Donald Trump’s Redistricting War Is Quickly Backfiring

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When President Donald Trump launched his redistricting war in order to insulate House Republicans’ majority ahead of a potentially bruising midterm election, it may have looked like a canny partisan move by a political figure known for violating all norms.

But it’s not looking like such a great idea right now. After moving five Democratic-held seats in Texas into the GOP column, Trump’s redistricting campaign has suffered setback after setback as Democrats responded in kind, and some Republican-led states refused Trump’s pressure campaign.

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California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, got voters to approve a ballot initiative that counters Texas’ gerrymander by adding five Democratic-leaning seats in the state. Efforts to pressure GOP legislatures to redraw maps in states like Indiana and Kansas ran aground while Virginia Democrats announced their own plan to redraw their state’s map ― potentially flipping up to four seats from the GOP. Then a state court in Utah required the state to draw one safe Democratic seat. And on Tuesday, a federal court struck down Texas’ new map as a racial gerrymander.

That decision could be stayed or reversed by the Supreme Court, as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, said the state will appeal. But if it isn’t, Trump’s redistricting war will have been a massive miscalculation. Those five seats will be taken off the board while California will have added five Democratic seats ― so long as its map survives a similar legal challenge brought by Republicans. With the one seat gained in Utah and another potential two to four added in Virginia, Democrats will have added at least eight seats compared to the four seats altered by Republicans in Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio.

“Many people felt that Democrats had a weak hand going into this because they didn’t control many states,” said Michael Li, an expert on redistricting law at the Brennan Center for Justice, a progressive nonprofit. “But they have masterfully played their hand.”

It could get even worse. Missouri Democrats have gathered enough signatures to put an initiative before voters that would repeal the new map approved by the GOP-run legislature that eliminated one Democratic-held seat. If the initiative survives legal challenges and gets onto the ballot, it would force the state to use its old map for the 2026 election. That would take another seat off the board for Republicans.

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All of the energy for redistricting now lies on the Democratic side. California voters approving Newsom’s Proposition 50 by a vote of 64-35 shows broad support for countering Trump’s redistricting push. So does Democrats’ sweep of races in Virginia after Democrats announced their bid to redraw the state’s map.

“The biggest note coming out of the election is to be very clear-eyed about the reality that voters are enthused about this,” said John Bisignano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a Democratic Party-aligned group.

Republicans, meanwhile, are in retreat. Indiana Republicans ended a special session on redistricting called at Trump’s behest by Gov. Mike Braun, a Republican, without taking action to redraw two Democratic-held seats on Tuesday.

The only hope now for Republicans is in Florida, where GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis is pushing the GOP-controlled legislature to redraw the state’s maps. But this may be complicated by the outcome of the Nov. 4 elections that saw Democrats romp to victory across the country.

Democrats’ strong position heading into the 2026 midterms makes it less appetizing for Republicans to redraw districts. To do so, they would need to move Democratic voters out of the current districts into GOP-held seats. By diluting the Democratic vote in this way, Republicans could wind up weakening their position in their own currently safe seats during an election where Democrats look likely to have a sizable advantage.

“If I’m, say, an Indiana Republican and I get a bunch of people from D.C. telling me we know exactly what’s going to happen in the election and you need to pass these maps cause we know what they’re going to look like, I wouldn’t believe that shit,” Bisignano said.

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That also holds if the Supreme Court does stay the district court opinion striking down Texas’ map. That map was enacted on the belief that voting trends from 2024, where Latino voters swung hard to Republicans, would continue in 2026 and beyond.

The results from the Nov. 4 elections in New Jersey and Virginia, however, show those trends reversing with Latino voters swinging hard back to the Democratic column. Polls now show Trump and Republicans heavily underwater among Latino voters with many regretting their vote for him in 2024.

If Republican gains among Latinos revert to pre-2024 levels, or further back to 2016 levels, the Texas map would likely not net the full five seats Trump hoped to secure.

“They made a big bet that the past was prologue,” Li said. “But if it turns out that the past was just the past and not the future, then they may have made a very bad bet.”

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