Indiana, Missouri, Ohio and perhaps Florida — all Republican-controlled states — seem likely to join Texas and California in attempting to redraw their congressional maps, Republicans could carve out up to seven more House seats where they would be favored to win.
Other states could join; a legal challenge to Utah’s map and a challenge to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act also loom.
Ultimately, the most important question is whether redistricting prevents the party that wins the national popular vote from winning control of the House. If the popular vote winner wins, then gerrymandering, hasn’t necessarily left one party at an undemocratic disadvantage overall.
The House map was fundamentally fair in 2024: Despite plenty of gerrymandering, the winner of the popular vote was reasonably likely to win the most seats. But if the new maps are enacted in all of these states, Democrats will need to win the national popular vote by two or three percentage points to be favored to retake the House, according to projections based on recent congressional and presidential election results.
A two-to-three-point structural advantage for the G.O.P. is meaningful, but pretty modest. With Democrats leading by four points in the national generic ballot polls today, the party would still be favored to win next year’s midterm election.
The Republicans wouldn’t stand much of any chance at all of surviving a so-called “wave” election, like in 2018, when Democrats won the House popular vote by seven points.
But even if the Democrats won, the likeliest outcome would be a piecemeal seat-by-seat battle in which control of the chamber would come down to a fairly small number of seats. The race might not be called for days. Democrats wouldn’t have much margin for error.
In Missouri, Ohio and Indiana, could draw a total of four new safely Republican districts without endangering any incumbents. Things were messier in Florida.
Republicans want to target two Democratic seats in South Florida, but it could potentially endanger an incumbent. One voted for Joe Biden and could be quite competitive — especially in the Democratic-leaning years that Republicans might hope to survive through new maps.
So it is not a given that Republicans would actually pick up seven seats from their maps when there are so few competitive districts nationwide.
Two potential Democratic-leaning districts in California and at least one of two new Republican districts in Florida seem likely to be at least somewhat competitive. It’s worth noting that most of these potentially competitive districts have relatively large Hispanic populations, and Democrats can plausibly hope that Hispanic voters will collectively snap back to the left next November.
Democrats have a much better chance to overcome a structural disadvantage if they pull off even a few surprising wins. If recent history is any indication, there will be a few surprises, eroding the G.O.P. edge. If not, Republican chances go up.
Source: Nate Cohn NYT
