The next phase of the redistricting war is starting to come into focus.
Indiana, Missouri, Ohio and perhaps Florida — all Republican-controlled states — seem likely to join Texas and California in attempting to redraw their congressional maps, according to my New York Times colleagues. By their tally, Republicans could carve out up to seven more House seats where they would be favored to win.
It’s too soon to be sure if these states will follow through, let alone whether it would mark the end of this cycle’s redistricting battles. Other states could join; a legal challenge to Utah’s map and a challenge to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act also loom. But suppose that this is where the redistricting war goes next, and where it ends. If so, how much would the new maps tilt the playing field toward Republicans?
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 is still likely to prevail, then gerrymandering, however odious, hasn’t necessarily left one party at an undemocratic disadvantage overall.
By this measure, 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 while Democrats would be favored if the election were held tomorrow, the race for the House would be significantly more competitive on the new maps. 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: A few mediocre Democratic recruits, some ill-timed retirements, an unexpected demographic shift or even plain bad luck in contests with razor-thin margins could be enough to give Republicans control even if the G.O.P. loses the popular vote by a modest margin.
And if the Democrats’ popular vote advantage turns out to be much less than four points, the new maps could give the Republicans the advantage. Democrats, for instance, might not be able to get away with their own version of the G.O.P.’s disappointing “red ripple” election in 2022 and still win. They might not win if 2026 is like the narrow Democratic victory from 2020, either. Indeed, each of the last three congressional elections was decided by three points or less in the national popular vote, with the winner prevailing by less than seven seats.
To make these estimates, I did something a little unusual: I drew hypothetical districts for the four red states that are most likely to redraw their maps next, based on my colleagues’ reporting. In general, I tried to take the cleanest possible approach. In Missouri, Ohio and Indiana, this meant drawing a total of four new safely Republican districts without endangering any incumbents. Things were messier in Florida.
The Times reported that Republicans want to target two Democratic seats in South Florida, but I found it difficult to draw two new safely Republican districts, at least not without potentially endangering an incumbent. I drew two new Trump districts, but 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.
The difficulty of drawing two new safely Republican districts in South Florida illustrates one important lesson from these estimates: It is not a given that Republicans would actually pick up seven seats from these maps. On average, our analysis shows Republicans would gain about 5.2 seats, not seven, as several would remain competitive. This might seem insignificant, but it’s not — not when there are so few competitive districts nationwide.
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, two of the competitive districts that Republicans targeted in Texas already voted for President Trump and won’t tilt that much more toward the G.O.P. after being redrawn, so they could easily remain competitive. Similarly, 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.
And while I was able to draw four new Republican districts in Ohio, Indiana and Missouri that were noncompetitive, that’s not guaranteed — not until new maps are released.
Beyond the maps themselves, there is no shortage of uncertainty in such projections, and oddly enough, uncertainty itself is vital to Democratic chances. Democrats have a much better chance to overcome a structural disadvantage if they pull off even a few surprising wins (if you have a long memory, think of Democratic wins in Oklahoma’s Fifth District, South Carolina’s First or New York’s 11th back in 2018, or in Washington’s Third, Ohio’s Ninth or Alaska’s at-large district in 2022). If recent history is any indication, there will be a few surprises, eroding the G.O.P. edge. If not, Republican chances go up.
At risk of belaboring the point, these details will matter with so few competitive districts. We won’t have every detail until long after the ink dries on the new maps.
Nate Cohn is The Times’s chief political analyst. He covers elections, public opinion, demographics and polling.
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