We just secured a huge victory in the mid-decade redistricting battle Trump started last year: With the help of MVP partners, Virginians approved a redistricting ballot measure that could gain Democrats up to four seats in the U.S. House in November.
This win is also a massive blow to Trump’s blatant attempts at partisan gerrymandering to retain power however he can.
Virginians Love Democracy!
After a long electoral, policy, and legal battle, Virginians finally approved a redistricting ballot measure in a special election on April 21, which will enact new, temporary, Congressional maps ahead of the November general election.
The new maps will likely shift Virginia’s Congressional Delegation from a 6-5 to 10-1 Democratic majority. That’s up to four more Democrats in the U.S. House — significantly increasing our chances of flipping the entire chamber in November.
As of this writing, voters approved the ballot measure by less than 3 points, which might have been even closer if MVP partners had not run such robust and effective voter engagement programs.
The new maps will be in place only until 2031, when an independent redistricting commission will regain control of redrawing Virginia’s maps following the 2030 census.
How did we get here?
Virginia only jumped into the mid-decade redistricting fight to counter Trump’s openly partisan attempts to gain more GOP seats in the U.S. House, starting with telling Texas to redraw their maps to favor Republicans. To fight back, Democrats and MVP partners successfully passed Prop 50 in California last November — gaining Democrats up to five seats in the U.S. House — and, now, this ballot measure in Virginia.
To be clear, MVP and our partners would not have had to jump into this fight at all if Trump had not been doing what he does best: attempting to undermine our democracy for his own power and gain. Good thing MVP and our partners are good at our jobs — understanding the stakes of the mid-district redistricting battle and committing to doing whatever it takes to fight back and win.
Photo: CASA In Action canvassing in support of Democrats ahead of the 2025 general election.
MVP partners made this victory possible.
MVP partners have been working for months towards this victory — not only to mobilize voters to the polls, but to put in place the governing majority who could get the measure on the ballot in the first place.
Last year, our partners New Virginia Majority, CASA In Action, and UNITE HERE Virginia helped win a Democratic trifecta — by electing Democrat Abigail Spanberger to the governor’s seat — and increased Democrats’ margin of power in the state House of Delegates.
They then helped pass legislation in the Virginia General Assembly that would allow the referendum to go before voters, which Governor Abigail Spanberger signed.
The road should have been clear from there, but Republicans pulled every trick in their dirty legal tricks book, throwing the fate of the ballot measure into a legal back-and-forth, with the Virginia Supreme Court ultimately ruling that the ballot measure and special election could move forward.
Photo: New Virginia Majority canvassers talking to voters and advocating for voting rights.
Mobilizing Voters for Fair Representation
MVP partners New Virginia Majority, CASA In Action, and NAKASEC Action Fund went all out to make sure voters knew about the special election, understood why voting “yes” was important, and made it out to the polls.
CASA In Action ran a deep canvassing program — door knocking and community engagement that includes longer, more meaningful conversations — with Latine voters in Prince William County and Virginia Beach, where voters overwhelmingly supported Democratic Abigail Spanberger in last year’s governor’s race.
Meanwhile, NAKASEC Action Fund ran a targeted program to reach Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) voters online and in Northern Virginia — a Democratic stronghold — while New Virginia Majority engaged trusted Black leaders and messengers in southeast Virginia and mobilized voters online.
Combined, MVP partners knocked more than 100,000 doors across the state and had nearly 15,000 conversations with Virginians urging them to vote “yes” on the ballot measure.
MVP also supported New Virginia Majority to have a seat on the statewide referendum committee run by and composed of largely Democratic Party entities. Until MVP’s involvement, the referendum committee was largely focused on running expensive ad and mail campaigns, with little focus or investment in an on-the-ground field program.
With MVP’s support and New Virginia Majority’s participation, we ensured that on-the-ground organizing and a strategic voter engagement field program were included in the larger plan to win. Working directly with the Democratic Party establishment in the state is one way MVP and our partners are wielding both bottom-up and top-down power and making sure the Democratic Party apparatus is listening to groups — and voters — on the ground.
Photo: Hamkae Power, NAKASEC Action Fund’s Virginia Chapter, persuading voters on Election Day to support Virginia’s redistricting ballot measure.
Trusted Local Messengers vs. Deceptive GOP Messaging
This victory was definitely hard-fought, with both sides flooding voters’ airwaves and mailboxes with mixed and manipulated messaging. A GOP-aligned PAC sent Black voters a mailer with images of the Ku Klux Klan, likening the redistricting push to Jim Crow laws, which our partners denounced. Both sides used images and clips of Trump and former President Barack Obama to persuade — and sometimes confuse — voters.
MVP partners’ ground game became all the more important in the midst of so much noise. Meeting voters at their home and in community, talking with them face-to-face and explaining the stakes of this vote — including its Trump origin story — was key to mobilizing voters in support.
In the face of systematic GOP-led efforts to confuse and demobilize voters, the MVP-supported, locally based, independent ground game was not an optional add-on but an urgent necessity. With voters pummelled by deceptive Republican messaging, hearing from trusted messengers not affiliated with the Democratic Party was more important than ever. And as the county-level results show, these efforts paid off, with our partners focused on geographies that voted predominantly in favor of the ballot measure, including Loudoun, Fairax, Prince William, Newport News, Hampton, and Norfolk Counties.
Who is winning the redistricting fight?
Despite Trump picking this fight, he’s definitely not winning it by the margins he thought he could. Going into Virginia’s special election, Republicans were ahead with up to three newly created Republican congressional districts. Now, the Virginia victory has all but wiped out that edge, leaving Democrats with a one-seat edge over Republicans. Combine that with Democratic momentum and so many recent election victories (see here, here, and here), and we have more than a real chance of flipping the House in November.
Emboldening Democrats
Playing hard in the redistricting fight is one part of MVP’s strategy to embolden the Democratic Party. Winning redistricting in Virginia will help us flip the House, but will also make room for new, bold Democratic candidates to run in these redrawn districts. From advocating for our partner New Virginia Majority’s seat at the referendum committee table to pushing Democrats everywhere to fight harder for our rights, especially when the other side has no qualms about taking them away, we must help revamp the Democratic Party if we want to win. MVP is committed to doing this work. We know it is not “someone else’s” job. It’s our collective responsibility.
