Policy Matters: February 26, 2026

Good morning and welcome to Policy Matters. Your window into Virginia politics with VPAP, our monthly roundup of the top political headlines from across Virginia, powered by VPAP's daily e-newsletter, VA News. I'm Benjamin Netanyahu Dolly, and joining me this morning is VPAP's executive director, Kat Anthony. Good morning, Kat. Good morning, Ben. Always great to be here. All right, well, let's jump right into this month's topics. Last week. The General Assembly session hit crossover. Can you tell us a little bit about what that is and what's happening in the General Assembly right now? Yeah, so crossover is the deadline halfway through the session where bills have to pass their original chamber to stay alive. We found that this year more bills made it through than last year, and each chamber passed more than half the bills that were introduced, leaving about 1,300 alive. And how did Democrats and Republicans fare with their particular agendas within the House and Senate? Both parties in both chambers had more bills passed than last year. Senate Democrats had the highest passage rate with around 70 percent, which rose more than 10 points. And on the other end of the spectrum? So House Republicans made a small increase but had the lowest rate, with less than 30 percent of their bills crossing over. Well, now that we've had crossover and we're moving on, voting patterns are starting to come into focus now that we're halfway through the session. What stands out this year? Yeah, so one of the biggest trends we found is an increase in closely contested votes compared to previous sessions. And does that mean lawmakers are disagreeing more often overall? Not entirely. Most floor votes are still passing unanimously, but when votes are close, they're more likely to be sharply divided in the past. And how close are we talking here? So this year, the majority of closely contested votes were split exactly along party lines, with all the Democrats taking one position and all Republicans taking another. And is that a significant change from previous years? Yes, it is. In past sessions, it was more common to see at least a handful of lawmakers break their parties. All right. Moving on, one of the big topics we've seen this General Assembly session is the redistricting efforts by Democrats. There have been more developments over that proposed redistricting amendment recently. What happened last week? Yeah, so there's been a lot of updates. Democratic legislators on the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee modified the congressional map that their party released earlier in February. And what kind of changes did they make to that map? The boundaries were shifted in the city of Chesapeake between Virginia's second and third congressional districts. And is there anything specific about that area that caused those changes? Yeah, so we analyzed the election results from the districts and found that shifting those boundaries would make the second district more democratic by pulling votes out of the third district, which is strongly blue. And so with all this now in play, what's next for the redistricting amendment? The House of Delegates approved the updated map, and Governor Abigail Spanberger has signed it. The map is a proposal that would only go into effect if voters were to approve the redistricting constitutional amendment. And where does that stand currently? Yeah, so the amendment faces more legal challenges, but statewide referendum is scheduled for April 21st. We're staying tuned for more developments. In the meantime, people can explore the proposed maps using BPAP's redistricting resources.

And while that's been the front of the conversation, we've had a lot of news stories about that redistricting amendment and the challenge it's facing this year. It's not the only one on the series agenda. Is that right? Yeah, that's right. Earlier this month, Governor Abigail Spanberger signed bills, though, put three constitutional amendments on the November ballot, covering reproductive rights, same-sex marriages, and voting rights restoration, which were mentioned during last year's campaigns. All right. Well, that's all the time we have for today. You can learn more about what we talked about this morning and keep up with all the latest information at vpap.org. You're listening to VPM News. Thanks, Kat. Thank you.