On July 15, 2025, when Donald Trump issued his call to arms for red states to redraw their maps in order to expand Republican seats ahead of the 2026 midterms, he understood something fundamental about this year’s election: It was going to be very bad for Republicans.
Cue Trump’s mid-decade redistricting scheme.
Trump had no interest in using the presidency to shift the political environment for his party by actually trying to make people’s lives better. No, he turned to his tried and true: rigging the rules in the middle of the game by demanding Republicans simply redraw districts to their own advantage.
And it worked. Well, it seemed to, at least.
In the year after Trump issued that directive, thanks to pliant Republican legislatures and governors, as well as some advantageous court rulings, Republicans appeared to net about nine seats out of their mid-decade gerrymander.
And that’s not nothing. Those nine seats bought Republicans a structural advantage going into next month’s midterms of around three or four points.
But as the political environment keeps getting bluer and bluer, it’s worth asking: Will Republicans’ +9 seat advantage in the redistricting wars hold, or will it get washed away in what increasingly looks like a blue wave election?
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In the wake of Trump’s demand that Texas—and really, every red state—redraw its congressional districts, several complied. Texas leapt first, redrawing its maps with the goal of picking up five additional Republican seats. This mid-decade redistricting arms race only came to an end last Friday when the Supreme Court quashed Republicans’ final attempt to net one more seat out of Missouri.
But Trump’s redistricting push was only part of the story. In April 2026, in its Louisiana v. Callais decision, the Supreme Court greatly weakened Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, ruling that racial gerrymanders were unconstitutional, giving license to southern states to eliminate majority-minority districts by cracking and packing Black voters into white majority Republican-leaning districts.
So, where did it all shake out? As The AP summarized,
All told, new congressional districts are being used this year in Alabama, California, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas and Utah. All favor Republicans except in California and Utah, where the new boundaries could help Democrats.
Notably,
If the districts all played out as designed, Republicans could net up to nine additional seats, but a good year for Democrats could reduce that tally.
Among the nine states where new maps are being used this year, Ballotpedia compiled a helpful chart laying out the circumstances of each state’s redistricting as well as the net benefit intended by the architects of each state’s redraw. This is how we get to nine new GOP seats.
Note that the Republican majority legislatures in Alabama, Louisiana and Tennessee each acted after the Supreme Court’s Callais decision this past Spring, in hopes of eliminating one majority Black Democratic district each.
Five of the states redrew their districts after Trump’s call to action, including Texas, California, Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio.
Only Utah’s redraw was a result of litigation unrelated to Callais.
Back in May, polling analyst G Elliott Morris estimated that with an approximate Republican advantage of +8 seats as a result of redistricting, Democrats would need to win the House popular vote by 3-4 points before they would begin to net the number of seats required for a majority.
But now, as we approach a midterm election with several polls giving Democrats a double-digit generic ballot advantage, that 3-4 point cushion Trump helped to build is a very low bar for Democrats to clear.
So how are these expected gains holding up heading into the final 30 days of the election?
Back in 2023, Alabama Republicans drew a map that tried to consolidate Black voters into a single Black majority district. It was such an egregious racial gerrymander that the currently constituted U.S. Supreme Court overturned the map and ordered the state to redraw fairer maps. After Alabama Republicans defied the order, a court-ordered special master re-drew Alabama’s congressional maps with one majority Black district and one near-majority Black district.
This map was in effect for the 2024 election, which allowed Democrat Shomari Figures to win a seat in Congress representing the newly drawn AL-02.
Just three years later, however, that same Supreme Court essentially reversed itself with the Callais decision, ruling that the redrawn map in play in the 2024 election was itself an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. This allowed Alabama to use its original 2023 maps in the 2026 election to dilute AL-02’s Black vote in hopes of going from a 5R-2D congressional delegation to 6R-1D.
Alabama Reflector laid out what the shift from the 2024 map to the 2023 map means:
The map, aimed at giving Black Alabamians a chance to elect their preferred leaders, set the Black Voting Age Population at 48.7%. Figures’ 2024 win was the
[first time Alabama elected two Black representatives].The
[2023 Legislature-passed map]that was put in place in May covers the Wiregrass, Montgomery and the eastern part of the Black Belt, and reduced the BVAP to 39.9%. The Cook Political Report[rates the district R+7].
Normally, Republicans would be favored in a R+7 district. But not so much this year, as Figures runs for reelection against Trump-endorsed state legislator Rhett Marques in what is shaping up to be a tight race.
An
[internal Democratic poll published in July]showed that Marques and Figures are in a “statistical tie” among 400 likely voters. Figures raised $1.35 million through July 22 to Marques $1.32 million, according to the[Federal Election Commission]. Figures has spent about half of his cash and Marques spent $1.13 million.Although Marques has Trump’s endorsement, Singleton is confident Figures has a chance. According to polling
[conducted by YouGov and analyzed by The Economist], Trump is broadly unpopular with Alabama residents, though he maintains a positive rating among 2024 voters.
As a result of strong polling in the race, Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball recently shifted the race from Likely Republican to Lean Republican. And the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) is all-in on Figures. Republicans are nervous. They are dispatching Donald Trump himself to Mobile, Alabama tomorrow for an appearance with Marques.
The stop is one of several Trump is making in what should be solid red districts. Swing district Republicans might not want the toxic president, whose approval rating keeps falling, stumping for them in the closing weeks. That he is headed to Alabama speaks to how anxious Republicans are that their aggressive gerrymander may fall short.
Mere weeks after the Supreme Court’s Callais decision this past April, Republican state lawmakers in Louisiana also got to work redrawing their map in the hope of eliminating one of the state’s two Black-majority districts. Unlike in Alabama, however, this redraw appears to be achieving precisely Republicans’ intent.
As PBS reported,
Legislation in Louisiana seeks to address the Supreme Court ruling by scrapping a district that snakes over 200 miles (321 kilometers) northwest from the capital, Baton Rouge, to Shreveport, creating a voting bloc with a majority of Black residents. Democratic U.S. Rep. Cleo Fields represents the current 6th District.
Under the new plan, that district would instead be clustered around predominantly white communities in the Baton Rouge area and southern Louisiana.
The new plan keeps a New Orleans-based, majority-Black district represented by Democratic U.S. Rep. Troy Carter while also adding a portion of Baton Rouge to it.
In July, Rep. Cleo Fields announced he would not run for reelection in the newly redrawn district, which Cook Political Report rated as going from Solid D to Solid R overnight. Fields instead is running for State Senate.
Rep. Troy Carter, whose run for reelection in LA-02 is rated Solid D, will now represent Louisiana’s one remaining majority Black district.
Within days of the Callais decision, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee called a special legislative session to “formally review” the state’s congressional map. In the end, the state legislature redrew the state’s map to break up their one Black majority district in and around Memphis (TN-09) by splitting the predominantly Black city among three congressional districts.
The district has been represented by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) for almost twenty years, but the aggressive redraw led Cohen, who had already been facing a primary challenge from State Rep. Justin Pearson, to announce in July that he would not seek reelection, saying, “I don’t want to quit. I’m not a quitter. But these districts were drawn to beat me.”
And of course, this is exactly what Republicans sought to do with the new maps.
Per PBS News,
Nearly
[two-thirds of Memphis residents are Black], according to U.S. Census Bureau data. The demographics represented under the old 9th District map, which included Memphis, were similar, with about 60% of the residents being Black, while 23% were white, according to the nonprofit Census Reporter.Now, 58% of residents in the new district are white and 32% Black, according to Cook Political Report analysis of census data.
As a result, per The AP, “Cohen predicted it would be nearly impossible for Tennessee Democrats to win a seat in Congress with the new districts.” And sure enough, Cook Political Report now rates the district—which went for Trump in 2024 by 21 percent and has a partisan voting index of R+9— “Solid Republican” along with every single other Tennessee congressional district.
But as Cohen observed in his remarks to The AP,
[T]here was a chance the redistricting effort could “backfire on the Republicans” but that would require an “unbelievable registration effort among Democrats” and a massive vote turnout.
And that’s precisely what State Rep. Justin Pearson, who won the nomination for the newly redrawn TN-09 in August, is counting on. According to Tennessee Lookout,
Pearson’s campaign released an internal poll in September showing him trailing Taylor 48% to 44% in a head-to-head matchup.
While TN-09 is a solid R district, in 2018, Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) only won this district by half a percentage point. And despite winning the district in 2024 by more than 20 points, Trump’s approval rating is down to 47 percent there.
The DCCC added the race to its slate of “Districts In Play,” and Pearson is up on the air with a powerful ad targeting his opponent over data centers.
Despite being a purple state—having elected Democrats at the statewide level in 2024 and voting for Donald Trump by only 3 points—North Carolina Republicans currently hold 10 of the state’s 14 congressional seats thanks to multiple brazen map redraws since the 2020 census.
And after Trump called for red states to eke out even more Republican congressional seats for the 2026 midterms, North Carolina Republicans became the first red state to ask, “How high?”
In October 2025, the legislature passed a new congressional map targeting Rep. Don Davis (D-NC) in the state’s first district.
According to WUNC,
Under the maps used in 2024, Republicans held a clear advantage in 10 of the state’s Congressional districts, Democrats held it in three and the 1st Congressional District was effectively a toss-up.
U.S. Rep. Don Davis, a moderate Democrat, won that district in 2022 and 2024.
As WUNC explained,
In the version of the 1st District used in 2024, about 40% of voters were Black. That will decline to about 32% in the new map, with significant Black populations in Greene, Lenoir, Wayne and Wilson counties moving to the 3rd District.
The current map “shifts about 500,000 people in eastern North Carolina between the 1st and 3rd Districts to give the GOP an advantage in the 1st.”
By cracking and packing the 1st District to get rid of Davis, who is Black, Republicans created a district that is more favorable to Republicans but not overly so. According to Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, in this environment, this R+5 district is rated a “𝕏Toss-up.”
The DCCC just released a tough new ad against Davis’s opponent Lisa Buckhout, calling her out for trying to get out of a DUI arrest.
And House Majority PAC has 𝕏announced a $2.5 million ad buy in support of Davis in the district.
But NC-01 may not be the only gerrymander backfire in North Carolina this year. As Cardinal and Pine editor Billy Ball ▶explained,
But the gerrymandering arms race could have unintended consequence…
