Democrats Threaten A Nationwide Redistricting War, But They May Not Like The Result
“In a re-redistricting war, Republicans would win.”
Democrats are scrambling to respond to Texas’s bold mid-decade redistricting push, but the reality is clear: they are poised to lose badly.
A partisan move by Texas to redraw its congressional maps in the middle of the decade to secure five more GOP seats in the U.S. House set off a clamor to replicate the effort in red and blue states.
Texas Republicans, backed by President Trump, kicked off the effort to lock in control of the House. Democrats staged their usual walkout stunt, but Gov. Greg Abbott made clear Republicans would not back down.
Past efforts by Democrats to abscond and deny Republicans a quorum similarly only delayed the passage of bills, but didn’t quash them. And Gov. Gregg Abbott vowed to keep calling the Legislature back until enough lawmakers are present to pass the redistricting proposal.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom tried to flex in retaliation, announcing his state would redraw maps to add Democrats. But unlike Texas, California faces a maze of restrictions, including its so-called independent commission and voter approval requirements. That means Newsom’s threat is more bark than bite.
Meanwhile, red states are moving fast. Missouri is on top of that movement.
A document obtained by The Associated Press shows the state Senate has received a $46,000 invoice for software licenses and staff training for redistricting.
While Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe hasn’t officially announced a special session, Republican House Majority Leader Alex Riley told the AP it is “pretty likely” to happen. Riley added that he has had discussions with White House staff about it.
Ohio, Florida, and Kansas are weighing similar moves, and they actually have the power to deliver immediate GOP gains. Democrats in New York and Wisconsin, by contrast, are stuck in courts and constitutional amendments that will take years.
Even left-leaning commentators are admitting the obvious. Chris Cillizza posted bluntly on X:
In a re-redistricting war, Republicans would win pic.twitter.com/PG9vuh3Lzv
— Chris Cillizza (@ChrisCillizza) August 16, 2025
That’s because Republicans control more states, more legislatures, and more governorships. The math is unforgiving: every GOP-led redraw can deliver seats by 2026, while Democrats are mired in legal roadblocks.
The mid-decade showdown is no longer a theory. It’s happening. And as one state after another lines up behind Texas, Democrats are being outflanked, outmaneuvered, and outnumbered.
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I’ve seen that a dozen or so blue states have no republican representation are any red states in that same position where there are no democrat representatives?
None of similar size and population.
Without looking it up: Wyoming, North Dakota, and south Dakota, but they only get one representative due to their low population. They could split 51-49 in favor of red and still be without a Dem representative. And Utah has 4 seats, all red. Maybe Nebraska. There may be others.
Save Utah, the other 4 mentioned are big on ground and light on people, and they feed the rest of us.
Arkansas as well. We have 4 districts all filled by republicans. Used to be solid Democrat when there was such a thing as “Blue Dog Democrats”. But the Dem’s ran them out of the party about 15 years ago.
Nebraska is all Red, but CD2 is ususlly very close, that is the Blue Dot Electoral College vote.
Nebraska was pressured to end that electoral college thing prior to this past POTUS election. Didn’t quite pull it off.
Definitely worth making the change and getting rid of that – go back to all or nothing like most other States.
Nebraska wont move on it unless Maine does who has split its EC for longer than Nebraska.
Montana has a relatively new West side Congressional district so there are two Republican held Congressional seats, but the state legislature is pretty solid Republican and the redistricting that was completed in 2022 is unlikely to change
Come to think of it, when was the last time the Democrats made a good decision on any matter of policy or strategy? They are good at trying to break things, causing division, and singing out of key.
When red state lost seats be uase of rigged elections redistricting isn’t a threat.
They act like Texas Republicans started this war but they have been at war with us for decades and we have just ignored it based on our belief in fair play. I personally think they are mostly out of ammo since in the states they control they have already drawn some pretty gerrymandered districts.
Part of the problem is that this will mess with their plans to turn several states Purple. They have been having people from places like Commifornia move to red states so they can vote for the same crap that ruined the place they came from.
It’s even worse for Democrats in Texas alone: Abbott says the GOP could gain up to ten seats if they wanted to do so.
Part of the problem is that this will mess with their plans to turn several states Purple. They have been having people from places like Commifornia move to red states so they can vote for the same crap that ruined the place they came from.
Sorry. Duplicate comment.
Yes. And while Abbott has the legislature in session to pass his moderate plan, he should also have them pass a 10-seat plan which would come into effect only if California redistricts before the 2032 election.
California’s legal roadblocks are no doubt humiliating for Gavin Newsom but lets be blunt.
Look at the leader of the “independent commission” what she has to say about Trump, look at how much of the vote in California Republicans get vs their representation in congress…..
California is already partisan gerrymandered in practice.
If Hair Gel gets his way the “Independent Commission” will be left out of the process completely for the next 6 years.
Like NY, CA is already gerrymandered a little, but not blatantly. The commission needs to preserve its veneer of independence, or the courts would have no choice but to strike its maps down. If the proposed amendment passes then the gloves will be off, and the new map will be blatantly gerrymandered and there won’t be anything anyone can do about it.
Which is why I suggested above that TX should preempt it by passing a highly gerrymandered map that would only come into effect if CA redistricts before 2032.
Your concept of “a little” amuses me. We voted just shy of 40% for Trump and Garvey (Senate) this past November, but have only 9 seats in the House out of a total of 52. That’s 17%. Your math is as bad as your legal reasoning…
The argument from percentage of the vote is stupid and invalid. We’ve already had this discussion a few threads ago. There is absolutely no expectation that a party’s percentage of the statewide vote should be reflected in the number of districts where it has a majority. If a party has 49% of the vote, but it’s spread evenly across the state, that party can expect and deserve to win zero seats. If you don’t like it, you can campaign to adopt proportional representation, but you probably don’t want that.
The fact is that CA is slightly gerrymandered, but not blatantly enough that the (Dem-controlled) courts would have no choice but to overturn it, as the (equally Dem-controlled) NY courts did with that state’s 2022 map. They play the long game by biasing the map just a little, so they can keep on doing it cycle after cycle, rather than turning it up to 11 once and then losing the ability to ever do it again.
Because you don’t like it presumably.
Yes, there will be some variance ; but it should be roughly proportionate.
I’m interested by the argument that a party that has 49% of the vote (but very few states, as Newsom’s latest attempt will create) somehow “don’t deserve it”.
I would also point out that if one party has 49% of the vote spread evenly, this means that the other party (discounting smaller ones) would have 51% spread evenly, near enough.
Exactly — that’s why they win all the seats and leave none.
Paul, no, it should not be even roughly proportionate.
If you want proportionate representation you know how to do that. Turn the whole state into one electorate, and have it elect the number of representatives it’s entitled to by PR, the way many countries do it. But that’s not what you want.
It’s completely obvious, to anyone but an utter moron, that if one party has 51% of the voters in a state and the other has 49%, and those voters are spread completely evenly throughout the state, then any map will result in the majority party taking all the seats. That is simply how single-member seats work. The only way for a minority party to win seats is for its support to be uneven, with it having less than 49% in some areas, and more than 50% in others.
Likewise a party with a tiny fraction of the vote can still win a seat if those voters are all concentrated in one area. Let’s say a state has 25 seats, so each seat has 4% of the population; if this party has 2.1% of the vote but they all live in one seat then they will win it, while a party with 49% in each seat wins none. That’s how the regional parties in the UK win seats, while a party like Reform, with about 100 times the support, hardly won any. It’s all about how evenly your supporters are spread around.
So the disparity in percentage of the vote versus percentage of the seats is not proof of anything. It should be completely expected. The proof of CA’s gerrymander is only to be found in actually examining the map and its history. It’s there, but you have to look for it. It’s not obvious on its face, which is why the Dem courts have felt free not to overturn it despite the state constitution banning partisan gerrymandering.
There is no expectation that a State’s voter split be reflected in its representation in the House, but it’s as good a metric as any other.
Concerning CA and TX, CA’s split is so unbalanced that even after TX’s redistricting (and before any redistricting that CA may do), CA’s representation-voter split will still have higher disparity than TX’s.
No, it isn’t a good metric at all. Without knowing where each party’s voters are, the percentage tells you absolutely nothing.
We do know that CA is politically gerrymandered to help the Dems, but we don’t know it from that source.
What you’re doing is exactly the same as those arguing that the fact that a higher percentage of black people than of white people end up in prison proves structural racism. Structural racism is certainly possible; it did exist in the past, and there’s no logical reason why it can’t still exist. I think it doesn’t, but it’s debatable. But whether it exists or not, the argument from percentages is still wrong.
It’s basically an argument to keep the “slightly” gerrymandered states like Illinois, but only change Republican ones if they are made worse.
Novel.
Texas is already slightly gerrymandered for the Republicans, and the new map will make it more so. Well and good. But if CA starts openly gerrymandering, then TX should go all the way.
He says ‘a little’ because Republican votes still get counted, so that makes it fair.
Even though their vote has been diluted through gerrymander, not because the ” party has 49% of the vote, but it’s spread evenly across the state, that party can expect and deserve to win zero seats.”.
In fact, in addition to the gerrymandering, there is the ‘top two’ jungle primary.. AND extensive mail-in balloting.
Democrats in California understand that their state is not blue all too well.
From what I’ve read, Democrats have been gerrymandering for so long and to such extremes there’s not a lot left for them to gerrymander. Not so with Republicans who are, for once, learning how to fight fire with fire. This is also further proof Democrats could give a rip about “democracy,” otherwise known as equal representation under the law. California is already a joke in that regard.
Republicans have no choice but to do their best to balance the overall scale.
There is more room for them to gerrymander, in states where they haven’t been able to do so because of local constitutional issues. Which is why Newsom wants to amend the state constitution.
It’s time to show some strength and crush them.
I will so enjoy the lamentations of their women.
What is a woman?
Is there anywhere a spreadsheet / table of all states showing :
– the vote percentages in the most recent election
– the representation percentages in the senate at the same time.
Save me doing it 🙂
In the senate?! Surely you mean the house. There is no gerrymander in the senate; it’s literally impossible.
I asked Grok this very question yesterday. It’s response….
Based on the data from the 2024 presidential election and House election results, blue states (those won by Harris) have a larger average discrepancy between the minority party’s vote share and their seat share (20.5%) compared to red states (those won by Trump, with 15.6%). This suggests that gerrymandering in blue states is worse at suppressing the minority party (Republicans) relative to their vote share than in red states against Democrats.
To arrive at this solution, I compiled state-by-state presidential vote percentages for Trump and Harris, classified states as red or blue based on the winner, and incorporated the number of House seats won by each party. For each state, I calculated the discrepancy as (minority party vote share) minus (minority party seat share). Positive values indicate underrepresentation of the minority party. I then computed weighted averages of these discrepancies for red and blue states, using the number of House seats as weights to account for state size. Single-seat states (where gerrymandering is impossible) and DC (no voting House seats) were handled accordingly in the aggregation.
The gerrymander has been around almost as long as our Republic. The truth is that many red states were bullied by demonrats and the lsm every time they redrew the maps. No more. Texas and Florida are leading the way and showing that the other red states can just ignore the caterwauling lsm/demonrats. Rush always said that conservatives were the true majority and the liberals just screamed the loudest making conservatives feel as if we were the minority. There is nothing in the US Constitution that says the states can’t redistrict between the census. Go for it all the red states that don’t have a state constitution prohibition against it. Do that and Congress could end up 300 Republicans controlling the House.
In addition to looking like a smug used car salesman, this politico gives the impression that a great internal struggle is taking place between his ears in order to think.
I dont hear the dems saying to outlaw gerrymandering
wazzzzz up wit dat!?
The other parallel issue the d/prog have right now is ‘coalition based majority minority’ districts. This is where there isn’t enough of say ‘blacks’ to create a ‘black majority minority’ district so the d/prog add hispanics or asians to get to the threshold. The 5th Circuit just blew those up which is part of what/why TX is doing redistricting …to eliminate the unconstitutionally drawn CD. There’s about two dozen of these CD Nationwide mostly concentrated in big blue States; CA, NY, Illinois, NJ with another 6-7 States with one each. Obviously the 5th Circuit doesn’t cover the big blue States but now we have a circuit split and a basis to do some challenges in those States. I suspect SCOTUS is getting far closer to blowing up the inherently racially discriminatory basis for all these districts to include the single race minority majority districts.
Some states were gerrymandered to achieve minority representation in Congress. If that was legal gerrymandering to achieve a particular party control is likely legal too.
More to the point: SCOTUS and several appellate courts have, for more than half a century, consistently ruled that gerrymandering based on RACE alone was not just constitutional but legally required under the (obscenely UnConstitutional Section 2 of the VRA).
Hard to unring that bell. And with white people going into the minority at some point relatively soon, and having been blatantly discriminated against for so long…
Bonus: Callais v Landry is on the docket for SCOTUS with oral arguments scheduled for Oct 15th. Speculation/expectations are that Section 2 of the VRA will go into the trash heap along with Roe v Wade. If so, the D’s will lose all of their racially gerrymandered guaranteed districts in the next round of redistricting. 20-25 seats can/should flip D to R as a result. The South will look like Arkansas now – just solid Red.
K-jon, you have it backwards. Partisan gerrymandering is certainly legal (unless a state’s constitution bars it). It’s racial gerrymandering that’s usually illegal (except when it’s mandatory, but SCOTUS may soon get rid of that exception).