Virginia election map win gives Democrats edge in battle for House in critical midterms

Dave Goldiner, New York Daily News on Apr 22, 2026

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Democrats grabbed a massive win in the battle for control of the House of Representatives with a narrow but clear victory in a Virginia referendum that will likely allow them to flip four Republican-held seats ahead the crucial midterm elections for Congress.

With the 3% win in the closely watched Virginia vote, Democrats will likely be able to take advantage of the newly drawn district lines to win 10 out of the state’s 11 congressional seats, up from the current 6-5 split.

The win means Democrats have effectively battled President Donald Trump and his Republican allies to a dead heat in the unprecedented nationwide mid-decade gerrymandering war that Trump started by ordering Texas to rejigger its congressional map.

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-New York, who stands to become House Speaker if Democrats win the House in November, cheered the results as a sign that Democrats are energized to reject Trump’s right-wing second term agenda.

“They thought we were going to step back, but we’ve made clear that we will fight back,” Jeffries said. “And we’ll keep our foot on the gas pedal.”

President Trump Wednesday trashed the referendum as “rigged” and a “crooked victory” for Democrats.

He repeated his evergreen claim that the Virginia count was somehow tainted because the early tallies showed the referendum trailing until big population centers like Fairfax County near Washington, D.C., reported Democratic-heavy tallies and tipped the balance in favor of “yes.”

“All day long Republicans were winning, the Spirit was unbelievable, until the very end,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social site. “When, of course, there was a massive “Mail In Ballot Drop!”

Several nonpartisan analysts shifted their outlook on control of the House toward Democrats after the vote and betting markets put the odds of a blue win at more than 85%.

“Democrats are on the cusp of the magic number of 218 in our ratings,” said Kyle Kondik, an analyst with Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia.

The Virginia results themselves were a bit underwhelming, especially compared to a thumping landslide win in a similar referendum in deep-blue California.

Angry Republicans turned out in droves, driving support for the referendum down significantly from Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s landslide 15% Democratic win in the 2025 election. But Democratic leaders and strategists won’t waste much time with navel gazing.

The big picture is that the four extra seats in Virginia make them favorites to retake the House in the midterms, especially with Trump’s approval ratings plunging to record lows amid the war in Iran that has sent gas prices skyrocketing. Republicans are clinging to a slender five-vote majority after a flurry of scandal-related resignations on both sides of the aisle.

Political pundits say the final move on the 2026 national redistricting chess board could come soon in Florida.

Gov. Ron DeSantis wants the state legislature to rejigger its maps to grab anywhere from two to five Democratic-held seats. But Republicans, including some of the incumbent GOP lawmakers, fear the new maps could wind up backfiring on them because Democrats have been dramatically outperforming expectations in polls and special elections.

But even if Florida goes ahead with a new map, which Jeffries mocks as the “DeSantis Dummymander,” the overall scorecard looks about even.

Trump unleashed the gerrymandering battle last year by ordering Texas to redraw its maps to flip five blue seats. The new map is now considered likely to only pick up three seats.

Red states like Ohio, Missouri and North Carolina followed suit, passing new maps likely to flip one blue seat apiece.

But Democrats countered with the California gambit, which is likely to score a five-seat shift in their favor. A court gifted Democrats a seat in Utah by ordering the deep-red state to create a blue seat centered on Salt Lake City.

A handful of states on both sides of the aisle rejected the gerrymandering push altogether. The Supreme Court shot down an effort by New York Democrats to eliminate dramatically redraw the Staten Island-based district held by Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, the city’s only Republican in Congress.