If the General Assembly this week sets in motion a constitutional amendment to allow Virginia to redraw its congressional district lines before the 2026 midterms, it could net Democrats anywhere from three to four extra seats.
That would wipe out the two extra Republican seats that Missouri and North Carolina are trying to create before next year’s election. If Indiana manages to pick up two more in a special session that state is planning next month, then Virginia’s action could leave the whole national gerrymandering battle even — unless more states start redrawing their lines, which they could.
Texas has already tried to create five new seats, prompting California to try to do the same.
If Virginia Democrats find a way to redraw the state’s congressional map, a delegation that’s now 6-5 Democratic could go to 9-2 or even 10-1 Democratic.
If 9-2, that would be the fewest Republicans in the state’s delegation since the 1964 election saw just two Republicans elected — Richard Poff of Radford in what was then the 6th District and Joel Broyhill of Arlington County in what was then the 10th District.
If 10-1, that would be the fewest Republicans since the 1950 election for the 1951-52 session, when no Republicans were sent to Washington at a time when the Byrd Machine of conservative Democrat Harry Byrd Sr. ruled the state and Republicans were only a faint political force. The 1952 election saw Republican Dwight Eisenhower win the state and his coattails swept in three Republican House members, Poff in the 6th, Broyhill in the 10th and William Wampler Sr. in the 9th. From then on, there have always been at least two Republicans in the state’s delegation and often more; as recently as the 2014 elections, there were seven Republicans with four Democrats.
Some of the maps now being circulated show it’s possible to use creative cartography to draw just one district likely to elect a Republican, with that district being in Southwest Virginia.
Democrats say this is necessary to counter the emergency of Republicans gerrymandering lines in other states. On Tuesday, two Democratic statewide candidates — Ghazala Hashmi for lieutenant governor and Jay Jones for attorney general — issued separatate statements in which they said the proposed constitutional amendment would “return power back to the people.” No, it would not. It would return power to the majority party in the General Assembly, which is always eager to engage in partisan gerrymandering.
None of this would be necessary — or even possible — if Democrats hadn’t lost rural voters over the past quarter-century, especially those in Southwest Virginia.
Or, conversely, if Republicans hadn’t lost suburban voters, especially those in Northern Virginia.
Gerrymandering has been around for a long time — just ask Elbridge Gerry, the 19th century Massachusetts governor whose surname has become affixed to the practice. It’s become easier, though, due to political realignments that have radically altered our nation’s politics since 2000. When this century began, most communities were far more competitive than they are now — and both parties had more geographically diverse coalitions than they do now.
Let’s take the 2001 statewide elections as our starting point, partly because two of the three winners that year are still in office: Democrats Mark Warner and Tim Kaine were elected governor and lieutenant governor that year. Now both are U.S. senators. The 2001 election is one we still have a living connection with.
Warner won the governorship that year with 52.2% of the vote, not that much different from the 50.6% that Republican Glenn Youngkin won with four years ago. But look how much changed.
In 2001, most Virginia localities were competitive. In 2021, most weren’t.
In 67 of the state’s 134 localities in 2001, the winning candidate took no more than 55% of the vote.
By 2021, only 21 of the state’s 133 localities (Bedford had reverted to town status by then) were that close.
In 2001, only three localities saw a candidate take 70% or more of the vote and in only one of those did that candidate top 80%: Warner took 82% in Petersburg.
By 2021, there were 50 localities where a candidate won 70% or more of the vote and in 15 of those the winning candidate took 80% or more, with Scott County topping the list. It voted 86.9% for Youngkin, just ahead of Tazewell County with 86.6%.
In 2001, both the Northern Virginia suburbs and Southwest Virginia were competitive. Now, neither region is. The question now isn’t which candidate wins there, but by how much — and how the turnout is.
That kind of monochromatic voting makes it easier for politicians to gerrymander districts — as Democrats now want to do in Virginia.
That’s because a quarter-century ago both parties’ supporters were scattered across the state. Now they’re packed into certain places. In the case of Republicans, who are now on the chopping block, their vote is concentrated in rural areas, particularly Southwest Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley.
That makes it easy to either pack other Republicans into districts there, which makes other districts more favorable to Democrats:
Or, Democratic map-makers could carve up the Shenandoah Valley and “bury” its Republican voters into districts dominated by Democratic voters elsewhere.
Only Southwest Virginia west of Radford is immune to gerrymandering because those counties are so Republican, and there’s really nowhere else for Democratic mapmakers to put them. There is simply no way to draw a competitive district in Southwest Virginia, much less a Democratic one.
Whoever approves the maps ultimately has to bear the responsibility for gerrymandering, but voters are not guiltless here. If they were more inclined to being swing voters, it would be harder for each party to gerrymander them because the results would be too unpredictable.
Consider this little historical experiment.
In the most recent congressional election, Republican Morgan Griffith won the 9th District in Southwest Virginia with 72.5% of the vote. That’s not just the most Republican congressional district in the state, it’s the most lopsided of any of our congressional districts (although the 8th District in Northern Virginia now held by Democrat Don Beyer comes close). I took the 2001 gubernatorial results and applied them to the current map of the 9th District. Using those results, the Democratic candidate won with 52.7% of the vote — almost exactly what Warner won by statewide that year. Put another way, in 2001, the 9th District was almost a perfect microcosm of the state at large. Now it’s not.
In 2001, Fairfax County, Loudoun County and Prince William County were all competitive — with the former voting 54.5% Democratic and the latter two Republican, with vote shares of 53.4% and 52.4%. Now all three are Democratic bastions.
While there are no official maps of how Virginia Democrats would like to draw new lines, many of the unofficial maps making the rounds show gerrymandered districts that might well have been competitive a quarter-century ago.
If Republicans could still win in Northern Virginia the way they used to, and if Democrats were still competitive in rural areas the way they once were, it would be harder for either party to gerrymander. If Democrats manage to pull off this constitutional amendment to restore partisan gerrymandering to Virginia, they will have to own that, in political terms (and some might own it proudly). Ultimately, though, voters are their enablers because this would be far more difficult without the realignment we’ve seen this century. William Shakespeare explained this long ago in his play “Julius Caesar,” where Cassius says: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”
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