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It may come as no surprise to readers of this column, but the fierce partisanship of Virginia’s new governor has begun to turn off voters who handed her a big win in November. Gregory Schneider, Scott Clement and Praveena Somasundaram report for the Washington Post: Virginia Gov. Abigail
Spanberger’s approval rating stands at 47 percent two months into the Democrat’s term, with 46 percent of voters disapproving and 7 percent expressing no opinion in a Washington Post-Schar School poll. Spanberger won in a 15-point landslide last year after touting her reputation for bipartisanship built on three terms representing a conservative-leaning district in Congress. But her current ratings reflect sharp polarization among Virginia voters in their views of the state’s first female governor. The approval mark for Spanberger is 13 percentage points lower than the
average for Virginia governors in Post polling since the 1990s. Ms. Spanberger used to criticize partisan schemes to redraw congressional maps—but now she supports a pending plan to stack the redistricting deck in favor of her party. Last month a Journal editorial described the proposed changes: Early voting began in Virginia last week, as Democrats seek the public’s permission to gerrymander the state to the max. The ballot language for the April 21 referendum asks if voters want to let the Legislature
adopt a new House map to “restore fairness,” by which Democrats mean they’ll be favored in four additional districts, so they can take 10 of the state’s 11 seats.
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