Two big redistricting questions have finally been resolved. The Supreme Court decided to allow Texas’ new congressional map, while the Indiana Senate — including, surprisingly, a majority of Republicans in the chamber — voted against a proposal to redraw the state’s congressional map.
Where does that leave the redistricting wars? On track for a wash.
That’s right. When all the drawing and redrawing is done, each side’s gerrymanders seem set to cancel out. There are, of course, still moving pieces on the board. Florida and Virginia loom. Missouri’s map could be stalled; even Wisconsin’s map could be struck down by state courts. But if you had to guess today, the likeliest outcome is a relatively balanced — if not exactly “fair” — congressional map, one where the party that wins the most votes nationwide will probably be favored to win the House.
As important as the developments in Texas and Indiana might be, the truth is that next year’s midterm elections aren’t exactly on track to be close enough for a few districts to make the difference. Democrats have been dominating regularly scheduled and special elections this year, including flipping a Republican state House seat in Georgia and winning the Miami mayor’s race on Tuesday.
With that in mind, let’s answer a few reader questions. Feel free to send any you might have to [email protected].
Party switchers and possible broken gerrymanders
A reader reacted to Democrats’ big victories in New Jersey and Virginia in which party switchers, and not just superior turnout, played a role.
Very interesting. I wonder, in the light of this analysis, if some newly created Republican gerrymander districts may actually vote Democratic candidates in? — Marianne, Los Angeles
Most of the newly created Republican districts voted for President Trump by such a wide margin that they’re safely Republican, even in a great Democratic year, but the relatively Hispanic districts in Texas are an important exception.
As I wrote in August, these heavily Hispanic districts aren’t necessarily so Republican that they’re noncompetitive. Two of the five “newly Republican districts” voted for Joe Biden in 2020, and three voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Two other districts were reasonably close. With Democrats surging back near 2020 margins in Hispanic areas in New Jersey and Virginia, these heavily Hispanic districts in Texas look a lot less “Republican” than Mr. Trump’s results make it seem.
One district in particular seems as if it might already be tilting Democratic: Texas’ 28th, where Mr. Trump pardoned the Democratic incumbent Henry Cuellar last week. He’s a moderate “blue dog” Democrat with considerable crossover appeal. In this national political environment and without the indictment hanging over his campaign, the Cook Political Report re-rated his race as “Leans Democratic.” And again, this is one of those “up to five districts” that Republicans hoped to flip.
It’s worth noting, however, that this doesn’t mean the Republicans’ gerrymander in Texas is likely to backfire. It just means they may not flip as many seats as some originally projected.
A left turn in Democratic primaries?
Broadly agree with the points Nate makes here, but for this: “And while today’s Democrats have had their problems, nominating extreme candidates that could dampen their advantage isn’t usually one of them.” Have you already forgotten your new mayor? And, a sample size of two governors in states that should have been at least a little competitive does not really justify that statement. — Ned
I do think it’s fair to say Democrats have generally avoided candidates who would risk otherwise winnable races. They’ve nominated plenty of far-left candidates, of course, but they’ve mostly done so in safely blue cities, districts or states. Zohran Mamdani, for instance, didn’t cost the Democrats anything. Neither did Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Elizabeth Warren. When it counts, Democrats have nominated broadly acceptable candidates over and over in the key races.
This is a deliberate strategy, and Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger, who won governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia, are great examples. They’re two of many veterans — often women — whom Democrats recruited in their successful 2018 campaign.
Still, I think it’s right to question whether Democrats are likely to avoid missteps in the future, even if they’ve mostly done so in the past. There are certainly warning signs. In the polls, there’s obvious dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party, even among the party’s rank and file, which could bolster outsider primary candidates. There’s talk of a Democratic “Tea Party.” And younger, more progressive Democrats make up a greater share of the party with every year. It might not be long until relatively strong insurgents can threaten party-backed candidates in competitive districts, not just in heavily Democratic cities.
In this political environment, it’s highly unlikely that extreme Democratic nominees could cost the party control of the House. The Senate, however, is a different story.
Already, the Texas Senate race stands out as a case where the party might be at risk of missing an opportunity. This week, Jasmine Crockett, a progressive House firebrand, announced her candidacy for Senate, while the relatively moderate Colin Allred dropped out of the race. It’s far from inevitable that Ms. Crockett will win her party’s nomination, but she’s certainly not a candidate in the mold of Ms. Sherrill or Ms. Spanberger, and it’s easy to imagine how she could put her party at a disadvantage in a state like Texas.
Even Aftyn Behn, the Democratic candidate who made gains but failed to flip a House seat in Tennessee this month, was no moderate. She wasn’t necessarily a bad candidate, to be clear, but there was no shortage of opportunities for Republicans to attack her based on some past statements, even though she was a political newcomer.
The attacks on Ms. Behn might reflect a new kind of challenge for Democrats this cycle: the legacy of 2020. Many of the Democrats seeking office this year naturally engaged in political activism during the left-liberal overreach of the early 2020s, and old comments on social media could haunt otherwise appealing candidates who stick to bread-and-butter issues. In their own ways, Ms. Behn, Mr. Mamdani and James Talarico, the current alternative to Ms. Crockett in Texas, have all stumbled on past statements more than anything they’ve said recently. It’s reminiscent of how Kamala Harris was dogged by comments from her 2019 presidential campaign. Democrats simply didn’t have a similar problem back in 2018.
One is not like the others
Some readers took issue when I compared President Trump to other recent presidents who “pushed too far in pursuit of an ideological agenda.”
Informative article, but D.J.T. is not like most every other incumbent. Some similarities but he is unparalleled in most respects. — Brice Hutton
Well, of course. Mr. Trump is an extraordinary president in many respects, from his broad assertions of executive power to his personal conduct.
But his political problems aren’t unusual. They follow a very familiar story: A president at once overreaches, alienating voters, and fails to address longstanding dissatisfaction with the country. Indeed, one of the more extraordinary things about him is that his extraordinary conduct doesn’t usually seem to be his major political problem.
For the purpose of political analysis, it has usually been safer to treat Mr. Trump as if he were just any other Republican, even though there have been so many reasons to think maybe he’s not, including a criminal conviction and Jan. 6.
Calculating Trump’s poll numbers
Forty-one percent still favor him? Are you sure about that? Seems higher than what I’m seeing/hearing elsewhere. — Carole in Pa.
Mr. Trump has a 42 percent approval rating in our polling average, which is based on essentially every publicly available poll. There are some polls — including a recent one from the venerable Gallup organization — showing Mr. Trump’s approval rating in the 30s, but that’s a bit of an exception. Most polls still show his approval ratings in the 40s, as reflected in our average.
The hard floor of support for each party
It’s remarkable to me that his numbers haven’t slipped more, given the public sleeping, the midnight Truth Social ranting, the confusion about facts. But it makes me wonder if the floor for “my guy” is essentially the same for red and blue team members, and it’s not changing. Could it be that what we’re seeing is that not even war crimes or dementia will erode his base, not necessarily because it’s HIS base, but because there’s a floor below which neither side will drop? — Jane Beard
There are two separate questions to consider here. Is there a relatively high floor for the political approval of presidents from both parties? And either way, should we expect Mr. Trump to have lower approval ratings than he does today?
On the first question, I don’t tend to believe in political “floors” and “ceilings” — even for Mr. Trump. It’s hard to remember now, but it was said over and over that there were hard ceilings on Mr. Trump’s support. In time, he would eventually build enough support to win the popular vote in 2024.
While he has shown extraordinary political resiliency, the notion that he has a hard “floor” hasn’t really been put to the test. To take one obvious example: Imagine that he presided over a real recession, with high unemployment, falling growth and a bear market. I don’t know whether he would end up in the 20s, like George W. Bush during the financial crisis, but the idea that he can’t fall much further simply hasn’t been tested.
And Mr. Bush didn’t just preside over a faltering economy and a quagmire in Iraq; he also divided his party by pushing changes to Social Security and immigration early in his term, and, later, a huge bank bailout. Mr. Trump hasn’t divided his party nearly as deeply or as often. The tariffs arguably count, as do the Epstein files, but on the other hand, his actions on the border and immigration, crackdowns in cities, DOGE and more have offered much more red meat to his party’s base than Mr. Bush did in his second term. Even so, Mr. Trump’s ratings are almost exactly where Mr. Bush’s were at this point in his second term: 42 percent.
For a related set of reasons, I don’t share the reader’s surprise that Mr. Trump’s approval rating is still in the low 40s. To fall further, he would need to alienate reliably Republican voters. He’s offered reliably Republican voters quite a bit to be pleased with, and while the economy isn’t perfect and Republicans may not be entirely satisfied, the conditions aren’t so bad that we would ordinarily expect a party to abandon its president.
Nate Cohn is The Times’s chief political analyst. He covers elections, public opinion, demographics and polling.
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