A slim majority of Virginia voters favors a redistricting measure to give Democrats as many as four extra seats in Congress this November, with 52 percent of likely voters saying they support redrawing state political maps and 47 percent opposed, according to a Washington Post-Schar School poll.
But the poll offers warning signs that the outcome could go either way as early voting proceeds ahead of the April 21 referendum. Republicans and opponents of the measure are more enthusiastic about casting ballots than Democrats and supporters.
Among registered voters overall, an 85 percent majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they’re certain to vote or have already done so, up from 76 percent who said that in polling ahead of last fall’s Virginia gubernatorial contest. In the poll, 77 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are committed to voting, on par with 79 percent last fall.
Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) won the fall election by a 15-percentage point margin, but the poll shows that outpouring of support for Democrats is not transferring to the redistricting measure she supports.
President Donald Trump touched off a national arms race over redistricting last summer by urging Texas and other Republican-led states to redraw congressional districts to help his party maintain its narrow majority in the House in this year’s midterm elections. New political maps are usually drawn every 10 years, but California and several states run by Democrats have countered Trump’s push with redistricting efforts of their own.
Virginia’s U.S. House delegation consists of six Democrats and five Republicans. But the maps proposed by Democratic state lawmakers who crafted the referendum would temporarily create 10 districts that went for Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election and one that went for Trump. The measure would allow the state’s independent redistricting committee to redraw districts as scheduled in 2030.
Grappling with fairness
The Virginia referendum is winning narrow majority support even though most voters oppose drawing districts to balance out other states. The poll found 57 percent believe it’s more important for Virginia’s congressional districts to reflect the political makeup of the state compared with 34 percent who say they should balance out other states that were drawn to favor one party. Still, more than a third of those who prefer balanced maps say they nonetheless support the partisan redistricting amendment.
“I don’t like the idea of any gerrymandering, just as a general belief,” said Rob Porter, 78, a retired Marine Corps officer who lives in Alexandria. Though he describes himself as a lifelong Republican, Porter said he will vote for redistricting because he believes Trump has led the GOP astray and a Democratic Congress can serve as a check on his actions. But he doesn’t feel good about it.
“We’re trying to do something wrong to get something right, and that bothers me,” he said.
Virginia, where voters rejected Trump in all three of his presidential bids, jumped into the redistricting battle at the last minute and must go through a complicated constitutional amendment process to create new maps in time for the November election.
Voters are split on whether it’s fair to create 10 Democratic-leaning districts. Forty-four percent say that would be a fair representation of Virginians’ political preferences while 48 percent say this would be unfair.
Autumn Mentink, a longtime Democratic voter, said she probably will set aside misgivings to vote for the measure after reading about the broader redistricting war nationally.
“I think it is going to gerrymander some areas in an attempt to give Democrats more seats, but if we need to do that to balance out the Republicans then that’s what we need to do,” said Mentink, who is 40 and lives in Reston.
Warning signs
The poll shows a considerably closer contest than the blue “tsunami” Democrats enjoyed in Virginia last year. Independents with no partisan leaning favor the amendment by a 10-point margin, down from the 20-point margin by which they favored Spanberger last year in the network exit poll. Partisans are largely united in their stance: 91 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents would vote yes while 89 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents would vote no.
In another sign of momentum for the “no” side: among voters who turned out in the 2025, 2024 and 2022 general elections, 46 percent support the amendment while 53 percent oppose it.
“Given that the higher propensity and more highly motivated voters are opposed, this may be closer than the top-line result suggests,” said Mark Rozell, dean of George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, which co-sponsored the poll. “Also, that the opposition has kept it reasonably competitive while being enormously outspent, suggests that a well-funded late push could turn this around. It is far from a done deal.”
Supporter demographics
Redistricting’s strongest supporters include women — 60 percent of whom favor the measure versus 46 percent of men — and Black voters, who at 79 percent support are more likely than any other racial group to favor the amendment. That support comes despite a flood of controversial advertising aimed at convincing Black voters that redistricting would violate civil rights. Those messages might be undermining Black turnout, as fewer Black voters say they are certain to vote or have already done so (54 percent) than before last fall’s election for governor (64 percent).
Results show that as household income goes up, support goes down. Voters with annual household income under $50,000 favor the referendum at 61 percent while those making over $200,000 are almost evenly divided.
Interest in the referendum is high despite happening at an unusual time when Virginians are not used to going to the polls. Early voting started in mid-March, and 76 percent of Virginia’s registered voters say they are certain to vote or have already done so, similar to 74 percent just before last November’s gubernatorial election. Early voting rates are almost identical to last year’s election at a similar point, according to the Virginia Public Access Project, a nonpartisan service that compiles state campaign finance and elections data.
Partisan implications
The referendum has come under partisan criticism for using vague broad language, asking voters whether to temporarily draw new districts “to restore fairness” without specifying that the map would favor Democrats. The Post-Schar School poll asked voters the exact ballot question, then followed with additional questions to measure understanding. Nearly three-quarters of voters (72 percent) say they are aware the amendment will help Democrats win more seats in Congress, while 15 percent think it won’t make a difference and 8 percent believe it will help Republicans, the poll finds.
Some aspects of the result are comparable to exit polling in last year’s Proposition 50 in California, which voters approved to adopt a map that could help Democrats gain up to five seats in Congress.
In Virginia, 46 percent of voters say one reason for their vote is to oppose Trump compared with 10 percent who say they are voting to support him, while 42 percent say Trump is not a factor. In the California exit poll last year, 52 percent of voters said they were motivated to oppose Trump while 7 percent were motivated to support him and 40 percent said he’s not a factor.
Samuel Tanner, a 34-year-old who voted for Trump, said the president’s redistricting plans in other states had no influence on him. His opposition to Virginia’s redistricting, he said, was based purely on his belief that the current map is a better representation of Virginia’s diverse politics.
“Just using my eyes, it looks a lot more fair,” said Tanner, a data scientist in Charlottesville. “I wish everything could just be perfect little rectangles.”
A 42 percent plurality of Virginia voters say that across the U.S., neither party is handling the redrawing of congressional district lines fairly, while 28 percent say only Democrats are handling it fairly and 14 percent say only Republicans are handling it fairly. In California, 52 percent in last year’s exit poll said neither party was handling redistricting fairly, 29 percent said only Democrats were and 11 percent said only Republicans were.
This poll was conducted by The Post and George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government from March 26-31 among a random sample of 1,101 registered voters in Virginia drawn from a statewide voter database. Live caller interviews reached respondents on cellphones (62 percent) and landlines (16 percent); 22 percent of respondents were reached via text message and invited to take the survey online. The overall margin of error is plus or minus 3.3 percentage points for both registered and likely voters; all registered voters were assigned a probability of voting to produce likely voter results.
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