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Washington, DC \u2013<\/strong> The latest battle in United States congressional redistricting has been decided, with voters in Virginia approving redrawing the state\u2019s electoral map.<\/p>\n The result of Tuesday\u2019s referendum on Virginia redistricting is widely expected to benefit Democrats in their fight to retake control of the slimly Republican-controlled US House of Representatives in the midterm vote in November.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n While redistricting is typically conducted every 10 years, following the US Census count of the country\u2019s population, the election season has seen an unprecedented flurry of states moving to redraw their legislative maps early, initially spurred by pressure on US President Donald Trump to urge his fellow Republicans in Texas to do the same.<\/p>\n Democrats may be up at the moment, but several scenarios \u2013 including a redistricting push in Florida \u2013 could soon spoil those gains.<\/p>\n Experts, meanwhile, warn of the long-term implications of the election season\u2019s norm-busting political manoeuvres, which they say could transform how and when electoral maps are drawn for years to come.<\/p>\n \u201cVirginia\u2019s unorthodox redistricting isn\u2019t just a map redraw, it\u2019s a mid-decade power play in a national arms race,\u201d Rina Shah, a political adviser and strategist, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n \u201cIn a cycle defined by retaliation over reform, this sets a precedent: when one side bends the rules, the other follows, until courts or voters draw the final line.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump has not been timid about his desire to redraw state congressional maps to benefit his Republican Party.<\/p>\n In July 2025, he confirmed the plan to reporters: \u201cTexas would be the biggest one,\u201d he said. \u201cJust a very simple redrawing, we pick up five seats.\u201d<\/p>\n By August, Texas\u2019s Republican-controlled State House had passed a new map favouring Republicans, setting the party on course to secure five more seats in the US House of Representatives compared to the earlier map.<\/p>\n The move was soon followed by changes in Missouri, whose new maps are expected to net Republicans one additional seat, while redistricting in North Carolina and Ohio is expected to give the party two to three new Republican-dominated districts.<\/p>\n Democrats in several states responded in kind, pushing for redistricting in California and Utah that resulted in about six new Democrat-dominated districts. Virginia\u2019s victory largely neutralised Republican gains, adding between two and four seats for Democrats.<\/p>\n \u201cThis could shift Virginia from a 6-5 split to something like 10-1 Democratic,\u201d political adviser Shah said, referring to Virginia\u2019s 11 congressional districts and noting this would result in \u201cdelivering up to four net seats and dramatically tightening the fight for House control in the 2026 midterms\u201d.<\/p>\n This comes as Republicans are already expected to face a punishing election season, with wariness over the US-Israeli war in Iran and the stubbornly high cost of living in the US.<\/p>\n Democratic control of either chamber of Congress \u2013 or of both \u2013 would give the party the ability to largely curtail Trump\u2019s agenda in the final two years of his presidency.<\/p>\n As of Wednesday, Sabato\u2019s Crystal Ball, a midterm predictor published by the University of Virginia\u2019s Center for Politics, rated 217 Congressional districts across the country as leaning towards Democrats, with 205 leaning towards Republicans and 13 rated toss-ups.<\/p>\n In the short term, Democrats are \u201cwinning\u201d from the redistricting battle, according to Samuel Wang, a professor of neuroscience at Princeton University who runs the Princeton Gerrymandering Project.<\/p>\n \u201cBut from a non-partisan good government standpoint, it\u2019s just a terrible event,\u201d Wang told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n He explained the \u201cincredible\u201d flurry of redistricting in recent months opens the possibility of a new age of heightened gerrymandering, the process by which congressional boundaries are drawn to benefit one political group.<\/p>\n Prior to this election cycle, there had been just three instances of mid-decade redistricting over the last five decades. Wang described the recent spurt as a \u201ccomplete busting of norms\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s bad in the sense of reducing competition. Gerrymandering on both sides, basically, removes voters from the equation everywhere it happens,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Top Democrats have largely argued their hands were forced in mirroring the Republican strategy, rather than yield to the opposing party ahead of a consequential election.<\/p>\n \u201cWe fought back,\u201d Hakeem Jeffries, the top Democrat in the House, told the Associated Press after Virginia\u2019s vote. \u201cWhen they go low, we hit back hard.\u201d<\/p>\n But some Democrats have echoed concerns over the new precedent being set.<\/p>\n John Fetterman, a Democrat from Pennsylvania who has regularly sided with Republicans, told Newsmax on Wednesday, \u201cWhether it\u2019s a red state or whether it\u2019s a blue state, our democracy is degraded.\u201d<\/p>\n To be sure, while opportunities for further redistricting are diminishing following the vote in Virginia, the final congressional maps ahead of the midterms may not yet be set.<\/p>\n The Virginia vote now shifts pressure on Republicans in Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis is set to hold a special legislative session on April 28 to discuss possible redistricting.<\/p>\n A new map could add up to five Republican-dominated congressional districts in the state, but could be scuttled by strict language in Florida\u2019s constitution related to the process.<\/p>\n Democrat Jeffries, in a statement on Wednesday, vowed to surge resources to the state to take down Republican incumbents if the map is redrawn. \u201cMaximum warfare, everywhere, all the time,\u201d he pledged.<\/p>\n Several challenges to Virginia\u2019s redistricting ballot measure are also currently being heard before the state\u2019s Supreme Court, which could hinder the implementation of the new map.<\/p>\n Trump on Wednesday decried the Virginia vote as \u201crigged\u201d, without providing any evidence to back up the claim.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, a case pending before the US Supreme Court could beckon in another slate of redistricting in the US South.<\/p>\n In Louisiana v Callais, the justices will determine whether the creation of two Black-majority congressional districts is in line with the Voting Rights Act, which seeks to assure minority representation in states with a history of racist election policies.<\/p>\n A ruling could open the door to redrawing maps in several states that would have previously been banned due to so-called \u201cracial gerrymandering\u201d, a process of drawing congressional lines based on racial makeup to dilute the electoral power of a minority group.<\/p>\n A handful of states have created independent commissions to oversee redistricting, in an effort to assure the process remains non-partisan.<\/p>\n But the vast majority rely on their state legislatures to draw the maps, which can lead to outsized influence over the party in control, barring legal challenges. That largely remains true whether redistricting is conducted every decade or, as the current election season could portend, more frequently.<\/p>\n But amid the current cavalcade of congressional map changes, Princeton\u2019s Wang, who is himself running in the Democratic primary for Congress in New Jersey\u2019s 12th district, sees a rare opportunity for federal reform.<\/p>\n That could take the form of Congress creating independent commissions to oversee redistricting.<\/p>\n \u201cNow that mid-decade redistricting is backfiring on Republicans, it creates the possibility that both parties can see clearly that gerrymandering is a zero-sum game,\u201d Wang said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt opens a path for possible bipartisan action.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Washington, DC \u2013 The latest battle in United States congressional redistricting has been decided, with voters in Virginia approving redrawing the state\u2019s electoral map. The result of Tuesday\u2019s referendum on Virginia redistricting is widely expected to benefit Democrats in their fight to retake control of the slimly Republican-controlled US House of Representatives in the midterm […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20016,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-canada-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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