President Donald Trump attacked the results of Virginia’s election Tuesday when voters approved a new congressional map that will likely give Democrats four more seats—his first pointed attack on the 2026 midterms in which Democrats are expected to outperform the GOP.
President Donald Trump speaks during the NCAA Collegiate National Champions Day event at the White House in Washington, DC, on April 21, 2026. (Photo by Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP via Getty Images)
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Trump alleged, without evidence, in a post on Truth Social that “there was a massive ‘Mail In Ballot Drop’” in Virginia at the “very end” of election day, reprising one of his frequent, unfounded election-fraud allegations.
He also said the language on the referendum was “purposefully unintelligible and deceptive,” writing, “Let’s see if the Courts will fix this travesty of ‘Justice,’” referring to a looming Virginia Supreme Court decision on whether Democratic lawmakers violated procedural rules in sending the new map to voters.
Virginia voters approved the new map in a 52% to 49% vote on Tuesday, giving Democrats an advantage in four more congressional districts and improving their chances of flipping the House.
The new map puts Democrats one seat ahead of Republicans in the 2026 midterm gerrymandering war, neutralizing Republican gains in Texas, Ohio, North Carolina and Missouri.
Republicans still have a chance to retake their advantage on the 2026 congressional map with battles looming in the Supreme Court and Florida. Gov. Ron DeSantis has called a special legislative session for the Republican-controlled legislature to approve a new map that would likely give Republicans more seats, though there are some risks in retooling the lines since there are some signs the state’s political leanings have shifted back toward Democrats since 2024. The Supreme Court will also decide whether to strike down a provision of the federal Voting Rights Act that prohibits the redistricting process from breaking up communities of color and diluting their voting power.
Democrats are favored to flip Republicans’ narrow majority in the House in 2026, according to expert predictions and polls.
Trump has repeatedly attacked mail-in voting when it doesn’t benefit Republicans, but has endorsed it—and used it himself—when the mechanism favors him. He voted by mail in a special election in Florida last month, and he urged his supporters to vote by mail in the 2024 election, marking a significant shift from his long-held position that the practice is rife with fraud. Trump has taken steps to tighten mail-in voting restrictions ahead of this year’s midterms. He issued an executive order in March instructing the U.S. Postal Service not to deliver mail-in ballots to anyone who is not on a new federal database of eligible voters. A coalition of voting rights groups have sued to block the order from taking effect, arguing it would create chaos in the election process, disenfranchise voters who have no other option but to vote by mail and effectively appoint the U.S. Postal Service as a voting arbitrator.
With Virginia vote, Democrats gain edge over Trump's national GOP redistricting push (NPR)
Trump's redistricting war leaves Republicans worse off (Axios)
In Virginia Redistricting Win, Democrats Play Hardball to Thwart Trump (New York Times)
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