Trump's mid-decade redistricting push fails to hold the House for Republicans

Maps fell flat in Alabama, Florida and Texas while California Democrats countered

Republicans in eight states redrew the boundaries of dozens of congressional districts over the past year, at President Donald Trump’s urging and in hopes of holding onto a slim House majority in a tough midterm election. Ultimately, it didn’t work. Democrats swept Republicans from power in a surge fueled by voter dissatisfaction with Trump, the economy and the war with Iran. Republicans lost most of the Democratic-held seats they had targeted to flip, and lost other seats they had counted on keeping.

The maps themselves fared no better. Courts scuttled the Republican redistricting in Missouri before voters there firmly defeated it on Tuesday. California Democrats redrew districts and flipped previously Republican-held seats, offsetting the GOP’s plan.

The Trump redistricting plan “was systematically dismantled,” former Attorney General Eric Holder, chair of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in an election night statement. “And given the opportunity, voters instead chose to elect a new Democratic majority,” Holder said.

The campaign began outside the normal calendar. Congressional districts typically are redrawn after a census at the start of each decade to account for population changes, but Trump spurred an unusual mid-decade redistricting battle last year when he urged Texas Republicans to reshape U.S. House districts to give the GOP a shot at winning five additional seats. A cascade of mapmaking followed, spurred in the South by a Supreme Court ruling that weakened federal Voting Rights Act protections for majority-Black districts. Republicans hoped their new maps could net as many as four more seats in Florida, two in Ohio and one each in Alabama, Louisiana, North Carolina and Tennessee.

In all but one of those revamped districts, Trump would have carried over 54% of the vote had they been in place for the 2024 election, according to Associated Press estimates. “In normal times, that sort of district is relatively safe,” said Justin Levitt, a professor at the Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who runs the “All About Redistricting” website. But the presumed Republican districts were undercut by shifting views of Trump: the AP Voter Poll found about 6 in 10 voters disapprove of how he is handling the presidency, and views of his priorities were mostly negative. “It’s foolish to presume that the electorate in one year is going to look like the electorate in another in a time of radical swings in public opinion,” Levitt said. “I think it is likely that some line-drawers got cocky.”

Texas showed how those assumptions failed. Republicans reconfigured three heavily Latino districts in the Rio Grande Valley, which had shifted toward Trump in 2024, to boost their chances of unseating Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez. Both won reelection Tuesday. Democrats instead unseated Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz, whose district is sandwiched between theirs.

De La Cruz’s new district retained the same share of Trump-inclined voters as its 2024 version, but about 3 in 5 of its voting-age residents were new, making it harder for her to compete against Democratic challenger Bobby Pulido, a well-known Latin Grammy award winner.

The AP Voter Poll indicates a substantial shift among Hispanics away from Republicans compared with Trump’s victory two years ago. Nationally, about one-third of Hispanics said they backed the Republican in their local U.S. House race, while roughly 4 in 10 voted for Trump two years ago. Republicans had “unrealistic assumptions about a shift in Latino voting” remaining in their favor, said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston.

In Florida, Trump’s adopted home state, Republicans tried to tilt four more House seats to the GOP. Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz was among their targets, but he ran anyway in one of the redrawn districts and won reelection Tuesday in Florida’s 25th Congressional District. “I’ve worked across the aisle. I’ve delivered results for my community, and they spent $26 million trying to beat me,” Moskowitz said after his victory. “They lit that money on fire tonight.” He said voters in his new district, like those nationwide, were most concerned about the economy and their ability to afford a good quality of life, and that redistricting angered voters, too.

Democrats also held other redrawn Florida seats the GOP had remade. About two-thirds of voting-age residents were new to the district represented by Democratic Rep. Kathy Castor after redistricting, but she won reelection. Democrat Pia Dandiya won an open seat in southern Florida that Republicans had reshaped for their advantage. In Alabama, a Supreme Court ruling allowed the Republican-led Legislature to revert to a map the GOP considered friendlier, but Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures won reelection anyway.

North Carolina produced some of the costliest races. Republicans redrew two congressional districts in the eastern part of the state with the goal of unseating Democratic Rep. Don Davis in the 1st Congressional District, which has sent a Black member to Congress for more than 30 years. Mapmakers made Davis’ district somewhat more Republican by bringing in thousands of voters from the neighboring 3rd Congressional District, held by Republican Rep. Greg Murphy, and reassigned thousands of Democratic-leaning areas to Murphy in exchange. The advertising battle for Davis’ seat cost well over $50 million, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact, ranking among the most expensive House races nationally. Davis held a slight lead Tuesday night, and the race between Murphy and Democratic challenger Raymond Smith was particularly close.

What started as a Republican redistricting effort could become a Democratic redistricting movement ahead of the 2028 presidential election. Maryland voters approved a constitutional amendment Tuesday that will make it easier for the state’s Democratic-led General Assembly to redraw districts to the party’s advantage. Democratic proponents, backed by former President Barack Obama, have touted the change as a way to “stop Trump.” Democrats who made gains in numerous state legislatures could use that power for redistricting as well, and Democratic lawmakers in New York already have taken an initial step toward congressional redistricting before the 2028 elections.

The results underscored how difficult it can be to anticipate voter behavior when drawing districts for partisan advantage. The challenge could be greater in the next presidential election, 2028, which would be the first in a dozen years without Trump’s name atop the ballot. That would make it difficult to know how his supporters would realign behind new candidates. “It’s really tough to pick a political model that accurately shows you who’s likely to show up in 2028,” Levitt said.

Associated Press writer Bill Barrow contributed to this report, which was written by David A. Lieb.