Dem
47
GOP
53
In 2020, in every state where one party held the trifecta and the law allowed the legislature to draw the maps, the legislature drew a gerrymandered map. When doing the gerrymandering, the mapmakers had to decide how aggressive to be. If they made the districts they hoped to win safe, say a 57-43 split in each of "theirs," then they got X districts. If they wanted to be even safer, and make "their" districts 60-40, then they got X - 1 of them. If they were willing to take more risks and make "their" districts 55-45, then they got X + 1 of them, and so on. It was their choice about how aggressive they wanted to be.
The implicit assumption behind gerrymandering is that people will continue to vote the way they did in the recent past. If the mapmakers found a bunch of counties near each other that have been 55-45 recently, they assumed they would continue to be 55-45 the same way and used that information to draw the maps.
The 2024 election upended some of that. Black, Latino, and young voters voted for Trump in larger numbers in 2024 than they did in 2020 or 2016, so some of the assumptions underlying the maps are no longer true. Adam Kincaid, the executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, the GOP's mapmaking expertise center, after the election said: "The battleground map is expanding in favor of Republicans, not in favor of Democrats." His analysis showed that after the election, only three Republican representatives are sitting in districts that Kamala Harris won. Before the election, there were 18 Republicans in districts that Joe Biden won in 2020. This will make it more difficult for Democrats to take back the House in 2026, despite the normal anti-incumbent wave in the midterms.
In contrast, there are now 13 Democrats representing districts Donald Trump won vs. only five before the election. So, the Democrats have fewer easy pickups awaiting them and more places where they have to play defense. In addition, there are a number of districts that were safe for the Democrats that have become competitive.
In an interview, Kincaid also said that the past election has expanded the Republicans' map in multiple ways on account of the Black and Latino voters being more open to voting Republican. He noted that in some places, the change was dramatic. In 4 years, NJ-09 went from Biden +19 to Trump +1. He said that realignments go slow at first and then very quickly. Another interesting district is CA-25, a working-class and heavily Latino district. It went from Biden +15 to Harris +2. There are more.
Democrats think that 2024 was a blip, due to young men voting for the macho Trump over the Black woman and all will be well in 2026 and 2028 when neither Trump nor Harris will be on the ballot. Kincaid thinks the change is more fundamental and won't go away so easily. Of course, how Trump's administration unfolds and how chaotic it is could matter. Trump doesn't understand any of the dynamics involved in the maps, but he does know certain things. For example, if his tax policies give billionaires like Elon Musk a $50 million a year tax cut and give the average worker a $100/mo tax cut, they will cheer him. Democrats think that they ought to be wildly against this because the distribution was so unequal. But Trump understands that voters really like the extra $100 and don't care that under the Democrats, everyone, rich and poor, might have gotten $200/mo. What they know is that Trump gave them an extra $100/mo and they really like that. Of course, other things that Trump does may horrify people who voted for him, but that remains to be seen.
The real question here is whether the underlying PVIs of the districts have changed or whether 2024 was a one-off event due to marginal voters coming out for Trump. NJ-09, for example, has a Cook PVI of D+8. In 2026, with Trump not on the ballot, will it revert to that and elect a Democrat as expected? No one knows. (V)