Months into his second term, Donald Trump wagered that he could beat the historic trend of the party in power losing seats in midterm elections if Republican-led states redrew congressional maps to sweep Democrats out of office.
The gamble is looking to be a bust, or at best a draw, for the president, after Democrats fought back with their own redistricting efforts, the latest of which came to fruition in Virginia on Tuesday, when voters approved a plan that could remove all but one of the five Republicans in its current House of Representatives delegation.
Far from defying history, Trump now seems set to succumb to it, as the Democratic counteroffensive coupled with voter dissatisfaction towards the president’s own policies sets the stage for Republicans to suffer potentially brutal losses in November’s midterm elections.
“Democrats did not step back. We fought back. When they go low, we hit back hard,” the top House Democrat, Hakeem Jeffries, said in a statement that vowed “maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time”.
The redistricting war began last year, when red states Texas, Missouri and North Carolina responded to Trump’s call by redrawing their maps to make as many as seven Democratic-held seats unwinnable for that party. But the plan went awry in the months that followed, when Indiana senate Republicans refused to join in the gerrymandering campaign, a bipartisan commission in Ohio enacted new maps that put Democratic incumbents in less peril than expected and a court ruling boosted the minority’s chances of winning a seat in Utah.
The biggest setback came in November, when California voters approved maps that could cost Republicans five House seats, the same number Texas Republicans hoped to win with their redistricting. In Virginia, Democrat Abigail Spanberger was elected governor, setting up a redistricting referendum that voters approved on Tuesday.
Its margin of victory was a small three percentage points, much less than the 15% romp by which Spanberger was elected four months earlier, but no matter – when the new Congress begins next year, Virginia’s congressional delegation is poised to consist of 10 Democrats and one Republican, as compared with its current split of six Democrats and five Republicans.
“This goes beyond Virginia, and what started in Texas didn’t stay in Texas, and what started here will not stay here either,” said the state senate president pro tempore, L Louise Lucas, a key figure in getting the maps approved. “Virginia sent a message: if you try to rig the system, we fight back. If you try to take powers from voters, we will take it right back.”
It may well be that the national redistricting push winds up being a wash, or perhaps even to Democrats’ advantage. It’s not the only way that political trends are breaking in the party’s favor – their candidates continue to triumph in special elections, and even when they lose, there are signs that demographics that backed Trump in 2024 have swung towards Democrats.
Trump’s approval ratings are underwater, including on key issues like the economy, while Democrats are ahead on the generic ballot, which serves as an indicator of pre-midterm sentiment.
Virginia’s supreme court is still considering a legal challenge to its referendum, and could potentially issue a ruling invalidating the vote. Even if the previous maps – which were drawn under a process voters approved six years ago to prevent partisan gerrymandering – wind up being used in November, Democrats would still have a shot at winning perhaps two swing districts in the state.
And there are still skirmishes to settle in the redistricting tit-for-tat. Next week, Florida’s legislature will convene for a special session called by the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, to consider congressional map tweaks that could make it harder for Democrats to hold on to as many as three seats.
But with the winds apparently blowing in his party’s direction, at a press conference on Wednesday Jeffries had a warning for Florida Republicans: “F around and find out.” He predicted that Texas Republicans may only be able to claim, at most, three Democratic-held seats under their new maps, and Florida’s redistricting could backfire entirely by making GOP incumbents vulnerable.
“If they go down the road of a DeSantis dummymander, the Florida Republicans are going to find themselves in the same situation as Texas Republicans, who are on the run right now,” he said.
“But go ahead, and make our day.”
