For the first time in recent memory, Virginia's 1st Congressional District may be 'in play' for Democrats

Virginia’s 1st Congressional District could be in play for Democrats for the first time in recent history headed into the 2026 midterm elections.

Represented by Republican Rob Wittman, the district saw a surge of Democratic support Nov. 4. Across the board, Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger performed better than Leslie Mehta, Wittman’s 2024 Democratic challenger.

Of note, Spanberger flipped James City County, which had narrowly gone for Wittman in 2024. She won with 55.3% of the vote there. Spanberger also eked out a 50.1% victory in York County, which Wittman won handily, and performed well in the Richmond suburbs, winning Chesterfield County with 58.7% of the vote. Four years ago, Gov. Glenn Youngkin won the county with 51.8%.

Even in deep-red Poquoson, Spanberger picked up seven percentage points over Mehta, gaining 29.7% of the vote there.

“It says that the 1st District is in play,” Alex Keena, an associate professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University, said of the recent election results. “I think the Democrats have been competing for a while. Last year, they had Leslie Mehta run against Wittman, and she didn’t come as closely as some people had hoped. … Every year, they seem to be chipping away.”

That’s not a fluke, Keena said. Democrats have been performing better in Virginia over the past decade and a half. Part of that has to do with population growth in areas like the suburbs around Richmond, which generally favors Democrats.

The 1st District currently stretches from the Richmond suburbs, encompassing parts of Henrico, Chesterfield and Hanover, down toward the Middle Peninsula, including Williamsburg, James City County and York. It includes all or part of 18 counties in total.

Wittman is now serving his 10th term. He’s handily won reelection every two years, earning 55% of the vote in his closest race in 2018.

“Wittman and his team have probably long known that they had kind of a comfortable margin in 2022, but over the course of this decade, it’s going to be slowly eroding,” Keena said. “There’s already that structural component that’s working against Wittman. And so he’s been laying the groundwork. He’s been doing a lot more outreach.”

A spokesperson for Wittman did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but the National Republican Congressional Committee weighed in.

“Republicans like Rob Wittman and (District 2 U.S. Rep.) Jen Kiggans have repeatedly won elections by consistently delivering results for Virginians,” said Reilly Richardson, a spokesperson for the NRCC. “From Henrico to Hampton Roads, Virginia families know Wittman and Kiggans have their backs, which is why they’ll reelect them next year.”

So far, 11 Democrats are running for the 1st District seat; seven Democrats have announced they’re running for Kiggans’ seat.

In addition to Democrats benefiting from geographic trends, Keena said the 2025 election was about Republicans not showing up for their candidate, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, in the way they did the last gubernatorial election.

“Republicans still won four years ago because of this perfect alignment of events: Biden getting elected, the pandemic, and then having Glenn Youngkin, who is a very wealthy, very well-financed candidate who came around at the right time,” he said.

“Earle-Sears did not have the endorsement of President Trump, did not really have the support that a typical Republican gets… but she was still tied to Trump and the unpopularity of Trump’s policies and to some extreme cultural wedge issues.”

This month’s election occurred amid the looming specter of redistricting. Democrats, who control the state legislature, will likely pass for the second time in January an amendment that would allow the General Assembly to draw new congressional district maps.

President Donald Trump told Republican-led state legislatures to redistrict in order to retain control of the House. Virginia is the latest state to take up the issue, with Democrats here hoping to offset some GOP gains. Once the constitutional amendment is passed again, it will be submitted to voters for a public referendum.

“You’ve got redistricting sort of sitting out there, and this district could just look radically different in the spring compared to how it looks now,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor at Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “It makes it challenging to assess. I mean, we rate VA-01 as ‘likely Republican’ in our House ratings.

“There’s an argument to be made that maybe it should be more of a ‘lean Republican,’ and honestly, if redistricting happens, maybe it goes to being a seat where Democrats are outright favored.”

Last week, the Cook Political Report moved its rating of the 1st District to “lean Republican” from “likely Republican.” It also changed its rating of the 2nd District, which includes much of Hampton Roads, from “lean Republican” to “toss up.”

How redistricting shakes out could matter more than the campaigns themselves, Kondik said. But the 2025 results will still weigh on how Democrats might think about redrawing maps.

“Even in 2024, even though (presidential candidate Kamala) Harris did several points worse than Biden did statewide, she did do better than Biden in parts of the territory we’re talking about,” he said. “Political trends would make the redistricting efforts more effective, because if VA-01 was a Trump +20 district or something, it’d be harder to reconfigure.

“But it’s territory that already is kind of becoming better for Democrats anyway.”

Nationally, Democrats are projecting confidence about Virginia’s 1st and 2nd districts.

“With the exception of Winsome Earle-Sears, nobody had a worse night than Jen Kiggans and Rob Wittman,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesperson Eli Cousin said in a statement. “The writing is on the wall: They will lose next November.”

None of that means a Democratic candidate is expected to be a shoo-in, at least with how the districts are currently drawn, experts and advocates say. Wittman over-performed both Earle-Sears and Trump. And Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares, who ran for reelection, also won in some of the same localities Spanberger did in the 1st District, including York.

“Rob Wittman is a very strong candidate, and he’s been laying the groundwork for years to prepare for an election like this,” Keena said. “He has tried to create a brand that is separate from the Republican brand and the MAGA brand. He’s tried to position himself as more moderate.”

Keena also said Spanberger represented a particularly strong candidate with roots in the area, and that could prove a tough act to follow. And, Democrats will have to get a handle on messaging, he said.

“In some cases, there’s this massive wave that propels all of these candidates, and there probably will be next year,” he said. “But the quality of the candidate really does matter, and it has to be a candidate that’s able to resonate with people locally, too.

“I don’t know that Democrats necessarily grasp that because they’re very focused on raising money and messaging, but I don’t know that they’ve really solved the problem in terms of what to message about.”

Heather Meaney-Allen, a founding member of the Williamsburg-James City County chapter of the advocacy group Indivisible, cautioned Democrats against drawing the wrong lessons from this election. She credits their victory to voters rejecting Trump.

“The biggest mistake that Democrats can make at the moment is thinking that on Nov. 4, the election results were their win,” she said. “They didn’t have a great win, the American people did. What the win was was against Donald Trump, it wasn’t necessarily pro-Democratic Party.”