Politics
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August 1, 2025
In a collection of mid-decade redistricting gambits, state legislatures wish to rig subsequent yr’s congressional balloting upfront.
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Voting rights protesters outdoors the Supreme Court docket in 2023 upfront of a gerrymandering ruling
.(Evelyn Hockstein / For The Washington Submit by way of Getty Pictures)
Ohio’s Ninth and thirteenth Congressional Districts are two of probably the most evenly divided districts within the nation. In 2024, Democrats narrowly gained each. Veteran Toledo lawmaker Consultant Marcy Kaptur held the aggressive Ninth, a slender, snaking district that runs alongside Ohio’s northwest coast, by lower than 1 share level. Within the thirteenth, which incorporates Akron, simply over 8,500 votes supplied the margin in a 51.1 to 48.9 p.c victory for Consultant Emilia Sykes.
It’s onerous to think about a path for Democrats to erase the GOP’s three-seat majority (which has ballooned to seven after 4 lawmakers sworn into the 119th Congress have died) and retake the Home in 2026 with out holding onto these seats, and scores of others like them all through the nation. But profitable them subsequent yr goes to be harder—not due to shifting political winds however as a result of Ohio Republicans will start redrawing the state’s congressional map this fall forward of the midterms—and plans are afoot in a number of different Republican-led states to create extra secure GOP seats out of districts that now lean purple-to-blue.
The Ohio gerrymander will come on the heels of the bid in Texas’s Republican-controlled state legislature to redraw congressional maps there to the social gathering’s benefit. In that still-pending GOP energy play, the social gathering stands to steal three to 5 congressional seats.
Republicans, afraid of shedding the Home subsequent November, have launched into an audacious and antidemocratic marketing campaign to carry on to their slender Home majority by rigging the midterms upfront. Beneath this state-level initiative, the purpose is for Republicans to recast already closely gerrymandered congressional delegations in order to make sure even better structural benefits that Democrats could not have the ability to counter. In a recursive set of rulings on voting rights and districting circumstances, John Roberts and the US Supreme Court docket have basically given them free rein.
Texas is getting all the eye proper now. However there may be no indication that Republicans will cease there. Ohio will remap subsequent. Florida, Indiana, Missouri, and North Carolina may observe. Kentucky and New Hampshire are additionally weak to right-wing takeovers of their congressional delegations. Redistricting will give Republicans a large, unearned enhance heading into the midterms—particularly since annoyed Democrats once more discover themselves with restricted choices to retaliate.
If Democrats thought the trail to erasing the GOP’s slender majority in 2026 is a straightforward query of capitalizing on an unpopular presidency and the historic midterm bounce for the social gathering out of energy—effectively, suppose once more. These mid-decade gerrymanders may greater than triple the variety of wins wanted to make Consultant Hakeem Jeffries speaker. And there aren’t some ways to counter them.
Present Situation
Let’s say Republicans have swung the minimal three-seat acquire in Texas. That may simply be the opening salvo within the redistricting wars. A brand new map is a certain factor in Ohio, the place Republicans in 2021 and 2022 each strong-armed a bipartisan fee and defied repeated rulings by the state Supreme Court docket. As a result of the state’s fee didn’t agree on that 10–5 GOP map, it expired after 4 years as a substitute of the standard 10. That’s was an ideal opening for the Republicans.
Ohio Democrats and voting rights teams have some choices, together with making an attempt to drive a statewide vote on the brand new map, but when Republicans battle again with comparable willpower, there’s little to be achieved. The Ohio GOP ignored a number of rulings from the state Supreme Court docket discovering that their maps violated the state’s Structure over the past go-round. Then, through the 2022 midterms, hard-line conservatives captured the court docket, profitable the seat of a brave GOP chief justice who dominated towards the gerrymanders simply earlier than she retired. (Maureen O’Connor’s independence introduced requires her impeachment, and her portrait has been banished to the court docket’s basement.)
After Ohio, the GOP may then transfer one state west to Indiana, the place the social gathering already holds seven of 9 seats. A mid-decade gerrymander may make that into an much more lopsided 8–1 benefit. In 2024, Democrats gained the First district, within the state’s northwest nook, with 57 p.c—however Republicans may carve up the blue stronghold in Gary right into a collection of slender slices, scattered among the many solidly pink Second, Third, Fourth or Eighth districts.
Shifting south, Trump aides have already reached out to Missouri lawmakers about turning a 6–2 GOP edge right into a 7–1 map that disassembles the Democratic district in Kansas Metropolis at present held by Emanuel Cleaver. There’s additionally potential to increase the Republican’s gerrymandered 10–4 map in North Carolina, the place the GOP-controlled state Supreme Court docket has already unraveled state constitutional protections towards tilted, partisan maps. (The three further seats gained because of this supplied the GOP with its Home majority within the 2024 cycle.) If Republicans wished to get extraordinarily aggressive, they may additionally try to focus on the one Democratic seats in Kansas and Kentucky, or carve out a extra favorable map in New Hampshire.
Democrats have threatened to satisfy these threatened gerrymanders with ones of their very own, however in sensible phrases, they simply have fewer choices. After being caught flat-footed by the audacious GOP gerrymanders of the 2010s, which created pink bastions in purple Wisconsin, Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, Democrats pressed their benefits wherever they might after the 2021 Census. They drew an aggressive 14–3 map in Illinois. A map that would have created an 8–0 delegation in Maryland was blocked by the courts, resulting in a 7–1 map as a substitute. Democrats additionally drew advantageous strains in Oregon and New Mexico, and modified a fee map in New York.
That leaves fewer targets of alternative for Democratic state legislatures—along with a physique of legal guidelines standing in the way in which of grabbing extra. The Illinois map seems maxed out. The courts would probably block one other 8–0 map in Maryland. New York’s state Structure seems to dam any mid-decade redraw there; Democrats try to be inventive, however even their likeliest play appears too late for 2026. New Jersey already has a 9–3 Democratic map, and robust speak from Governor Phil Murphy apart, there may be reportedly little urge for food within the legislature to unravel the state’s bipartisan fee in an election yr.
This implies the principle Democratic battleground would probably be California. Governor Gavin Newsom, state legislators, and members of Congress have talked brazenly about placing a poll initiative rapidly earlier than voters that might discover a manner across the state’s nonpartisan citizen fee, the nationwide gold customary for honest redistricting. That’s an extended highway. Every other legislative energy play would face an uphill authorized path
The GOP’s gerrymanders will thus skew the midterm math towards the type of wave election Democrats had in 2018—and that’s earlier than the US Supreme Court docket hears arguments in a case from Louisiana that would take a look at the constitutionality of majority-minority districts, and put seats held by Black Democrats in Louisiana, Alabama, and elsewhere in danger.
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The 5 seats all however sure to return from Texas and Ohio push the Democrats’s magic quantity to eight. Missouri would make it 9. North Carolina would edge it into double digits. And every gerrymander would additional shrink the roster of potential Democratic pickups on a map the place solely 37 of 435 seats have been inside 5 factors in 2024. The highway just isn’t inconceivable. There are winnable seats in Nebraska, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York.
However Democrats can’t rely on historical past right here. Sure, the social gathering out of energy in Washington historically earns a midterm bounce within the vary of 20 seats. However a lot of these political science charts have been constructed many years in the past, in congressional battlegrounds ruled by extra aggressive and fewer gerrymandered maps. It’s rather more tough to engineer a powerful run of flipped Home seats when so a lot of them have been taken off the desk and rendered uncompetitive.
It’s true that Democrats recaptured the Home by a sturdy margin of 41 seats in 2018—however they did this with out overcoming the gerrymander. First, they gained in courts, and established fairer maps in Pennsylvania, Florida, Virginia, and elsewhere. Then they gained some three-quarters of the flipped seats that yr in states the place courts and commissions drew the strains. They didn’t beat gerrymanders in Ohio, Wisconsin, or North Carolina, however gained in locations like Utah and Oklahoma—and people seats have since been gerrymandered out of attain. That path not exists. Forward of 2016, Florida’s state Supreme Court docket overturned a number of districts as unconstitutional and ordered a brand new map. This June, a court docket managed by Ron DeSantis, Leonard Leo, and hard-right Federalist Society acolytes let a rather more excessive GOP gerrymander stand.
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This isn’t a race to the underside any longer; we’re there. The nationwide congressional map, already almost maximally gerrymandered and uncompetitive, may quickly have its final significant races drained away. The legislative physique that’s imagined to be closest to the folks is nearly completely insulated from the poll field. The US Supreme Court docket has taken the federal courts out of play as a impartial arbiter. In consequence, any state that fixes the antidemocratic adoption of gerrymanders by itself seems like a sucker embracing common disarmament.
This can be a downside in want of nationwide options. They exist—mainly in reforms resembling ranked-choice voting, multimember districts, and proportional illustration. However because the gerrymandering battles erupt as soon as extra into all-out partisan warfare, the vital reforms to protect the integrity of 1 particular person, one vote in our embattled democracy might be on life assist. If you happen to hated the results of partisan gerrymandering earlier than, simply wait.
David Daley
David Daley is the writer of a nationwide best-seller on partisan gerrymandering, Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Does not Rely and Unrigged: How Individuals Are Battling Again to Save Democracy.
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