Voters cast ballots in districts reshaped by Trump's redistricting push

Republicans’ estimated advantage of about eight seats faces the midterm electorate

Voters across much of the South are casting ballots ahead of next month’s midterm elections in congressional districts that were redrawn after President Trump called on state legislatures to redraw them, NPR reported. Trump said the effort would help the GOP hold the House, where Republicans currently outnumber Democrats 218 to 214.

Over the last year, state legislatures tilted about eight more seats toward Republicans than toward Democrats in response to Trump’s call — a figure NPR described as an estimate and showed on a bar graph. The advantage gives Republicans a head start as the party works to keep the chamber, but NPR reported, the voters will decide whether it works. Republicans drew many of the new districts partly on how people voted in the 2024 presidential election, and NPR reported that the political mood has changed and that many people who voted for Trump two years ago could vote for Democrats, or not vote, in the midterms. Republicans could lose many of the districts they targeted.

States usually redistrict early in each decade after the census, NPR reported, but Trump called on legislatures to redraw their maps now, and the mid-decade remapping that followed brought disputes over congressional lines in several states. In Texas, Republicans issued arrest warrants for Democratic lawmakers who had left the state. In Louisiana, the governor suspended a primary after thousands of votes had already been cast so the lines could be redrawn. In Missouri, the state supreme court found the Republican secretary of state in contempt for sticking with a GOP map that was not legally in effect, NPR reported.

Democrats won approval in statewide votes for redistricting in California and Virginia in response to Republican redistricting in other states, NPR reported, only to have the courts toss out Virginia’s plan. When the Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act this spring, the ruling fueled rushed legislative sessions to draw maps that often ended up weakening the voting power of minority communities, NPR reported. One accompanying NPR item reports that redistricting has split up predominantly Black areas in six states; another examines how new voting maps in Texas and California shift the political landscape.

In a few places, Republican-led legislatures rejected Trump’s call to redistrict, including Indiana and South Carolina, NPR reported. But overall, Trump prompted a cycle of mid-decade redistricting unlike any since the 1960s, when courts set the current rules, NPR reported. NPR also published an item on which states redistricted and which did not.

With early voting under way across much of the South, the new districts are in place and the political effects of the year-long remapping effort now move to the voters.

MSI previously reported that midterm House campaigns were proceeding amid unresolved redistricting disputes in multiple states, with primary elections already held in newly redrawn Texas and North Carolina districts and final boundaries still contested in Missouri and Virginia (Midterm House campaigns proceed amid ongoing redistricting disputes). Voters in those redrawn districts are now casting ballots in early voting, and the maps drawn through the year-long redistricting effort now face the midterm electorate.