Democrats hope gerrymandering Virginia will give them the edge they need to win back the House. But Tuesday’s special election is proving more competitive than they’d like.

Tight polling and concerns over voter turnout in an atypical April election have many Democratic party strategists and officials preparing for a close finish.

“I always thought this campaign would be close [and] 24 hours out, I believe that to be the case,” Democratic strategist Jared Leopold said on Monday, before the final day of voting.

“Anytime you’re on the ‘yes’ side of a referendum, you’ve got the burden of proof,” he added. “It doesn’t matter what the referendum is, but anytime you’re arguing for ‘yes,’ the other side is going to be arguing for the status quo.”

The party anticipated its campaign to redraw the state’s congressional maps would be boosted by its massive war chest and a favorable political environment that helped elect Gov. Abigail Spanberger last November. If approved, the aggressive partisan gerrymander could deliver Democrats a 10-to-1 seat advantage in Virginia, which amounts to a net pickup of as many as four House seats.

“I think it was always going to be close,” said another Democratic strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “One side is giving [President Donald Trump] power and the other side is doing a reform that a lot of them don’t really want to do. That’s your choice.”

The election will serve as a test of whether voters in the light blue state will set aside long-standing distaste for partisan gerrymandering to counter a redistricting fight set in motion by Trump last year. With primary elections already underway, this is one of Democrats’ last shots at offsetting or even overcoming the gains Republicans made in Texas and elsewhere before November.

If the ballot referendum fails, it would be an early embarrassment for Spanberger as governor and a high-profile loss for a Democratic Party that has cast Trump’s efforts in existential terms as “election rigging” that undermines American democracy.

The campaigns have drawn heavyweight national involvement from former President Barack Obama and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, among others, who have campaigned on behalf of Virginians for Fair Elections, which is leading the “yes” effort. On the Republican side, former Gov. Glenn Youngkin has been a vocal critic of the measure. And, after largely staying on the sidelines, Trump made a late push Monday night for the “no” campaign, joining Speaker Mike Johnson for a tele-rally where he sought to remind voters of the stakes.

“Tomorrow, your commonwealth has an incredible, and really, an important election in every sense of the word that will have major consequences for our entire country this November,” Trump said. “This is really a country election. The whole country is watching.”

Public polling suggests the race will hinge as much on persuading voters about the need for new maps as on mobilizing them to the polls for an out-of-cycle election.

A Washington Post-Schar School poll conducted last month shows the “yes” campaign leading by roughly five percentage points among likely voters. That same poll found Republicans are slightly more likely than Democrats to say they planned to vote in the special election or already had — 85 percent to 79 percent.

Many Democrats say they remain cautiously optimistic. There has been an uptick of early voting in recent days, particularly in counties in Northern Virginia, which tend to be blue-leaning. Overall, more than 1.3 million people cast early ballots, according to the Virginia Public Access Project, not much lower than the roughly 1.48 million who cast early ballots in 2025, when Spanberger was running.

“I don’t think there’s been an alteration to whether or not people like gerrymandering,” said John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. “What I do think is, if this is the only way that we can keep the U.S. House of Representatives as a representative body for this nation, people are willing to do it.”

Virginia Democrats have also recently put pressure on the governor to more aggressively campaign on behalf of the “yes” effort and be more outspoken about the stakes of the special election. She was on the campaign trail over the weekend urging voters to back the measure.

“Ultimately, I do think this is more of a persuasion election than a turnout election, and so it’s a test to see if [the] ‘no’ campaign has done an effective job reaching voters,” said Noah Jennings, a Virginia-based Republican strategist unaffiliated with the “no” campaign.

Complicating Democrats’ pitch are two factors: The Virginia Supreme Court could still nullify the redistricting effort after the April election. And, in 2020, voters approved a constitutional amendment that established a bipartisan redistricting commission seeking to limit the partisan redrawing of maps.

That history has given the “no” campaign a potent line of attack.

Conservatives have painted Spanberger as a flip-flopper on redistricting and slammed her for caving to pressure from national Democrats. GOP-aligned groups have also sent out misleading mailers or run ads using past comments opposing gerrymandering to suggest that both she and Obama are “no” votes on the ballot measure.

“The Democrats have deployed over $60 million to rig Virginia’s congressional maps and yet the referendum is extremely close — as all sides acknowledge,” said Mike Young, of Virginians for Fair Maps, the group encouraging voters to vote against redistricting. “That didn’t happen by accident or dumb luck.”

Jennings said if the “no” effort wins on Tuesday, “that’s a very clear showing that there’s a line that you cannot cross.”

“Virginia does have that larger middle that does move independently, and I think those people don’t like the gamesmanship, and they don’t like it from either side,” he said.

The “yes” campaign says it’s unfazed.

“While Republicans have spent nearly $34 million flooding this race with MAGA misinformation, the YES Campaign has been doing the work — knocking over 600,000 doors, communicating directly with Virginians, organizing in every corner of the state, and driving historic early vote turnout,” said Dan Gottlieb, a spokesperson for Virginians for Fair Elections.

The outcome of Tuesday’s election could reverberate well past Virginia. After Trump pushed to redraw congressional boundaries in Texas last year, the fight escalated into a tit-for-tat battle, with each party trying to lock in an advantage ahead of November.

In California last year, voters overwhelmingly approved new congressional districts, offsetting GOP gains out of Texas. Florida could redraw its own maps as soon as next week, which could counter any Democratic gains in Virginia — should the ballot measure pass.

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