Midterm Voters Defy Republican Redistricting Gambit in Eight States

Democratic candidates won most of the congressional districts that Republicans had redrawn to favor their party in the November 3 midterm elections. The voting results undermined a multi-year strategy urged by President Donald Trump to secure a slim House majority. Republicans lost the majority of the Democratic-held seats they targeted for flips and failed to retain several Republican-held seats they had protected in new maps.

The redistricting effort began last year when Trump urged Texas Republicans to reshape House districts to win five additional seats. A Supreme Court ruling weakening federal Voting Rights Act protections for majority Black districts accelerated the process in the South. Republicans hoped to gain up to four seats in Florida, two in Ohio, and one each in Alabama, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Trump would have carried 54% of the vote in all but one of these new districts if they had been active during the 2024 election.

In Texas, Republicans won only one of the five seats they aimed to flip. Democrats, however, flipped two Republican-held districts, resulting in a net loss for the GOP. The party reconfigured three heavily Latino districts in the Rio Grande Valley to target Democratic Representatives Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez. Both men won reelection on Tuesday. Democrats instead unseated Republican Representative Monica De La Cruz, whose district was sandwiched between the two Democratic seats. About three-fifths of voting-age residents in De La Cruz’s new district were new to the area, complicating her campaign against challenger Bobby Pulido.

Florida presented a similar challenge for Republicans, who attempted to tilt four House seats in their favor. Democratic Representative Jared Moskowitz ran in one of the redrawn districts and won reelection in the 25th Congressional District. Moskowitz said his opponents spent $26 million trying to defeat him. Democratic Representative Kathy Castor also won reelection after two-thirds of voting-age residents were new to her district. In southern Florida, Democrat Pia Dandiya won an open seat that Republicans had reshaped for an advantage. In Alabama, Democratic Representative Shomari Figures won reelection despite a Supreme Court ruling allowing the state legislature to revert to a map Republicans considered more favorable.

California offset Republican gains elsewhere through retaliatory redistricting. Democrats flipped all five Republican-held seats they targeted in the state. In North Carolina, Republicans redrew two eastern districts to unseat Democratic Representative Don Davis. They moved thousands of voters from the neighboring 3rd Congressional District held by Republican Representative Greg Murphy. The advertising battle for Davis’s seat cost well over $50 million, ranking among the most expensive House races in the nation. Davis held a slight lead Wednesday, while the race between Murphy and Democrat Raymond Smith remained close.

John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, described the outcome as a catastrophic rebuke of Trump’s effort to gerrymander the country. Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University, called the mid-decade redistricting gambit a complete bust for Republicans. Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School, noted that in normal times, such districts are relatively safe, but voter dissatisfaction with the economy and the war with Iran shifted the outcome. About six in 10 Americans disapprove of how Trump is handling the presidency.

Adam Kincaid, executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, acknowledged that picking up five seats in Texas without jeopardizing others was a difficult task. He stated that the strategy required recent voting trends to continue, which did not happen. Kincaid added that Republicans likely would have lost even more seats if they had not redrawn the Texas districts. The results suggest that voter behavior is difficult to anticipate when gerrymandering for partisan advantage, particularly ahead of the 2028 presidential election.