a new congressional map in 2026. 

In October, Democrats took the first step toward altering Virginia’s structure, using their slim majorities in the House of Delegates and the state Senate. The really helpful modification would enable the Legislature to sideline the bipartisan commission that attracts Virginia’s political maps.

Shortly after, in November, Virginia elected Abigail Spanberger as the governor with a 15-percentage-point victory, defeating Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears and increasing House Speaker Don Scott’s 51–49 majority to 64–36.

“What we were doing was not something that they saw as a negative … that Democrats are on the right track in terms of where we are in our politics, and that this is not a bad thing,” Sen. Mamie Locke (D–Hampton) told VPM News.

During a Nov. 7 look on WAMU’s The Politics Hour, Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell said that Democrats are in search of to redraw maps such that they’re ready to flip at least two U.S. House of Representatives seats at the moment held by Republicans.

“There’s two seats that are pretty obviously in play. And after that it’ll probably get pretty hard, but you know, anything’s possible,” he said at the time.

Democrats in the General Assembly have focused preparedness to reply to GOP-led redistricting efforts countrywide instead of promising a new congressional map forward of the 2026 federal midterms.

While Governor-elect Spanberger hasn’t yet said that she would log off on new maps, she has spoken about maintaining all choices open.

Connor Joseph, her spokesperson, said, in an emailed assertion, Spanberger “knows many Virginians are increasingly concerned by the Trump Administration’s attempts to undermine public trust in our elections — and by the continued uncertainty unfolding across the country”, VPM reported.

“Governor-elect Spanberger believes it’s important that the General Assembly be ready to respond to the concerns of Virginia voters if needed”, Joseph added.

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President Donald Trump has been urgent lawmakers in Texas, North Carolina, and Missouri to redistrict, a course of generally accomplished after a new U.S. census is carried out at the start of a decade.

But the trail has been rocky, and it’s far from sure that it should ship a internet gain for Republicans in Congress.

Texas’s redrawn map — which critics argue is an unlawful racial gerrymander somewhat than a partisan one — is now before the U.S. Supreme Court. In Indiana, Republicans initially resisted calls to redraw district traces, but later superior a proposal that would eradicate the state’s two present Democratic seats.

In response, Democrats in California — where voters overwhelmingly authorized a poll measure in November to enable redistricting — launched their own new map to counter many of these adjustments.

Still, across the nation, Democrats control fewer state legislatures than Republicans, limiting their affect over how congressional maps are drawn.

“There hasn’t been any additional discussion in terms of what’s going on in Texas now, what’s happening with Indiana,” Locke told VPM News. “We haven’t been able to actually sit down and talk about, ‘OK, now what?'”

The proposed constitutional modification would enable the General Assembly to draw new maps. In 2021, Locke was half of the Virginia Redistricting Commission, a bipartisan group of eight lawmakers and eight non-elected Virginians that failed to produce maps. This failure led the Supreme Court of Virginia to intervene and finalize new maps for elections starting in 2023.