Virginia's congressional districts

Virginia is currently divided into 11 congressional districts, each represented by a member of the United States House of Representatives. The number of Virginia's districts remained unchanged after the 2010 Census.

The Virginia Legislature's 2012 redistricting was found unconstitutional and replaced with a court-ordered redistricting on January 16 2016 for the 2016 elections. Gloria Personhuballah and James Farkas claimed that Virginia’s 3rd Congressional District violated the Voting Rights Act by packing black voters into the district for the political purpose of making surrounding areas better for Republican candidates. Following Supreme Court precedent, the Eastern Virginia Circuit Court found that U.S. Congressional Districts cannot be gerrymandered for partisan gain. In this case, the twisting non-contiguous 3rd District hopped the James River in several places and divided multiple locality boundaries, resulting in 89% majorities for black Representative Bobby Scott (D) while surrounding Republican incumbents enjoyed majorities of 16-24%. Subsequent appeals by Republican lawmakers to the Supreme Court were unsuccessful.

Virginia is one of the most gerrymandered states in the country, both on the congressional and state levels, based on lack of compactness and contiguity of its districts. Virginia congressional districts are ranked the 5th worst in the country because counties and cities are broken into multiple pieces to create heavily partisan districts.

Virginia’s congressional districts do not meet the “competitive” mark of a 5% margin of victory, but they average a margin of 35%, comparable to the national district statistical average of all 435 districts. Districts 10 and 11 in northern Virginia and the 2nd in the Hampton Roads ranged between 16-18%. Virginia, like the nation as a whole, has about 73% of its delegation winning by a margin of 20% or more. Districts 4, 7, 5, 1 and 8 ranged from 22-32%, and three outliers had a margin of victory of more than 50%: the 9th at 48%, the 6th at 62%, and the 3rd at 89%.

See Recent and present district boundaries below.

Reform recommendations by the Redistricting Coalition of Virginia include either an independent commission or a bipartisan commission that is not polarized. Member organizations include the League of Women Voters of Virginia, AARP of Virginia, OneVirginia2021, the Virginia Chamber of Commerce and the Virginia Organizing Project.

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