Bulwark Takes - BREAKING: Virginia Redistricting Referendum PASSES

Episode Date: April 22, 2026

Tim Miller and Bill Kristol give their takes on a major election night development in Virginia as voters approve a redistricting referendum that reshapes the state’s congressional map and clears the way for a potential 10–1 Democratic advantage. The result marks a significant political victory for Democrats, who moved aggressively to counter Republican-led gerrymandering efforts in other states.Stop putting off those doctors appointments and go to https://Zocdoc.com/bulwarktakes to find and instantly book a doctor you love today.Sign up for the Morning Shots newsletter: https://www.thebulwark.com/s/morningshots

All right, hey, everybody. It's Tim Miller from the bulwark here with my colleague, Bill Crystal. We have a special Tuesday night election edition in Bill Crystal's home Commonwealth of Virginia. We can make an official call here that the yes vote, which means that the side that favored the referendum that redistricted the state of Virginia and redrew the state in such a way that it might end up being a 10 to 1 Democratic majority. that referendum passed this evening. There were some concerns in the pro-democracy circles about this, but the no campaign was very aggressive and well-funded. And so a lot to unpack there, Bill. You're on the ground of Virginia. You made the case passionately on a couple of shows for why, even as a non-gerrymandering guy, you think in this case it was worthwhile to support the referendum. What's your big takeaway?

Yeah, didn't expect to be having an election night discussion on Tuesday, April 21st. But, you know, Trump's America, strange things happen, right? And the Virginia Constitution required that they go to the voters to change the previous, I think, constitutional amendment, which has set up a non-jerrymandering, non-partisan districting, which was actually worked well and produced a six to five break and contiguous districts and all that. But then Texas redistricted, Trump's pushing it in other states and Spanberger, the new Democratic governor thought, you know, Virginia should play its part in checking this Republican attempt to keep control of the House by. one-sided gerrymandering. So the Democrats gerrymandered. It looks like it's going to pass by about four points.

So a little close for comfort. Spamberger won by 15, obviously a year ago. Not a year ago, what, five, six months ago. So some Spamberger voters, Northern Virginia here has some good government Democratic types who believe that you shouldn't do gerrymandering. I think stuck to their belief over their partisan interest. And I would say also over the interest in stopping Trump. But, you know, it's another issue.

It may be true, but in Arlington, the yes vote is currently plus 60. So they did have Assad-like numbers in Arlington. They do. No, no. The northern Virginia saved, I mean, so what happened basically is, first of all, there's a couple things. Surprisingly big turnout. It looks like it's a little over $3 million or I think it's $3.4 in the gubernatorial race. So we're having the same level of turnout as the high turnout, almost.

It's a high turnout we had a few months ago with the wave election in November of 2025. a lot of mobilization on both sides. An effective no campaign, a sophisticated one with smart messaging, and they had appeals to black voters. This was going to dilute their votes, because they're going to be stuck in other districts than they're used to and so forth. So they did their best, the no campaign. The Yes campaign was pretty good, I would say. But what it tells me is we are in a, this was the national environment. I mean, this is Virginia, two-thirds of Virginians voted in 2020 for the previous.

redistricting. And that was the actual sentiments of Virginia are probably two to one for, let's have nonpartisan redistricting. And so they overcame that because of the threat of Trump. And I was one of those who thought they should, and I voted that way. And obviously, a lot of other people thought so too. Yeah. If you pull up the map here, it kind of tells the story of Virginia, and it's extremely, this is a straight partisan vote. You have all the way out in what they call South Side and Southwest Virginia. Right. Just deep,

Drip Red, which is representing the no side here with a couple of exceptions, Roanoke City, Danville, which has a lot of black residents and South Side. But then you kind of go into a swing area over in Virginia Beach, you know, where things are much closer.

And then you have Richmond and Northern Virginia running up big numbers on the yes side. And like that, that basically is a breakdown of the state. It's why Democrats have won. with the exception of that first Biden midterm. That's why the state of Virginia is gone basically blue. I guess the only to your point on the national environment drove this,

and it was a swing of whatever two-thirds in favor of nonpartisan redistricting. You know, that would be one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is if there was such a widespread backlash against Trump as we are hoping for. you know, maybe you'd see a bigger blow out there tonight. And so I do think that there, it signals that there's yet more work to be done on that front. No, I very much agree with that. I mean, yeah, a couple of points along those lines. It was striking. I looked at some of the counties. I don't know the state so, so, so, so well to really make a really, granular judgment on this.

I think there were parts of central Virginia that did not like being pushed into districts that are now going to be dominated by the northern Virginia part of the district up here at Fairfax. County in Arlington and are going to have representatives from up here, most likely. And so there was a little bit of a war of a backlash among some of those in some of those areas around the margins were just high, including in places like Virginia Beach, where there wasn't a margin this time. And I think Spanberger wanted by 12 or something. So there was a little more erosion down there.

But North Virginia came through. The Shenandoah in that kind of area, you end up going very rad. Yeah. Bullwork Takes is sponsored by Zock Doc. I've got young kids at home. I know health issues don't follow a neat 9 to 5 schedule. In fact, sometimes it's 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. With Zock Doc having no time to book a doctor's appointment is actually no problem.

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kind of, we're sort of annoyed to be stuck in some Northern Virginia district for the next four years. Whatever. That was sort of reasonable enough, I suppose. But I was, you know, what the race looks like the most is the Jay Jones Attorney General race from 2025. Remember that? So he was the weakest Democratic candidate by a long shot, running against the strongest Republican, the incumbent Maya is for AG. Jones had all kinds of issues. Jones won by, by six and a half points, while Spanberger was winning by 15 plus, I think. And that really showed what a wave November 2025 was.

Now, you're right. I mean, this is less of a margin than Jones. and it doesn't show that the entire country is so up in arms about Trump that it's going to just do everything you can to stop his party from controlling the House. I agree with that. It does show there's more work to be done. It's very consistent with the generic ballot polling right now nationally, which is plus seven plus eight. Don't you think? I feel like that's kind of pretty good for Democrats, but not quite at blowout levels.

Yeah, that's right. And if you look at the Jay Jones thing, and, you know, at least in that case, There is a bulwark split on the other way around. I mean, some of us were like, I would not vote for Jay Jones, given his personal behavior, which is horrific. And I think that's a different case in this ballot initiative. Yeah, yeah, this isn't a person. But it's interesting, though, to use that example, which means that there's like some people in the Democratic pro-democracy, Spanberger Harris Coalition in Virginia, who decided they couldn't vote for Jay Jones or wouldn't vote for this ballot initiative.

And if you look at the Jones, I just pulled this up, Jones map and kind of compare it to the map of this. ballot initiative. It is obviously pretty similar, but as you're saying, kind of in central and south, like kind of south of Richmond and, you know, around Roanoke in the middle of Virginia,

there are some areas that Jones won that this referendum went down. Yeah, so I think that is the kind of just not liking being in Northern Virginia. No, so I mean, the truth of the, so if this was plus, ends up around plus four, four and a half, maybe I would think, a percent.

Spanaguerberg, one by 15. if the Democrats run reasonably attractive candidates, which they will here in Virginia, I believe. There's some primaries we won't know. And then around the country, presumably the truth is somewhere in between the kind of, I think it's pretty good, I guess. The more I think about it,

this was uphill in various, a little more uphill than people realized in various ways. Also, the sense of urgency had kind of dissipated because people think the Democrats are going to win the House pretty easily. And so it wasn't like, you know, if you had seen a lot of national polls with the House even in the generic value.

I think you might have had a little more urgency among some of these Democrats, but they were able to vote what they thought was their, you know, their principles and so forth, or stay home in some cases, probably. Yeah. So I don't know. I don't know.

I don't overthink it. It's one referendum. It's one state. It's one moment in time. But I'd say it's consistent with a very strong Democratic year, but it's not, you know, it's not one of these amazing blowouts where they're running, you know,

25 points ahead of where they should be and all that kind of thing. I agree with that. So two other thoughts and takeaways that I have. Number one, just to emphasize your point about how there was challenge in selling this, and there was like urgency in some ways. And a lot of people felt like this had already been beaten back with what California did. And so I had, you know, Suhas, Supermoneum on the pod about a week ago.

And I forget what he said on the pod versus when we were chatting. He's a two-lane ground. So I got to see him down here in person a couple months ago. the internal polls were not were concerning like they like the yes side of this referendum thought that they might lose a ton of money on the other side um they were using old quotes from obama and spanberger to make it seem like they were against it if they're a low information vote or not following it that closely you know some people conceivly could have been persuaded or even tricked by that and so they were they were worried about this so i think the fact that they end up with a

small but comfortable win um is is an expectation beat on what they were seeing internally. And my main takeaway, though, like my biggest picture of all this, like taking off the campaigns and elections nerve hat, you know, and just like looking at the biggest, you know, biggest picture takeaway. It's really a huge win and an exclamation point for the response that the Democratic Party and the pro-democracy movement had to Donald Trump and his cronies attempts to rig the mid-term elections.

and they're going to keep trying other things. But I think that this is important. We should learn the lesson from this moment. That, you know, there were at times, there are people who are fatalists or, you know, not believing that fighting was worth it or critiquing the Democratic Party and saying the Democratic Party likes to have meetings

more than they like to actually do things and they won't actually have the balls to push back on this. And, like, those naysayers were wrong. You know, you have got to give credit to Spamberger, Louise Lucas, Gavin Newsome, and others. who said, no, screw you. You know, we're not going to bog this down in interest group politics and red tape. We're going to punch you back in the nose and, you know, we'll see how the chips fall.

And it worked. They counterpunched back to Trump. And in the end, their effort to, I guess, maybe it's not fully rigged, jury rig, the midterms, you know, by putting their thumb on the scale and trying to redraw districts in a way that was more favorable to them. that attempt has failed. We can say that officially tonight, April 21st, and will they do some other things to try to mess with them in terms? Of course.

But, you know, their first gambit is an L. And that's, and I think that's a good kind of lesson to take tonight. No, I think it's a very useful, you know, 30,000 foot perspective. I mean, real perspective, though, of, you know, the big picture here. And the one only footnote I'd add is, for Houston to do this in California, was consistent with his own personal ambitions and sort of you wanted to be the leader of the Democratic resistance.

he's an outgoing governor. Spamberger got elected, huge margin. There was pressure on her not to do this. She had bipartisan support. She's a moderate. She should be governing for the whole. Virginia has tradition of sort of bipartisanship to some degree a little more than some other states. It wasn't maybe necessary.

You really did after Jerry rigged the districts to have them go like set 100 miles down, you know, in the state and stuff. So, and she did it. And they pulled it off. And it does, you know, one of your favorite things in mind, centrist Democrats can be aggressive anti-Trump Democrats too. Spanberger and the Democratic Party in Virginia, which is pretty moderate on the whole.

And the Democratic electorate in Virginia, which is a moderate Democratic electorate, Democratic electorate, Democratic electorate, you know, came through on this. So I think, yeah, I think the big picture is sort of like with no kings and like with other things that have been happening in special elections. And, yeah, people... Yeah. And I was just saying it's important to just say it.

The Democrats played hardball one. Yeah. And that's good. Like there is, they have a brand problem. And I was watching, I think it was an interview of Graham Platner with the interviewer.

They're talking about some poll of Maine residents. And I can't remember exactly what it was. And I can't remember exactly what it was. But it was like mushy and weak will and whatever. And it's like, this was a case where that's not true. They played hardball politics. They won. You know, sometimes there can be a, you know, you can overdo hardball politics.

there could be situations where hardball politics is not called for where, you know, cooler heads are better to prevail. This was not one of those cases. They played hardball politics against Trump. They won. And as a result, and the House of Representatives, as election this November is basically in the back. And the fight turns to the Senate. And they did so. They had to do it so because of the Constitution.

But they did so by going to the voters and winning referendum. Pretty different from Texas, where they jam it through. It already jerry managed state legislature. to then have more gerrymandering of the congressional races, right? I mean, so in that respect, I think it has a, it's hardball, but it's Democratic hardball. I swallow the Democratic hardball. Amen. All right.

That's Bill Crystal, a winner and a Virginian on the right side of the referendum this evening and the Commonwealth. We appreciate everybody. We'll be back. What's next on your agenda this week, Bill? You got morning shots tomorrow? I guess to write something for tomorrow morning and Iran, Virginia, an awful lot of news going on, you know. We'll see all soon.

all right peace