The redistricting wars heading into the November midterm elections had been in a stalemate, with each party\u2019s tit-for-tat gerrymanders roughly canceling each other out.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not a stalemate anymore. Over just the last two weeks, new court rulings and new congressional maps have put Republicans on track to add more than a dozen districts that voted for President Trump. It would be enough for Republicans to obtain a significant structural advantage in the House of Representatives, giving them a much better chance to at least stay competitive even if they lost the combined national vote by a wide margin in the midterms.<\/p>\n
On procedural grounds, the Virginia Supreme Court on Friday struck down a Democratic-drawn congressional map that had been approved by voters. The map had been the centerpiece of the party\u2019s effort to counter Mr. Trump\u2019s mid-cycle redistricting campaign. The decision was entirely unrelated to the Supreme Court\u2019s decision allowing states to dismantle majority-minority districts, which has triggered a rush of new Republican redistricting efforts across the South. For good measure, Florida Republicans redrew their state\u2019s map, potentially adding up to four new Republican districts.<\/p>\n
With Mr. Trump\u2019s approval rating stuck below 40 percent<\/a> and Democrats building a growing polling lead in the race for Congress, even a dozen new Trump districts might not be enough for Republicans to retain the House. But while Democrats remain favored, retaking the House is no longer a foregone conclusion. The new maps make it much easier to imagine how the midterms could be a seat-by-seat battle for House control \u2014 one which Democrats could well be favored to win, but which would not feel like the sweeping \u201cwave\u201d election it might have been otherwise.<\/p>\n It\u2019s important to emphasize that this cycle\u2019s redistricting fight has been surprising from the start, and the details remain in flux. Florida\u2019s new congressional map, which was enacted on the grounds<\/a> that the Supreme Court\u2019s recent decision invalidates the state constitution\u2019s prohibition on gerrymandering, faces serious legal challenges<\/a>. Litigation is ongoing in other states, including Virginia. And so far, only Tennessee has enacted a new map in response to the Supreme Court\u2019s decision on the Voting Rights Act. Louisiana, South Carolina and Alabama are expected to follow, but maybe one<\/a> or two<\/a> will not \u2014 or maybe additional states, red or blue, will join the fight.<\/p>\n But if everything stays as is \u2014 and with Alabama, South Carolina and Louisiana enacting new maps \u2014 Republicans will obtain a significant structural advantage. To win the House, Democrats could need to win the House combined national popular vote by around four percentage points, according to our estimates.<\/p>\n A four-point structural advantage wouldn\u2019t be enough to make the Republicans favorites to win the House, but it gives them a real shot at it. In polling averages, Democrats lead by six points<\/a> on the so-called generic congressional ballot<\/a>, which asks voters which party they\u2019ll support for Congress. But if Republicans make gains between now and November or pull off enough victories in key races, they could have a chance to retain control of the House even while losing the national vote by a significant margin.<\/p>\n A different way to consider the Republican advantage is to look at the kinds of seats they would need to win. Here, the most popular measure is the median congressional district \u2014 the district that would serve as a tipping point for House control. By this measure \u2014 after the Southern states redraw their maps \u2014 the median district will have voted for Mr. Trump by 5.5 points in 2024, or about four points more Republican than his 1.5-point margin in the 2024 national popular vote.<\/p>\n By each measure, Democrats need to win districts that voted Republican by a comfortable margin, though it may not be quite as challenging as it sounds. For one, there are nearly 50 districts where Mr. Trump won by five to 15 points. Democrats do not need many to break their way, and historically breakthroughs like these tend to happen when the national environment swings decisively in one direction.<\/p>\n For another, many districts that backed Mr. Trump by a wide margin have a recent record of voting for Democrats, including many with large Hispanic populations and many of the newly Republican districts created in this cycle\u2019s redistricting wars. As a result, many Republican gains from redistricting might fail to materialize in this national environment: Democrats might hold districts like Florida\u2019s 25th or 14th; Texas\u2019 28th, 34th or 35th; or North Carolina\u2019s First.<\/p>\n And Democrats might flip some of the seats they targeted in their ill-fated Virginia gerrymander the old-fashioned way, like Virginia\u2019s Second or even Virginia\u2019s First.<\/p>\n On the other hand, these seats are so Republican that it\u2019s easy to see how Democrats could fail to break through. If the Supreme Court\u2019s Voting Rights Act decision and Mr. Trump\u2019s mid-cycle redistricting campaign allowed Republicans to win the House while badly losing the national vote, it would be yet another blow to the credibility of American institutions during a time of bitter division.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The redistricting wars heading into the November midterm elections had been in a stalemate, with each party\u2019s tit-for-tat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[651,1452,416,47837,859,46937,9,11,10,49,51,50,58310,5285,35417,15074,1069,1876,418,81542],"class_list":["post-226021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-democratic-party","tag-donald-j","tag-elections","tag-federal-state-relations-us","tag-house-of-representatives","tag-midterm-elections-2026","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-redistricting-and-reapportionment","tag-republican-party","tag-state-legislatures","tag-states-us","tag-trump","tag-united-states-politics-and-government","tag-virginia","tag-voting-rights-act-1965"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}