Virginia voters appeared fiercely divided as they headed to the polls on Tuesday to vote on a referendum to redraw the state\u2019s U.S. House map to hand Democrats additional seats.<\/p>\n
Anger was evident in deep-red areas of southwest Virginia, where the Republican-backed \u201cNo\u201d side was hoping for strong Election Day turnout to defeat the measure. If the new map were approved, Democrats could potentially win 10 of Virginia\u2019s 11 seats, up from the six they now control.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just unfair for the Democrats to have 10 seats and the Republicans to have one,\u201d said Judy Quesenberry, 67, a retiree in Carroll County. \u201cThere\u2019s no way that adds up.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Hillsville, the county seat, Barbara Hernandez, a 56-year-old small-business owner, said she also voted no. \u201cI want my voice to be heard,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019re disenfranchising all the southern Virginia voters.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nearby in Galax, James Hagy, 78, put it more bluntly \u2014 and appeared to have been swayed by the advertising on both sides featuring former President Barack Obama. The former president has appeared in ads supporting the referendum, but Republican \u201cNo\u201d supporters have run ads highlighting Mr. Obama\u2019s past comments in opposition to partisan gerrymandering.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t like Democrats at all,\u201d Mr. Hagy said. \u201cAs soon as Obama\u2019s face showed up\u201d in an ad, he added, \u201cI was against.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Goochland, Va., outside Richmond, Stephen Jenkins, 63, an independent, also voted against the referendum. He believed it was unfair to voters in right-leaning districts.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe talk about equality and everybody having a voice and I think, by what is being attempted with this, it\u2019s going to silence some people\u2019s voices, whether we want to hear them or not,\u201d Mr. Jenkins said.<\/p>\n
Mr. Jenkins, who said he had voted for Donald J. Trump in 2024, said he believed that leaders in the Democratic Party would not use their advantage to help Black people with low incomes.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a Black man and in my 60s, I grew up in New York City, and I\u2019ve been watching a certain party promise Black people in the community that they would lift us up, and I have not seen the results of it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But in Loudoun County, a liberal-leaning suburb of Washington where Democrats were aiming to pump up turnout, voters appeared more supportive of the referendum.<\/p>\n
Hunter Chandler, a 21-year-old student at Northern Virginia Community College, said he planned to vote \u201cyes\u201d because redistricting would help even the balance of power in Washington.<\/p>\n
Mr. Chandler, who also works part-time at a grocery store, said he voted for Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, in the state\u2019s race for governor last year, but had not voted for either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.<\/p>\n
He cited his worries about the cost of living for his \u201cYes\u201d vote, as well as the move by Texas Republicans last year to redraw their state\u2019s congressional map, which kicked off the country\u2019s redistricting fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you cheered for your side doing something that all of us on the other side thought was wrong, you shouldn\u2019t be surprised that the other side did the exact same thing,\u201d Mr. Chandler said. \u201cI just want there to be more of an equilibrium.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Virginia voters appeared fiercely divided as they headed to the polls on Tuesday to vote on a referendum…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,416,859,46937,9,24,63,58310,129,131,130,418],"class_list":{"0":"post-205509","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-the-bronx","8":"tag-bronx","9":"tag-elections","10":"tag-house-of-representatives","11":"tag-midterm-elections-2026","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-redistricting-and-reapportionment","16":"tag-the-bronx","17":"tag-the-bronx-headlines","18":"tag-the-bronx-news","19":"tag-virginia"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}