Several House seats could flip blue in Virginia this fall, with a new poll showing one Democrat ahead in a district held by Republicans for decades and another modestly behind in a deeply red district that President Donald Trump carried by double digits just two years ago.
Voters in Virginia’s 1st Congressional District, considered the national bellwether for control of the House, narrowly favor Democrat Shannon Taylor over 10-term incumbent Rep. Rob Wittman (R), a Washington Post-Schar School poll has found.
Taylor, Henrico County’s top prosecutor, is preferred by 50 percent of likely voters, compared with 46 percent for Wittman. That is within the poll’s 4.5-percentage-point margin of error for that race, but represents a substantial shift to the left from previous elections.
Wittman won in 2024 by 13 percentage points in a district that stretches from the Richmond suburbs up through parts of coastal Hampton Roads. Trump won the district that year by 4.9 percentage points, making it the national median congressional district, with its results exactly in the middle of all 2026 districts nationwide, according to the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
The poll also found a shift to the left in Virginia’s 5th Congressional District, a more conservative seat in the central part of the state. where incumbent John McGuire (R) leads Democratic challenger and former representative Tom Perriello 51 percent to 45 percent.
Trump won the 5th District by 12 percentage points in 2024, and McGuire won his first term that year by 15 percentage points. Perriello represented the district for a single term from 2009 to 2011, but redistricting since then has made it more red. Republican primary voters in 2020 ousted Rep. Denver Riggleman (who recently endorsed Perriello) after he officiated a same-sex wedding, then four years later rejected his more conservative replacement — Bob Good — when McGuire claimed greater fealty to Trump.
“That these two GOP-leaning districts are so competitive tells all,” Mark Rozell, dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, said. “The national climate is driving everything this year and even Republican incumbents who otherwise should be comfortable are struggling.”
The findings affirm a recent consensus among election prognosticators that Virginia’s competitive races are trending blue. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report switched the 5th District from “solid Republican” to “leans Republican” this week, but the survey also suggests limits to a Democratic surge nationwide.
National polls find Democrats leading by about 8 percentage points in support for Congress compared with Trump’s 1.5-point winning margin in the 2024 popular vote, a roughly 10-point swing. That compares with a roughly nine-point swing toward Democrats in the 1st District and six points in the 5th — perhaps illustrating the limits of any blue wave, especially against lawmakers with an incumbency advantage.
Taylor and Perriello face tougher campaigns after the Virginia Supreme Court struck down voter maps that would have let them run in far more Democratic-friendly districts. But the poll suggests Democrats could still flip up to three seats even without the redistricting that, had it not been struck down in court this year, would have made it easier to win four.
Additional findings
In the 1st District, the Post-Schar School poll finds voters, by a margin of 53 percent to 46 percent, want Democrats to control the U.S. House, suggesting Taylor has room to grow her support.
Wittman’s personal favorable ratings are divided — 42 percent favorable versus 44 percent unfavorable. Taylor isn’t much different, at 40 percent favorable versus 37 percent unfavorable, but Wittman needs the personal appeal to outrun Trump’s low approval ratings. Nearly 6 in 10 voters in his district disapprove of Trump’s job performance, with 52 percent “strongly” disapproving.
In the 5th District, several indicators show the district’s more firm Republican tilt that favors McGuire. Fifty-four percent of likely voters want Republicans to control Congress and 57 percent dislike the Democratic Party, compared with 46 percent who dislike the GOP.
But unlike two years ago, Trump could be a drag on McGuire. The president’s approval rating in the district is underwater — 47 percent favorable versus 53 percent unfavorable. That’s higher than his standing in national polls but notable for a district Trump won by double digits. More voters strongly disapprove of Trump than strongly approve of him, 45 percent vs. 24 percent.
Two other findings suggest Trump is a burden for McGuire: 49 percent of voters say the cost of living is their top issue (no other issue tops 11 percent), and more voters say they are “not as well off” since Trump returned to office than say they are better off, 39 percent to 25 percent.
Perriello, who ran for governor as a progressive in 2017 and is now running a populist campaign for Congress focused on the high cost of living, shows strength in college towns. He leads 68 percent to 29 percent in Albemarle County and Charlottesville, which make up about a fifth of the district. His ability to turn out University of Virginia students and other young voters around Charlottesville could help him close the gap with McGuire.
National Democrats recently put McGuire’s seat on their list of competitive races, which also includes the Wittman seat as well as that of Rep. Jen Kiggans (R) in the 2nd Congressional District, anchored in Virginia Beach. There, former representative Elaine Luria is challenging Kiggans in a district even more closely divided than Wittman’s.
Virginia voters have taken note; the Taylor/Wittman race is the busiest district for early voting, which began Sept. 18, according to analysis by the nonpartisan campaign finance site Virginia Public Access Project. The Perriello-McGuire race is the second-busiest.
While poll accuracy has fluctuated over the past decade, Washington Post-Schar School polls have been accurate in recent Virginia elections. The poll came within one point of Joe Biden’s 11-point statewide margin in 2020 and matched Kamala Harris’s six-point win in 2024. Post-Schar School polling also came within three points of Abigail Spanberger’s 15-point win in the 2025 governor race and within two points of the low-turnout redistricting referendum this spring.
Alauna Safarpour contributed to this report
This poll was conducted by The Post and George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government from Sept. 23-28 among samples of 609 likely voters in Virginia’s 1st Congressional District and 600 likely voters in Virginia’s 5th Congressional District. Voters were randomly selected from a statewide voter database; live-caller interviewers reached respondents on cellphones (64 percent) and landlines (10 percent); 26 percent of respondents were reached via text message and invited to take the survey online. The overall margin of error for results for likely voters in each district is plus or minus 4.5-4.6 percentage points; all registered voters were assigned a probability of voting to produce likely voter results. Full results at wapo.st/poll archive.
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