In American politics, we’re familiar with gerrymandering — when a political party redraws district lines to gain an electoral advantage.
But what happens when that plan backfires and accidentally benefits the opposing party instead? Enter what politicos call the “dummymander.”
Republicans in several states, including Missouri, followed President Donald Trump’s orders to redraw congressional maps to protect the GOP’s House majority. To do it, they carved up blue seats and dispersed those Democratic voters into deep red districts, making many hue more towards pink.
Earlier this month, Democrats scored massive wins across the country — seen by many as a rebuke of the president and the prelude to a blue wave in next year’s midterms. Could that wave be large enough to turn carefully constructed GOP maps into a dummymander?
Republicans worried about that very scenario in Missouri two years ago, when state senators rejected a map that would have given the GOP seven of the state’s eight congressional seats. They feared a 7-1 map could swing to a 5-3 map if political winds shifted.
Those concerns were set aside in September when the legislature redrew the map to break up the Kansas City-based 5th District represented by Democrat Emanuel Cleaver.
So does this make Missouri a prime candidate for a dummymander?
Probably not.
The key difference between 2022, when the 7-1 map was deemed too risky, and 2025, when it was approved, is the retirement of Republican U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer. His rural St. Elizabeth home made it difficult to keep him in his district while maintaining a GOP advantage everywhere else.
Luetkemeyer’s replacement, Bob Onder, lives in the St. Louis suburbs, making a gerrymander easier.
Under the new lines, the previously Democratic 5th District would have voted for Trump by 18 points last year, said Erin Covey of Cook Political Report, a national nonpartisan newsletter that analyzes election trends. And Trump would have won the new 4th District — which now includes more Democratic voters from Kansas City — by 21 points.
Even the 2nd District, long targeted by Democrats, became redder under the new map. Covey said the new 2nd District would have voted for Trump by 11 points, compared to eight points before.
She notes that the last time the U.S. saw a blue wave — in 2018 — the reddest seat Democrats flipped was in a New York district Trump won by 15 points.
Now, all this could ultimately be moot. A referendum campaign is raising millions to put the new map on the 2026 ballot, which could freeze the current districts in place until an up-or-down statewide vote.
But if the new map stands, Missouri Democrats shouldn’t be so discouraged that they don’t recruit and run strong candidates, said Kyle Kondik of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, which also provides nonpartisan political analysis at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
“If the wave comes,” Kondik said, “you want as many surfboards in the water as possible.”
Look no further than Tennessee, where Democrats are contesting a special election for a U.S. House seat Trump carried by 22 points. Despite the district’s deep red tilt, Democrats are making a play, hoping an anti-Trump electorate is ready to rebuke the party in power.
As both parties brace for the chaos of 2026, one thing’s clear: in the game of gerrymandering, the only certainty is that the lines will always keep shifting.
- Jason Hancock has spent two decades covering politics and policy for news organizations across the Midwest, with most of that time focused on the Missouri statehouse as a reporter for The Kansas City Star. A three-time National Headliner Award winner, he helped launch The Missouri Independent in October 2020.
The post This GOP plot may hand Dems a massive red state win appeared first on Raw Story.
