Joseph Akers
March 2 (Reuters) – With 16 months until the midterm elections, the Democratic Party is in trouble.
President Donald Trump persuaded Texas Republicans last July to redraw the state’s congressional maps, upending decades of precedent in an extraordinary effort to protect the party’s fragile majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. Other Republican-led states are poised to follow suit.
Democrats have limited options to counter Trump’s efforts to add Republican seats. They control fewer statehouses, and several strongholds, including California and New York, have constitutional provisions prohibiting any such counteraction. Republicans appear poised to win as many as a dozen new House seats in November.
Eight months later, things look very different. Trump’s push has stalled in several Republican states, while aggressive Democratic moves in states like California and favorable court rulings have allowed them to eke out a tie.
Ultimately, the race to determine which party wins control of the House in November will still come down to a race for a handful of seats — meaning months of political chaos, partisan recriminations and the reshaping of dozens of House districts from coast to coast have returned the national landscape almost to its original state.
“I do think it’s a wash now,” said Erin Covey, a House analyst at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. “If you only think about partisan seat gains, a lot of turnover and confusion is essentially for nothing.”
This could still change. Legal challenges to several of the new maps are pending, and Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has said he wants the state to redistrict in April. The U.S. Supreme Court is weighing whether to weaken a voting rights bill that could allow Republican-controlled Southern states to eliminate numerous Democratic districts.
first test
The Texas map that started it all will be put to its first test on Tuesday, when state voters select party nominees for all 38 U.S. House seats, as well as statewide races for the U.S. Senate and governor.
The breakup of several Democratic districts has created some unusual matchups. In the Houston area, for example, two incumbent Democrats, Christian Menifee and Al Green, are facing off against each other.
Tuesday’s primaries in Texas, North Carolina and Arkansas mark the official start of the midterm elections. Democrats only need to flip three Republican-controlled seats in November to win control of the 435-seat House of Representatives, and they face greater odds in trying to gain a Senate majority.
A Democratic House could block much of Trump’s legislative agenda while using subpoena power to launch investigations into his administration. Typically, the president’s party loses congressional seats in midterm elections, a historical trend that Trump’s redistricting campaign aims to stem.
Redistricting for the U.S. House of Representatives typically occurs at the beginning of each decade to reflect population changes in the U.S. Census. Both parties use this process for partisan gerrymandering, the practice of manipulating district boundaries to create a political advantage in elections.
But for more than a century, mid-decade gerrymandering was virtually unheard of, until Trump took office. Texas’ map targeted five Democratic incumbents; Republicans in Missouri and North Carolina quickly passed their own maps, targeting seats held by Democrats.
While Democrats have supported legislation banning gerrymandering in the past, Trump’s decision prompted many in the party to vow to respond in kind. Former President Barack Obama and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, among others who have long opposed gerrymandering, have said Democratic states should be willing to redraw their own maps to fight Republican redistricting.
“I’m tired of the Democratic Party having a knife fight with pencils,” Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin said at a party gathering in August. “Let’s grow a damn spine to fight this fight.”
As Texas Republicans move forward, the state’s Democratic House members met with Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to discuss the party’s strategy, U.S. Rep. Julie Johnson, a Dallas-area Democrat, said.
The party is centering around California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposal to amend the state’s constitution through a voter referendum and create a map aimed at flipping five Republican seats. The plan was initially seen as a long shot, but eventually sailed through the Legislature and was overwhelmingly approved by voters in November.
Virginia Democrats quickly adopted a more sophisticated strategy to amend the state’s constitution in a similar manner, potentially adding four seats if the state can overcome a Republican legal challenge this spring.
There will be more in the future
Democrats were also helped by favorable court rulings. In Utah and New York, judges ordered new maps that appear likely to shift Republican seats in the states.
Meanwhile, Republicans in a handful of states have resisted Trump’s pressure campaign, notably Indiana, where a majority of state Senate Republicans have rejected a Trump-backed redistricting plan despite the president’s threats of political retaliation.
Not everything is going the Democratic direction. In Maryland, a new map that would have eliminated the state’s only Republican seat has been shelved amid opposition from the state Senate’s Democratic leader.
Whatever the outcome this year, one thing seems clear: The redistricting war started by Trump will not end in November. In Colorado and New York, two Democratic-leaning states with anti-gerrymandering laws, Democrats have proposed changing the rules to allow new maps to be drawn in time for the 2028 election.
“We could have as many states redrawing their lines in 2028 as we did in 2026,” Covey said.
(Reporting by Joseph Akers; Editing by Paul Tomash and Alistair Bell)
