(WASHINGTON) -- Former President Barack Obama, in a video shared exclusively with ABC News, called on Virginians to vote in favor of a redistricting measure that could give Democrats a boost in the 2026 midterms if it passes.
"By voting yes, you can push back against the Republicans trying to give themselves an unfair advantage in the midterms," Obama said in the video shared with ABC News. "By voting yes, you can take a temporary step to level the playing field. And we're counting on you."
Over a million Virginians have voted early already, according to the Virginia Public Access Project, in an April 21 statewide referendum that will decide if the Democratic-controlled legislature should be allowed to redraw the state's congressional map.
That would allow the legislature to implement a map it already advanced that would reconfigure four congressional seats to favor Democrats, which could be decisive in the midterm elections for the U.S. House of Representatives given Republicans' current slim majority.
Democrats -- including Obama, who previously starred in an advertisement for the "yes" side -- have argued that it's a necessary counterweight to mid-decade redistricting in 2025 that redrew nine seats to favor Republicans.
Republicans and other opponents of the redistricting gambit, which is also still facing a court challenge even as the election was allowed to proceed, have slammed the move as unfair to a large swath of Virginia voters. President Donald Trump received 46% of the vote in Virginia in the 2024 election.
"Virginia is a very purple state, and there's a wide variety of voices in Virginia," U.S. Rep. Jen Kiggans, a Republican whose district is redrawn by the proposed new map, told ABC News. "And for one political party to come in and assume that it's their way or the highway, and to force that down Virginians' throats -- this will come back to bite them."
The "Yes" side has fundraised and spent millions more on advertisements than the "No" side, according to campaign finance filings and an analysis by AdImpact. It's also been bolstered by celeb power from figures such as Kerry Washington, John Legend and Pusha T.
Yet polling has still shown a close race, despite the seeming momentum behind the "Yes" efforts. A Washington Post-Schar School poll conducted in late March, after early voting had begun in the state, found that 52% of likely voters in the referendum supported the move, while 47% were opposed -- a result just outside the poll's margin of error.
Why does it appear so close? J. Miles Coleman, a political expert and analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, told ABC News that could be in part because for Democrats, the stakes may not seem as high as they are for Republicans.
"For Democrats, it would be nice to have these four extra seats out of Virginia if this map gets passed," he said. "But I just think probably something driving enthusiasm on the Republican side is that, from their point of view, this vote probably seems more existential ... they lost their statewide seats last year in a drubbing. They could very well stand to lose a lot of their federal representation."
But Obama, in the video shared with ABC News, framed the stakes as having national importance.
"By voting yes, you have the chance to do something important -- not just for the Commonwealth, but for our entire country," Obama said in the video.
(The video also serves as a way for Obama to reaffirm his support for the ballot measure, after allies of his harshly criticized mailers that used old quotes from Obama about redistricting to portray him as against the initiative.)
Some Democrats are not onboard.
Outside of an early polling site in Virginia on Thursday, Geoff Warrington, who works in tech and identified himself as a Democrat, told ABC News he had chosen to vote no because he believes it is "relatively unfair to essentially have redistricting temporarily to reallocate seats to sway an election."
But for some Democratic "yes" voters, the referendum is a way for Democrats to be able to strike back while being locked out of power in the White House and Congress.
"I mean, the Republicans have been playing dirty, so I think the Democrats are good to play dirty," Adan Hernandez, an engineer, told ABC News at a separate early voting site in Virginia on Thursday.