Gerrymandering can’t fix the GOP’s voter problem
In the past two weeks, Republicans have racked up major legal wins that stand to benefit the party in its quest to insulate itself from a midterm cycle that’s expected to wipe out their House majority. The problem for Republicans is that, even in favorably drawn districts, they still need to convince people to vote for them — and that task is getting harder by the day.
In late April, the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais ushered in the worst-case scenario for Democrats in the midterms, as well as for minority voters in the South, who could see their representation wiped out in 2026.
The decision paved the way for states like Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee and South Carolina to redraw their congressional districts to be more favorable for Republicans, potentially wiping out every Democratic leaning seat in these states and delivering Republicans as many as six new seats before the midterms.
On April 21, Virginia voters approved a proposed redistricting plan. But last Friday, a decision from the Virginia Supreme Court overrode voters and wiped that decision out, siding four to three with Republicans who sued to block the maps, making the scenario even worse for Democrats.
The combination of the Callais decision and the Virginia Supreme Court ruling have, in the course of a few weeks, dramatically darkened the midterm picture for Democrats, who are aiming to retake the House and Senate in November.
Prior to these two decisions, Democrats had more or less fought Republicans to a draw in the mid-decade redistricting battle, which was kicked off by President Donald Trump last August after his numbers began to slip in the polls near the beginning of his term. Between last August and the beginning of May, Republicans have already delivered gerrymanders in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Florida. Republicans in Louisiana and Alabama have already suspended their ongoing primary elections, so they can redraw the maps in their favor. Tennessee and South Carolina are expected to follow.
In response, Democrats have redrawn maps in California, and likely gained a seat in Utah, after the state redrew its maps following a court ruling that its previous map was unlawfully gerrymandered. Virginia was set to deliver Democrats as many as four seats before the court order.
To delay primaries “even when early voting has begun in some places — or even the idea of redoing primaries because you change the lines — is something that there’s not really any recent precedent for.”
While there is still a long-shot scheme to redraw the maps in Virginia despite the court order, election analysts largely expect the current maps — except for those states in the Deep South taking advantage of looser racial gerrymandering laws — to be the maps that the midterms play out on. That’s because in many states, elections are already underway, and most state governments aren’t as ready to suspend elections as the governments in Louisiana and Alabama.
Geoffrey Skelley, the chief elections analyst at Decision Desk HQ, told Salon that under more normal circumstances, it would’ve been too late to redraw maps, even when the Callais decision came down at the end of April.
“There have been situations where states have delayed their primaries after initially starting them,” Skelley said. “But to do it so close, and even when early voting has begun in some places — or even the idea of redoing primaries because you change the lines — is something that there’s not really any recent precedent for.”
Even considering the new maps, however, Skelley said that in his estimation, Democrats are still favored to retake control of the House in November. What Republicans have managed to do with their redistricting push was to raise their baseline of seats they can be expected to control, which will likely chip away at any incoming Democratic majority, but isn’t likely to prevent it, at least if current trends continue.
“I do think Republicans, in the wake of all this, are in a better position to potentially hold on, but because the national environment is just pretty bad for the GOP,” Skelley said. “But in midterm years, in conditions like this, we would tend to see a sort of swing toward Democrats that’s large enough to overcome this.”
For reference, DecisionDesk HQ’s polling average for the generic congressional ballot, which measures whether voters prefer one party or the other for congressional races without attaching a specific candidate’s name, has Democrats up 5.9 points over Republicans, more than enough to usher in a Democratic House. This average has also improved by about 0.6 points over the past month.
Logan Phillips, the founder of Race to the WH, told Salon in an interview that he estimates that Democrats need to maintain, at the very least, about a 3.5 point advantage to stand a good chance of winning the House. He credits this relatively low requisite advantage to a candidate recruitment advantage for Democrats, and points to 2024 as an example of Democrats overperforming generic ballot preference in actual election results.
In 2024, Phillips explained, Democrats lost the popular vote in the House by about 2.6 points, but were only five seats away from a House majority, with five seats making up about 1.1% of all House seats. This was due to overperformance in specific races and in Phillips’s estimation, this could happen again in 2026.
“They’ve been getting people that are more experienced at winning elections, that are doing a better job at fundraising, and that don’t have to pass the loyalty test to Trump to be able to get that nomination,” Phillips said. “This isn’t true for all races, but on average, more Democrat primary voters are focusing a little bit more on which candidate can win, and so I think as a result, they’re probably going to overperform whatever their performance is nationally.”
Start your day with essential news from Salon.
Sign up for our free morning newsletter, Crash Course.
This means that Democrats could win the House in 2026, which would buy them time to redraw district maps in other states ahead of the 2028 election. This would mean that Democrats could respond in kind to GOP gerrymandering in states like Virginia, Illinois, New York and potentially California again.
Miles Coleman, the associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said that this is the sort of scenario he expects to see play out ahead of 2028, but that this could also basically be the end of the line for partisan gerrymandering, if only because there are no states left for parties to squeeze favorable seats from.
“One of the things the Callais decision basically did is it guaranteed that this redistricting arms race is going to continue into 2028. Democrats have some states, like Colorado, where they could probably gain three or four seats, but they just didn’t,” Coleman explained.
In states like Colorado, where the government has empowered an independent commission to redraw the state’s maps, leaders in state government didn’t move fast enough to redraw lines ahead of the 2026 cycle. But as the race to the bottom in redistricting continues, Coleman expects them to revisit their state’s lines. With that being said, there’s not an obvious avenue for Democrats to respond to the Republican redistricting wave ahead of the midterms. Coleman advised against ruling anything out just yet, especially when looking ahead to the 2028 maps.
“Where there’s a political will, there’s frequently a way. At the start of this, it looked like Indiana could redraw its lines, but that Virginia and California would not be able to respond the way that they did,” Coleman said.
Read more
about politics