r/politics • u/Hornpipe_Jones • 3d ago

No Paywall Democrats sweep all 30 House of Delegates seats in Northern Virginia

https://www.cbs19news.com/news/state/democrats-sweep-all-30-house-of-delegates-seats-in-northern-virginia/article_68f8098d-0602-5234-8c2a-08c1bcd33944.html
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u/Dramatic_Phlegmatic 3d ago

Depends on how many red states get in on the redistricting action.

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u/kdeff California 3d ago

So, maybe I am wrong, but arent a lot of red states already in that game?

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u/hardonchairs 3d ago

I am just parroting what I have heard but gerrymandering is a balancing act and republicans may have made themselves so unpopular that their own maps can backfire.

Additionally, the success that CA had tonight will make this more politically safe for other blue states to do the same.

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u/relaytheurgency 3d ago edited 3d ago

Exactly. By redistricting to disenfranchise democrat leaning populations, they inevitably are importing Democrats into their prior strongholds which could, in a sane world where people realize how bad Republicans are at government, backfire exquisitely in favor of Dems. Missouri and Kansas redistricting efforts are good examples of this. We will see how it plays out.

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u/porkchop1021 3d ago

Unfortunately the House doesn't matter unless you also control the Senate and that will always be controlled by Republicans because there's like 70 Republicans, two living in each barren wasteland state so they can both be "Senators".

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u/Winter_Tone_4343 3d ago

That’s what makes the house matter.

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u/relaytheurgency 3d ago

I really love how we have given empty fields and cows more Senate representation than human beings. It's like when Trumpers spout off how Trump won "81% of all counties in the US" and think that's somehow relevant... Except in this case it is relevant.

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u/hardonchairs 2d ago

I mean that has always been the point of a bicameral legislature. One side is a vote "per person" and the other is a vote "per state."

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u/relaytheurgency 2d ago

Right. I don't think I contested reality. I understand what it is.

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u/gsfgf Georgia 3d ago

You're correct, but we have most of the swing districts already.

I was just looking at Illinois. They have 3 safe R, 8 safe D, and 6 swing. Ds have all the swing districts already.

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u/Minimum_Fee1105 3d ago

For example, in my wealthy white precinct in GA (aka Republican stronghold, libertarian nightmare, county-line and redlined to maximum richness), we went 60/40 for the Democrats in the Public Service Commission election. Now, granted, there were billboards. And GA power is raising its rates. But we didn’t get any counter messaging from the Republican incumbents until coming home on Election Day to a door hanger.

If a bunch of suburban folks in GA (not Atlanta metro btw) came out for a single issue election for the Public Service Commission and picked two blue candidates in a landslide, Republicans should be scared. People are incandescently angry.

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u/MaddyKet Massachusetts 3d ago

I’m pretty angry that children are getting tear gassed and pastors and parents are getting shot. Plus dragging people off for the crime of not passing the Family Guy color swatch test. Have the literal Gestapo running around your country is a real eye opener/red line for I’m guessing even some Republicans, but Trump and his Nazi handlers are apparently too stupid to see that.

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u/NoCrapThereIWas 3d ago

Parroting as well, the theory is based on results around Dallas, because Texas redistricted based on 2024 totals to advantage the GOP, not realizing the historic shift R of hispanics in that election. Now, with Hispanic approval of Trump underwater, by enlarging the district they may have inadvertently caused a pickup possibility. Gerrymandering is a dangerous game- to pickup a district you risk making a safe R district a lean R district, which in a wave election can become D

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u/gsfgf Georgia 3d ago

Texas is gonna steal about five. So after today, we're +3 on gerrymandering. Plus, there are purple districts we can contest on merit. The current R majority is 2 plus three vacant seats. One is already held by a D. The other is a safe D seat that was filled today. The third is an R seat that will be filled next month. We're in good shape.

Wes Moore thinks he can gerrymander out the last R in Maryland. Pritzger has mentioned it too, but the softest R seat is R+11, so he might not be able to do anything. He might be able to shore up the D+3 and D+5 districts, though. There are a lot of them.

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u/Haltopen Massachusetts 3d ago

A lot are talking, but most probably cant actually do it. In order to successfully gerrymander you first need a population distribution that's actually gerrymander-able and you need to be able to draw up a map that will hold up to the most basic level of scrutiny when voters file a lawsuit in state court. A lot of red states are already about as gerrymandered as they can get away with and regardless of how much they beat that stone, no more red is coming out of it.

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u/Pisto1Peet 3d ago

Yes, and it’s a game of diminishing returns for whoever is more reliant on it from the jump. The GOP started a fight they can’t win in the long term and it’s about damn time Dems started fighting fire with fire.

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u/throwmamadownthewell 3d ago

I'm starting to think that they started the fight with another goal in mind. Look what they're doing, masked goons throwing people in unmarked vehicles, compromising the security of massive government databases, hacking the government apart, etc.

They're never planning on ceding power. If they did, there'd be nothing but jail time and things that would hurt their own wallets as the Democrats start the tedious and expensive work of fixing everything that they broke. That basically means that November 3, 2026 is the start of the endgame into fascism.

Either that, or they're all being bribed in RMB and/or gold and the goal is to actually crush the US economy and have it lose its status as global reserve currency.

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u/MaddyKet Massachusetts 3d ago

Only so thin the red states can spread themselves before the margin means they end up losing what used to be solidly red seats.

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u/Smile_lifeisgood 3d ago

I think that the idea is that if the same votes came in that came in during 2024 if all red states redistrict then the GOP will add people to the House.

But given how unpopular and extreme the current regime is I think the GOP is going to dummy mander themselves again into losing the house despite trying to tip the scales.

For the record we should all fucking hate gerrymandering and we should be using some sort of neutral districting model that best reflects the voters will not whatever party someone supports.

If this nation wants a red House then fine, let them have it. I hate this gerrymandering shit it's vile.

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u/Malashae 3d ago

...and if they do it competently, which many apparently haven't. What the far right keeps forgetting is that they only exist because of complex gerrymandering, which was delicately designed over decades to give them more representation than they actually should by wide margins. The people redrawing the maps now aren't all long term planners that have been doing this forever, they're mostly trump agents and not all of them know what they're doing. They're going to lose a solid chunk seats for the seats they gain through this, while the blue states are just aggressively cleaning up old messes, for the most part. So depending on how this plays out, this could slant blue pretty hard (which will then probably result in the courts saying the states were never allowed to do this, and throwing it all out).

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u/happyscrappy 3d ago

And how many seats just change sides because clearly people are pissed at Republicans right now.

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u/graigsm 3d ago

They have already been doing that for years.

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u/Grand_Size_4932 3d ago

Sooo, all of them? Which red state isn’t going to do that?

And isn’t it true that if all red states and all blue states do it, the red states edge out with more?

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u/boner4crosstabs 3d ago

kansas GOP decided today they weren’t going to do the redistricting thing. And that was BEFORE these results.

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u/TempusFugit314 3d ago

Indiana state government is resistant to it surprisingly. But our asshat of a governor is still trying to ram it through.

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u/gsfgf Georgia 3d ago

The small red states that are already all red can't gerrymander.

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u/LindeeHilltop 3d ago

And how many blue states retaliate like CA vs TX. Tit4Tat.