Obama takes a victory lap after humiliating defeat for Trump

Former President Barack Obama is celebrating Donald Trump’s humiliating defeat in Virginia’s high-stakes political redistricting fight.

Voters narrowly approved a state-wide referendum on Tuesday that temporarily allows the General Assembly to draw new congressional redistricts favoring Democrats in response to Republican gerrymandering in red states.

Both Obama and Trump had weighed in on the race, which could give Democrats up to four additional House seats in the November midterms and help counteract expected GOP gains in states like Texas and Florida.

“Congratulations, Virginia! Republicans are trying to tilt the midterm elections in their favor, but they haven’t done it yet,” Obama wrote on X.com. “Thanks for showing us what it looks like to stand up for our democracy and fight back.”

Trump had made a last-ditch plea to voters on Monday and Tuesday, phoning into a tele-rally and doing interviews with conservative talk shows in a bid to motivate his base to turn out and oppose the redistricting plan.

X.com/Barack Obama

On Tuesday, he fired off a frenzied post on his platform Truth Social: “VIRGINIA, VOTE ‘NO’ TO SAVE YOUR COUNTRY!”

Obama, meanwhile, had urged Old Dominion voters in a video message to vote yes and “push back against Republicans trying to give themselves an unfair advantage in the midterms.”

Polling showed an incredibly tight race, with the “yes” vote ultimately prevailing 51.5 percent to 48.6 percent.

Trump sparked a national redistricting arms race last summer when he asked Texas for a “simple redrawing” of its political maps to help Republicans pick up five House seats in the midterms.

Gov. Gavin Newsom also led a successful push for new, temporary political maps in California to counteract Republican gerrymandering in Texas and other red states. / Fred Greaves / REUTERS

After Texas Gov. Greg Abbott quickly obliged, California Gov. Gavin Newsom led a successful effort to temporarily suspend California’s non-partisan maps until 2030 to help Democrats pick up five seats of their own.

Since then, Missouri, Ohio, and North Carolina have redrawn their maps to help Republicans gain up to four seats, and Florida’s Gov. Greg DeSantis is also pushing voters to approve new maps.

Lawmakers in bright-red Indiana, however, refused to change the state’s maps despite heavy lobbying from Trump, saying that instead of threatening them, the president should focus on “convincing voters that his policies and behavior deserve a congressional majority.”

The new Virginia maps could allow Democrats to take 10 of the state’s 11 House seats; currently they hold six.

The referendum fueled more than $81 million in ad spending, making it one of the most expensive contests in Virginia history outside a presidential election.

The measure allows lawmakers to adopt new districts until after the 2030 census, at which point the state returns to its standard process of using maps drawn by a bipartisan commission.

Similarly, in California, congressional redistricting authority will return to the state’s independent commission after the 2030 census.