A no-holds-barred bout of partisan redistricting has been won by Republicans. Now it’s up to voters to decide whether it matters for control of Congress.
Republicans could net about 10 additional U.S. House seats in the November elections if redrawn voting districts perform as they were intended. The question is whether that’s enough for the GOP to hold on to a majority in the chamber, where Democrats need to gain only a few seats to take control.
Political trends and historic patterns favor Democrats. President Donald Trump’s approval ratings are negative. And the incumbent’s party has lost House seats in every midterm election over the past two decades.
This election season already has been unusual. Voting districts typically are redrawn only after a census at the start of each decade. But Trump urged Republicans last summer to redraw congressional districts to their advantage to try to prevent losses in the 2026 midterms.
Since then, Republicans think they could win as many as 16 additional seats from new House maps enacted in eight states — Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Tennessee, Louisiana and Alabama. Democrats, whose counterattack faced several setbacks, think they could win up to six additional seats from new districts in California and Utah.
Nearly 145 million people — about two of every five U.S. residents — live in states with new congressional districts for this election.
Yet the mid-decade redistricting battle didn’t go as far as it could have.
Republicans in Kansas and Democrats in Illinois both rebuffed party pushes to take up redistricting. In Republican-led Indiana and South Carolina and Democratic-led Maryland, new congressional districts passed the state House but ultimately died in the state Senate. The Virginia Supreme Court invalidated new voter-approved districts that could have helped Democrats win up to four additional seats. And the U.S. Supreme Court set aside a lower court order that could have helped Democrats gain a congressional seat in New York.
Here’s a look at the states with new U.S. House maps:
Texas
Current map: 13 Democrats, 25 Republicans
New map: Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed a revised House map into law last August that could help Republicans win five additional seats. Democrats think they could still win some of those seats.
Missouri
Current map: two Democrats, six Republicans
New map: Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe signed a revised House map into law last September that could help Republicans win an additional seat by reshaping a Democratic-held district based in Kansas City. Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins has until Aug. 4 — the date of Missouri’s primaries — to decide whether to reject an initiative petition seeking a statewide vote on the map.
North Carolina
