Virginia voters headed to the polls on Tuesday to vote on a plan aimed at helping Democrats pick up more seats in the House come November.
With 96 percent of the votes counted, 51.2 percent voted yes to redistricting, while 48.8 percent voted no.
The results of the referendum were a direct rebuke of President Donald Trump, who has been urging Republican-led states to redraw their congressional maps to favor GOP candidates, but Democrats furiously scrambled to redraw districts in Democrat-led states in response.
Democrats in the deep purple state backed the referendum to redraw the congressional districts ahead of the 2026 midterms as Republicans fight to hold onto power.
The new Virginia maps could allow Democrats to pick up an additional four seats in Congress come November. They currently hold six of the state’s 11 seats. The proposed maps backed by voters on Tuesday could give Democrats 10 of those seats.
The referendum fueled more than $81 million in ad spending, making it one of the most expensive contests in Virginia history outside a presidential election.
The mid-decade gerrymandering push in the state came after a series of red states, starting with Texas, moved to redraw maps to favor the GOP at Trump’s urging.
It set off a redistricting war with Virginia being the latest state to enter the fray. Voters in California previously backed Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom’s push to redistrict mid-decade last November with Prop 50.
Florida is the final state that could take up redistricting this spring after Missouri and North Carolina joined Texas, with efforts to help Republicans.
The proposed constitutional amendment in Virginia would allow for the General Assembly to temporarily adopt the new districts ahead of the upcoming election in response to redistricting efforts by Republicans.
The state would then return to its standard process, which involves a bipartisan commission drawing maps, again after the 2030 census is conducted.
Democrats like President Barack Obama and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries were urging voters to vote “yes” on the referendum. Obama called it important for the entire country in a video encouraging voters to get out and push back on “Republicans trying to give themselves an unfair advantage in the midterms.”
Jeffries said the move would “stop Donald Trump’s MAGA power grab.”
“VIRGINIA, VOTE ‘NO’ TO SAVE YOUR COUNTRY!” Trump wrote in a post on Tuesday morning.
The post came one day after he raged during a tele-rally with Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday night that the referendum was a “blatant partisan power grab that nobody’s really ever seen anything like it.”
He called it “unjust” and warned that if Republicans lose the elections, “it’s going to be a disaster.”
Before Virginians even hit Election Day, more than 1.3 million people had already cast ballots on the referendum, including more than one million people who voted early in person and another 250,000 who returned absentee ballots by mail, while more than 37,000 voters dropped off absentee ballots in person.
Of the $81 million in ad spending leading up to Election Day, more than $56 million of it was spent in support of the amendment, while more than $24 million was spent against it, according to tracking by AdImpact. The only non-presidential contests to have seen greater spending were the governor’s races in 2021 and 2025.
Polling leading up to Election Day showed “Yes” on the referendum receiving the majority of support, but the margins remained close. A Washington Post poll last month showed “Yes” up by five points among likely voters.
More recent polling by Quantus Insights this month showed “Yes” up by four points, but conservative Neighborhood Research Corporation polling showed “No” up one point.
