Virginia Democrats hope the brand new congressional map they’re asking voters to approve Tuesday will flip 4 Republican House districts, delivering 10 of 11 seats in a state former Vice President Kamala Harris gained with simply 52% of the vote in 2024.
Here’s how they drew it up.
The plan dramatically reworks complete sections of the state, slicing up deep blue districts within the Washington, DC, suburbs and round Richmond, and creates a brand new district working alongside the Blue Ridge Mountains that connects liberal cities.
Virginia’s present map, which was drawn by a pair of court-appointed redistricting consultants in 2021, is compact and produced six districts that lean in direction of Democrats, 4 that lean in direction of Republicans, and one which is very aggressive. Opponents of Tuesday’s referendum have run ads noting that Gov. Abigail Spanberger and former President Barack Obama backed nonpartisan redistricting then.
The proposed map is a jagged puzzle particularly drawn to assist Democrats win as many seats as doable.
The vote is simply the most recent volley in a redistricting battle that kicked off last year, when Republicans redrew Texas’ map with the objective of flipping 5 Democratic seats. Spanberger and Obama now argue the brand new map is important to counter President Donald Trump’s push for brand new Republican seats.
After some inner disagreement over how aggressively to attract their new map, Democratic leaders in Virginia took a maximalist method. The ensuing map creates a number of seats that seem extra aggressive than the brand new Republican-leaning districts drawn in Texas.
While Texas Republicans drew a map the place none of their focused seats voted for Trump by lower than 10 share factors in 2024, 5 of the districts on the proposed Virginia map supported Harris by single digits.
Northern Virginia and the ‘lobster’
Heavily Democratic northern Virginia can be carved into 5 separate districts, with districts that pinwheel from exterior Washington to vacuum up conservative rural areas of the state. The new seventh begins in northern Virginia and stretches to this point that it splits in half to keep away from selecting up extra Democratic turf round Charlottesville that may go into a unique district. The outcome resembles a lobster with a protracted skinny tail and two broad claws.
The proposed sixth District runs alongside the Blue Ridge Parkway via central Virginia, connecting Democratic cities from James Madison University in Harrisonburg to Charlottesville, house of the University of Virginia, to Lynchburg (together with the very not-Democratic Liberty University) via Roanoke to Blacksburg, house of Virginia Tech.
Harris gained this potential district by simply 3 factors, a much more aggressive district than any of those Texas Republicans designed to flip their manner.
Under Virginia’s present map, the Richmond space is essentially contained within the 4th District, which reaches down from the capital to the North Carolina border and voted for Harris by 32 factors.
The proposed map splits a part of the Richmond space into the fifth District, leading to one district that voted for Harris by 16 factors and one which supported her by 9.
The subtlest change is within the Norfolk area, across the extremely aggressive 2nd District. The proposed map shifts the district from one which was a digital tie at the presidential stage in 2024 right into a district that voted for Harris by about 5 share factors by changing rural Republican areas with closely Democratic areas close to Norfolk.