For the second time in six months, voters in a blue state have signed off on an aggressively gerrymandered US House map to help Democrats fight back in a redistricting war launched by President Donald Trump and Republicans.
Virginia voters on Tuesday approved a referendum that could net Democrats an additional four seats in the 2026 midterm elections and allow them to win 10 of the state’s 11 congressional districts. California voters approved a similar measure last year.
The Virginia measure was passing 51%-49% with 97% of the vote in.
The vote makes the tit-for-tat redistricting war that’s played out over the past several months something close to a draw. But Republicans could still come out with a slight advantage if Florida passes a new map in the coming weeks.
Below are some takeaways from the vote.
Close to even results, but one big state remains
Republicans began this redistricting war by launching an aggressive – and historically rare – mid-decade gerrymander in Texas last year.
Democrats had plenty to fear.
Republicans simply had more power to draw new red districts. And Democrats needed voters to sign off on their biggest opportunities in states like California and Virginia – which was no sure bet.
But thanks to a series of breaks for Democrats and those voters delivering for them, the battle is something close to a draw right now.
CNN’s redistricting tracker shows Democrats have drawn themselves 10 potential seats and Republicans nine.
(This is a somewhat inexact science, given some districts might only very modestly favor one side or the other, though, and some of the GOP gains especially could be in doubt.)
Of course, one state is still outstanding. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to ask his state legislature to pass a new map with as many as five new Republican-leaning districts.
Some on the right are concerned that getting too aggressive in Florida could backfire in what’s looking to be an increasingly tough environment for Republicans in the 2026 election.
Florida’s constitution prohibits gerrymandering on partisan grounds. But the state Supreme Court earlier this decade weakened that restriction.
What’s clear is that it seems this war hasn’t landed Republicans near the advantage they might have imagined it would.
And the GOP’s razor-thin majority can’t bank on new maps saving it in what should be a tough 2026 election.
It’s not officially over in Virginia
Virginia’s Supreme Court still needs to consider unresolved litigation over the map.
The court previously ruled that Tuesday’s election could proceed, but it said it would consider the full merits of the case if voters passed the measure.
At issue is a pair of claims. One is whether Virginia Democrats violated procedural rules when adding the proposal to a special session. The other is whether the ballot language was too misleading.
Obviously, if the state Supreme Court were to strike down the new map, it would be an advantage Republicans nationally.
A less resounding win for Democrats
Democrats won this vote. But for a party that has become used to big over-performances since the 2024 presidential election, this one was somewhat less so.
In fact, the final margin was less than Kamala Harris’s nearly six-point margin of victory in the 2024 presidential race. It wasn’t close to the 15-point margin by which Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger was elected in November.
It was also far less resounding than California’s vote in November.
There are likely a few reasons for that.
California’s vote – the referendum passed by a resounding 64%-36% margin – was likely more lopsided in part because it’s just a bluer state; Harris won it by 20 points. But that doesn’t account for all of the difference.
A more robust GOP effort to fight the ballot measure in Virginia than in California along with the passage of time combined to make things a little more interesting.
While the redistricting wars were very heated ahead of California’s November vote, they’ve cooled somewhat in recent months.
That includes Indiana Republican state senators standing up to Trump and rejecting a new map back in December, and it included Maryland’s Democratic-controlled state legislature declining to try to draw a new blue district.
As for the fact that Democrats didn’t over-perform like they’ve become accustomed to? That’s likely in large part because it’s usually difficult to get people to vote in favor of gerrymandering.
It’s not the same as a standard Democrat-versus-Republican election. Prior to this year, voters pretty reliably sided against gerrymandering whenever the issue was put on the ballot.
Indeed, the fact that two states have now effectively voted in favor of gerrymanders in the last six months is pretty remarkable, given that history.
Democrats probably shouldn’t panic. But Republicans did show some fight.
The ‘no’ side just had a tough argument
But it was always going to be tough for the “no” side to get over the hump. That’s in large part because it relied on some real rhetorical gymnastics.
That was perhaps best exemplified by Trump’s comments on Monday night.
“I don’t know if you know what gerrymandering is, but it’s not good,” Trump said.
That’s a pretty laughable comment from a president who pushed so hard for his side to get so aggressive with its own gerrymandering – and actually got the ball rolling on the gerrymandering war by pressuring Texas Republicans.
For Democrats, they just had to convince their voters that this was about leveling the playing field and fighting back against a very real MAGA power grab.
For Republicans, they had to argue gerrymandering was bad despite … well, not having made that argument when Texas was doing it.
It’s gotten ugly – quite literally
Say what you will about the legitimacy of Virginia Democrats fighting back; the map they’ve drawn is audacious.
Not only does it mean Democrats could win more than 90% of districts in a state that Harris won with just 52% of the vote. But it extends five districts out from the heavily blue Washington, DC, suburbs way out into rural Virginia in order to accomplish its task.
It’s surely one of the most drastic maps out there.
Democrats spread their voters out so much that they could lose some of these districts if the environment in future elections favors Republicans. Five of them favored Harris by less than 10 points.
Which seems like it’s about all that will prevent such redraws in the future.
The lesson of the current redistricting war appears to be that you take whatever advantage you can, whenever and wherever you can. And about the only thing restricting you is voters rejecting it or the possibility of it backfiring one day.
The question now is whether we just see a continual series of mid-decade redraws whenever it seems convenient, whether we get something of a détente when Trump is gone, or if the madness might even lead to some momentum behind some bipartisan national redistricting reform.
Because right now, the biggest impact of the 2025-26 redistricting wars has been damage to democracy rather than any partisan benefit.
.jpg)
.jpg)
0 ความคิดเห็น:
แสดงความคิดเห็น