Majority Of Virginians Oppose Dems’ Gerrymander

A majority of Virginia residents do not support the Democrats’ attempt to gerrymander the commonwealth’s congressional districts, according to a new poll, but it remains unclear whether the Republican Party is organized enough to get those people out to vote.

According to a Roanoke College survey taken from Feb. 9 to Feb. 16, 52 percent of respondents said they would vote to maintain Virginia’s current redistricting process. Forty-four percent said they would support the Democrat gerrymandering referendum to change it, allowing a highly partisan, mid-decade redistricting process to take place.

The Democrats’ plan would overturn the current delegation of six Democrats and five Republicans and give Democrats a 10-1 advantage through a highly gerrymandered map that allows the commonwealth’s bluest and most populous regions to control the representation of its reddest and most rural. Sixty-two percent of those surveyed said they supported Virginia’s nonpartisan commission method for drawing congressional district maps. Virginians passed a constitutional amendment to use the commission for redistricting in November 2020, just before the normal census-driven redistricting of 2020-2021.

Political polling is subject to a variety of factors that can undermine accuracy, and it is notable that this poll stipulates it asked Virginia “residents” and not specifically registered voters. But the poll does represent the first time the question has been asked about the referendum.

The divide among those who do and do not support the referendum — only 8 percentage points — does not suggest a runaway victory for Republicans and others who do not support gerrymandering. It does, at best, suggest the possibility that the mobilization of a serious political campaign could lead to a GOP victory on the issue.

As The Federalist reported, however, there is thus far little evidence that national Republicans are invested in stopping Democrats from swiping four congressional seats.

Though Republicans have garnered some legal victories along the way, the election is still likely to take place on April 21. Despite GOP challenges to the legality of this election, its results will be difficult to overturn once the votes are counted. The April 21 Election Day in Virginia means that early votes will start coming in on March 6, meaning Republicans have fewer than two weeks to start knocking on doors, making phone calls, running television ads, and engaging in other get-out-the-vote actions necessary to win.

While national Democrats are apparently pumping millions into Virginia in order to win, national Republicans are seemingly still undecided about getting involved with such a grassroots campaign. The Republican National Committee (RNC) filed a lawsuit that has thus far been successful at the lower court — but Republicans previously found success at that exact same lower court, only for the state Supreme Court to overrule the victory and allow the election to move ahead anyway.

Republicans in Virginia, meanwhile, reportedly lack the money to run television ads or an effective social media campaign that will inform Virginians that there is an election and that the Democrats are about to succeed in effectively disenfranchising them.

Breccan F. Thies is the White House correspondent for The Federalist. He is a co-recipient of the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. As an investigative journalist, he previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.