Governor called referendum after president urged GOP-led states to redraw maps to protect House majority
Voters in Virginia on Tuesday approved new congressional maps intended to boost Democrats’ chances of retaking the House of Representatives, in the latest blow to Donald Trump’s effort to use mid-decade redistricting to preserve his control of Congress.
The tit-for-tat redistricting battle began last year after Trump pressed Texas’s Republican-controlled legislature to redraw that state’s congressional maps in a bid to oust as many as five Democratic House lawmakers in the November midterm elections.
California voters retaliated by approving new maps that could flip five Republican-held seats, and in Virginia, Abigail Spanberger, the newly elected Democratic governor, backed an effort to redraw her state’s maps following her January inauguration. Tuesday’s referendum could help Democrats win four additional House seats in November’s midterm elections.
I guess that it looks like the the early gerrymandering effort may, when one includes the backlash, have wound up on the net reducing the number of seats that Republican legislators hold in the House relative to Democrats, then.
Probably would have been better for the Trump administration to have left well enough alone.
Assuming states like Texas even gerrymandered things safely. With the current approval ratings some of the districts they redrew are at a higher chance of being flipped.
I’d love to see that, but man imagine the chorus of “unfair they must have cheated!” that would erupt from the right.
I mean, they’re going to do that anyway, but still
There was gerrymandering on both sides, but definitely more in Red states. Kind of a stupid fight to start, because there was always more room to gerrymander on the blue side.