President Trump’s campaign to redraw House maps in GOP states around the country will make it tougher for Democrats to win back control of the chamber in next year’s midterms, but it won’t knock them out of contention altogether, according to leading election handicappers.
While Trump and his Republican allies are battling to pad their slim House majority through partisan redistricting — a rare, mid-decade project that launched in Texas but could expand to other GOP states — a number of other factors leave Democrats well positioned to seize the chamber, the election experts say.
Not only is California vowing to revamp its own map to counter the GOP advantage in Texas, but the national mood currently favors the more energized Democrats; Republicans are defending a razor-thin House advantage that leaves them little room for defeat; and historic trends predict significant midterm losses for the party of the sitting president.
“Democrats won 235 seats in 2018 on a map that was a little bit more skewed towards Republicans than the one that is in place currently,” David Wasserman, the senior elections analyst for the Cook Political Report, said in a phone interview. “And we’re looking at a political environment that’s similar to 2018, based on the enthusiasm gap between the parties and the off-year election results so far.”
That enthusiasm gap, by Wasserman’s tally, is a whopping 15 percent over the course of this year’s special elections, which include a long string of Democratic wins in races for state, local and judicial offices across the country. The figure represents the percentage difference between the Democrats’ vote totals in those contests relative to the number of votes won by Kamala Harris last November in the same regions (63 percent) and the Republicans’ vote totals relative to those secured by Trump (48 percent), Wasserman said.
“If you replicate that across the country, then Democrats would still be able to win the House even after Republicans redraw these districts,” he said.
“Now, I don’t think the turnout differential in the midterms is going to be as dramatic as the one we’ve seen in specials,” he cautioned. “But I’ll put it this way: If Democrats were on track to win 235 seats on the current map, they might only be on track to win 225 seats after Republicans redraw these districts.”
He attributed much of the discrepancy to the simple fact that Trump has not been on the ballot of those special elections.
“That explains a lot of the turnout differential,” Wasserman said, “because Republicans are having such a difficult time turning out voters who are loyal to Trump but not the Republican Party.”
Kyle Kondik, the managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, an independent election handicapper based at the University of Virginia, offered a similar assessment, saying a favorable political environment has the power to overcome redistricting efforts — if it holds.
“If the environment is good for Dems next year, you’d probably expect the bulk of the Toss-ups and even some of the Leans GOP seats to move their way,” Kondik said in an email. “So they could potentially win the House even if all the redistricting is pro-Republican.”
Trump and the GOP are familiar with those trends — it was during Trump’s first term that the Democrats’ 2018 House takeover occurred — and the president wants to make it as tough as possible for Democrats to do it again, not least because it would empower Democrats to launch countless investigations into the administration and, perhaps, impeach Trump for a third time.
Indeed, the Texas redistricting push, which is designed to help keep the Speaker’s gavel firmly in Republican hands, came at the request of the president. Gov. Greg Abbott (R), a Trump loyalist, quickly jumped on board, and the new map was approved by Texas state Republicans last week after dramatic Democratic efforts to block the votes met their inevitable end.
The new Texas lines are expected to flip as many as five Democratic seats to the GOP, and other Republican-led states — including Ohio and Florida — may follow suit.
Democrats have responded in kind with their own redistricting effort in California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is pressing ahead with new maps that would likely flip five GOP seats into the Democratic column. But the move is not a slam dunk.
Unlike in Texas, California law requires public approval of the changes before they can take effect. And a recent poll revealed that fewer than half of state voters support Newsom’s effort.
Democrats are also hindered by another dynamic surrounding the redistricting fight: They simply don’t have as many options as the Republicans do.
Illinois Democrats, for instance, are eyeing new maps, but with only three Republicans in the entire delegation, their pick-up opportunities are slim. Maryland, another Democratic-led state weighing a redistricting effort, has only one Republican in the House. And Democrats in New York, where Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) is vowing to redraw the maps, are restrained by state laws that would prevent the changes from taking hold in time to influence next year’s midterms.
Wasserman noted that, as a simple math problem, the Republican efforts to devise safe new GOP districts will make it more difficult for Democrats to pick up the three seats they need to gain control of the House in 2027. But the combination of outside factors — including the fact that Trump won’t be on the ticket to help Republicans in the midterms — still puts Democrats in striking distance of the Speaker’s gavel.
“If Texas and Florida and Ohio redraw their maps, and California does not — let’s say that Newsom is unsuccessful in convincing voters to revisit it — then that really makes it harder for Democrats. [But] it doesn’t completely throw away the key,” Wasserman said.
If California does change its map, along with Texas, Ohio and Florida, then Republicans would likely see a net gain of five or six seats, Wasserman said, “and Democrats would still be in a strong position.”
If California voters reject the effort, then the Republican gains will be closer to 10 seats, he added, “and that could make the House closer to a toss-up.”
Kondik agreed that California is a crucial piece of the broader battle.
Under the current House map, Sabato’s analysis has 209 seats favoring Democrats to some degree, 207 seats favoring Republicans, and 19 toss-ups indicating the most contested races in the country.
Taking into account only the changes in Texas, those numbers shift, giving Republicans the advantage in 211 districts and Democrats the edge in 206, with 18 races in the toss-up category.
When the new maps in Texas and California are considered together, the winds change once again, with 211 seats favoring Democrats, 206 leaning the GOP’s way, and 18 toss-ups.
“You can see how important CA can be to the math,” Kondik wrote in an email.
Republicans appear to agree. Although they’re supporting the efforts of GOP states to redraw their maps ahead of the mid-terms, they’re attacking Newsom and Democrats for attempting an illegal power-grab — one they’re vowing to challenge in court.
“The maps weren’t drawn in public view, they were cooked up behind closed doors in Washington, and the sudden adjustments made this week expose the truth: this was never about another state, it was about cementing Democrat power,” Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), the head of the House Republicans’ campaign arm, said in a statement.
Democrats have dismissed those criticisms as mere projection, arguing that it’s Trump and the Republicans seeking to “rig” elections they couldn’t otherwise win on the merits of their policy agenda, which is deeply unpopular. They say they had no plans to redraw their maps mid-decade — a concept they generally oppose — but were given no choice when Trump and GOP states launched their redistricting efforts.
“When extreme MAGA Republicans go low, we will hit back,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said in a statement. “Hard.”
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