The post-2030 redistricting fight could spell big trouble for Democrats

Democrats could face a gloomy Electoral College atmosphere next decade, according to new population estimates released Tuesday that show red-leaning states like Texas and Florida making major gains and California as a big loser.

By combining the census bureau’s new state population estimates for 2025 with previous years’ data, experts quickly projected the number of House seats — and Electoral College votes — states will gain or lose after the 2030 Census in the process known as reapportionment. And while those projections differ slightly, they all had bad news for Democrats: GOP-leaning states will gain electoral power and Democratic-leaning states will lose it if the trends continue.

While Joe Biden would still have won in 2020 under the estimates, two projected maps show Democrats would no longer be able to win the Electoral College by relying solely on the Rust Belt battleground states.

One of the estimates from Jonathan Cervas, a redistricting and apportionment expert at Carnegie Mellon University, shows seat changes across the map, with Florida and Texas gaining four seats each, while California, New York and Illinois collectively lose eight.

Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Utah and Idaho would all pick up one more seat, while Oregon, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island lose one seat.

Another map from the GOP-aligned American Redistricting Project shows less seats shifting overall, with Texas gaining four seats, Florida gaining two, and Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Utah and Idaho gaining one. Under that estimate, California loses four seats, and New York, Illinois, Oregon, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island all lose one seat.

In both models, the shifts — which are significant in both projections given the already razor-thin margins in the House — stand to alter the battlefield for the 2032 presidential campaign and the fight for the House down-ballot.

While the changes are “not going to lock in” GOP wins, the map is certainly shifting in their favor, said Adam Kincaid, president of the National Republican Redistricting Trust.

“The Rust Belt states and Sun Belt states will continue to be the battleground,” he said. “The difference is that Republicans will be able to win the White House without a single Rust Belt state, whereas Democrats would have to sweep the Rust Belt and win in the Sun Belt.”

The new maps are mostly in line with earlier estimates from Democrats, who at the time presented changes to Florida and Texas specifically as the “result of population growth specifically in diverse, metropolitan, Democratic-leaning urban centers.”

That is leaving the party with some tempered optimism about their fate in the Electoral College and the battle for House control.

“As these folks are moving, they're bringing their politics with them,” said Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. “And so I think it's not necessarily safe to assume that those population shifts don't or aren't able to impact statewide results.”

But not everyone in the party saw good news between the lines. Plus, Democrats have long hoped population shifts in red states like Texas and Florida would lead to gains for the party, but so far that wish has not materialized.

David Hogg, the former DNC vice chair who has embarked on a mission to primary members of his party that he believes are not doing enough to stand up to President Donald Trump, said the estimates prove that the party must invest further in the South.

“If we don’t start building infrastructure in the South … we can kiss goodbye any chance of winning the white house in the 2030s,” Hogg said on X.

The shifts also amplify fears from Democrats that Republicans will try and gerrymander urban areas and lessen those voters’ impact in House races, something Jenkins said is designed to “dilute the voices of these communities.”

“We're going to find in states like Texas is that as those communities grow, it's going to become harder and harder for [Republicans] to gerrymander their way out of the fact that those people live there, and they're real people,” she said.

Jenkins said it’s important to understand the projections “in the context of this effort to gerrymander the country into oblivion,” pointing to the White House-initiated mid-cycle redistricting effort that swept the country last year.

But both parties acknowledge there’s still plenty of time for populations to shift even more before the numbers are locked in during the 2030 Census.

Ahead of the 2020 Census, reapportionment projections were dire for Democratic-controlled states. But the shifts ended up being less dramatic than anticipated — in part due to an undercount of Black, Hispanic and Native American people, the Census Bureau acknowledged, that was partially triggered by the extraordinarily difficult task of counting every American during a pandemic.

“It's basically halftime,” Kincaid said. “We've got 5 years to go. A lot can change.”