GOP Fears Campaign To Redraw Districts Is Backfiring

By Aaron Zitner , Alex Leary and Terell Wright

Republicans are increasingly worried that a battle President Trump started last summer to redraw congressional district lines has backfired and might hand more seats to Democrats.

At best, some Republicans say, the effort will produce only a small gain in the number of GOP House seats instead of the firewall the party was hoping to build to stave off the loss of its House majority in the midterm elections.

Some in the party said on Wednesday that Trump, a Republican, and his aides had miscalculated by pressing Texas last year to undertake an unusual, mid-decade effort to draw new House district lines to the GOP’s advantage. That redistricting prompted several Democratic-leaning states to redraw their own maps in response. And some questioned why Trump’s political machine didn’t spend more resources on Tuesday’s election in Virginia, given the narrow outcome.

Voters in Virginia on Tuesday passed one of the nation’s most aggressive gerrymanders that, should it survive court challenges, would put Democrats in position to win 10 of the state’s 11 House seats and leave the party with a slight overall advantage in the na-

tionwide redistricting war, which so far has yielded new House maps in seven states. A redistricting approved by California voters last November could add up to five Democratic seats.

“We should have anticipated and played three or four moves ahead. We should have known that there was going to be a response to Texas,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R., Neb.), who is retiring after this year. He added: “We’ll pay for it in November.”

Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, a Virginia Democrat who championed the new districts in the state, said: “People are fed up with this administration, especially in Virginia. Trump is historically unpopular there.” He said the vote reflected “the desire to even the playing field.”

The chess match isn’t over and it is impossible at this point to predict exactly how many seats will change hands. The battle turns next to Florida, which is slated to take up a redistricting plan next week that could add Republican seats. Louisiana and potentially other GOP-leaning states could also draw new maps if given the green light under a Supreme Court case regarding racial considerations in redistricting, for which a ruling is expected by the end of June.

But the state of the redistricting battle, as of now, has left many in the GOP frustrated.

“Unleashing Texas was bad for the nation and it turned out to be bad for the GOP,” said Ari Fleischer, White House press secretary to former President George W. Bush. “This was avoidable, and if Texas hadn’t gone first, it is conceivable that Republicans actually would be better off than where they are now. So, Republicans picked the fight and lost the fight.”

GOP leaders in Congress showed little enthusiasm for the fight Wednesday. Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina, who leads the GOP’s House election arm, distanced himself from the redistricting effort. “It’s not for me to decide that,” he said. “It’s not my decision.” The Senate Republican leader, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, said that “when you go down the path of starting to do these things mid-decade, these are the kinds of outcomes you’re going to run into.”

Analysts who have assessed the new maps put in place so far see Democrats as now with a slight advantage. Jacob Rubashkin of Inside Elections, a nonpartisan newsletter, said the Democratic gain could be as large as three or four seats, depending on what changes Florida and potentially other states make.

The Cook Political Report wrote that the Virginia outcome gave Democrats “an edge in the mid-decade redistricting wars” and that the ultimate outcome would be “a minimal effect on the battle for the House majority.”

Evidence from recent off-cycle elections shows that a more powerful factor in the fight to control the House could be the advantage that Democrats have shown, at least until now, in motivation to vote.

The Virginia outcome left Republicans citing what they said was unfairness in the new map as they called on the Virginia Supreme Court to invalidate it. The court is considering several challenges to the constitutional amendment that voters approved Tuesday by 51.5% to 48.5%. The amendment would put the new, Democratic- advantaged map in place temporarily, until lawmakers draw new districts after the 2030 census, following customary practice.

On Wednesday, a circuit court in Virginia barred state elections officials from certifying Tuesday’s vote, saying the ballot question violated procedural rules and the state constitution. The ruling means the new map cannot go into effect for now, but the matter is sure to wind up before the state’s high court.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) called the proposed Virginia map “a hyperpartisan gerrymandering boondoggle” and called on the court to strike it down. “This is a divided state—it is almost 50-50—so a 10-to-1 map is not justified in that state,” Johnson said, referring to the balance of Democratic- and Republican- leaning districts under the new lines.

Some House Republicans, particularly those who could be affected by redistricting moves, have for months questioned the White House strategy, which was spearheaded by James Blair, a deputy chief of staff who recently took leave to oversee Trump’s political apparatus for the midterm elections.

Blair defended the effort Wednesday, saying Democrats had already been using courts to push for more favorable maps in some states. Blair said the Republican turnout in Virginia showed the party—which has suffered a number of electoral defeats since Trump returned to office—would be motivated in November.

“What I expect is that when all of this redistricting sort of continues this cycle, is that there will be a narrow advantage for Republicans,” Blair said on CNN.

The White House directed questions to the Republican National Committee, which pointed to funding for voter engagement and a legal fight against the Democratic plan.

Some Republicans said it was wrong to say that Trump had picked the fight when he called on Texas to redraw its House district lines, a process that could net the GOP as many as five seats. They cited a map that Democratic-led New York approved in 2024 and efforts in other states to use civil rights law to challenge districts.

The spate of highly partisan, mid-decade redistricting efforts threatens to create extreme mismatches between the partisan makeup of some states and their representation in Congress.

Trump won 46% of the vote in 2024 in Virginia, and his party holds 45% of the state’s U.S. House seats. That could fall to 9% under the new map. Democrats won 42% of the presidential vote in Texas but could wind up with 21% of House seats under the new map.

Virginians watched results of the redistricting referendum.

HEATHER DIEHL/ GETTY IMAGES