Will Virginia be the final mid-decade redistricting battle?

Virginia Democrats’ narrow redistricting victory may end up winning the party more than the obvious prize of three or four additional seats in Congress. It may also cap a protracted battle that began last summer when Texas passed a law drawing a new congressional map that favored Republicans.   

With most state legislatures out of session or soon to be out of session, lawmakers are nearly out of time to use mid-decade redistricting to influence voters in the midterm elections. Estimates vary, depending on legal rulings still to come in Virginia and a few other states, but the new maps could usher in as many as nine new Republicans and 10 new Democrats. The Texas map alone could flip five seats held by Democrats to Republican control.   

The Trump administration encouraged red states to pursue redistricting, and Democrats followed suit, creating mounting fights across the country. But they were all running against the clock. Most state legislatures meet between January and early summer. Only four states—Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, and Pennsylvania—meet year-round. Unless the Florida legislature or another statehouse meets in a special session to consider and pass a new map, Virginia’s referendum will likely be the final major redistricting battle before the fall elections.

Recent history reveals the challenge facing both parties. Immediately after Texas acted, California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom responded with a measure that would allow temporary changes to district boundaries. Proposition 50 garnered enough signatures to appear on the November 2025 ballot. As I previously discussed, these new districts would create five new Democratic-leaning congressional districts for three election cycles. The measure passed overwhelmingly with 64.4% voting in favor and 35.6% against. Exit polls showed that the victory was broad and deep and reflected an enormous amount of anti-Trump sentiment. Newsom successfully painted the ballot measure as the latest front in the fight over fair elections and the future of democracy, rather than gerrymandering.  

But the Texas and California moves were not the end of the story. Spurred by their leaders in Washington, lawmakers in other states followed suit. In Ohio, a bipartisan commission passed what they called a compromise map that could add two Republican seats. In North Carolina, a new map targeting Rep. Don Davis, a Democrat, could add one Republican seat.  

In a defeat for the White House, Indiana lawmakers could not muster enough support for a redistricting plan that would have added two Republican seats in the House, even after Vice President JD Vance visited the statehouse to lobby the legislature. When more than 20 Republican lawmakers joined Democrats to defeat the bill, Trump promised political retribution, saying he would support a primary challenge to the Republican state Senate president and threatening to cut federal funding to the state, but Indiana Republicans held firm.  

In Missouri, the legislature passed a law aimed at redrawing Democratic Congressman Emanuel Cleaver’s district to pick up a Republican seat. Democrats quickly collected signatures to put a referendum on the November ballot, which, if successful, would freeze the law. They produced more than double the number of required signatures, but hearings before the Missouri Supreme Court set for May could disqualify the effort. Yet, even with the referendum on the ballot, the redistricting law could still be upheld if voters fail to strike it down at the polls.

Efforts to get Nebraska to take up mid-decade redistricting seem to have fallen short, even though the Republican governor said he was “open” to the idea. Similarly, efforts in Kansas to flip the third congressional district, currently held by a Democrat, failed to win enough votes in the state legislature.  

Perhaps the last hope for Republicans is Florida, a state poised to consider maps that would add as many as four Republican seats to the House. Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has called a special session and then delayed it, seeking more time to produce maps. At the same time, some political experts question whether moving district boundaries can eke out more than one new Republican seat. The effort would also have to overcome legal obstacles prohibiting redistricting for purely partisan reasons.  

Republicans weren’t the only ones trying to pick up seats. In Utah, a Republican state, a court order gave the Democrats one seat. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) made a special trip to Illinois to try to convince the legislature to add more Democratic seats, a strategy that Governor JB Pritzker (who is, like Newsom, a potential presidential candidate) said he is open to. But so far, there has been no action in Illinois, and time is running out. Jeffries also traveled to Annapolis, Maryland, to support Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, in his effort to pick up one Democratic seat by targeting the lone Republican in the delegation. But Democratic Senate President Bill Ferguson blocked a vote before the legislature adjourned.   

The outcome of the dueling mid-decade redistricting fights remains to be seen. First, the effects won’t be clear until November, when we will see just how prescient those mapmakers really were. In Texas, for instance, two political scientists analyzed the electorate in the five new districts and concluded that Republican map drawers may have erred in assuming that the Hispanic vote from 2024 would remain strong in 2026. Recent polling shows substantial erosion for Trump among Hispanic voters, a shift the authors believe could slash the projected Republican pickup from five seats to just two.

And second, the Supreme Court has yet to decide what might be a landmark voting rights case: Louisiana v. Callais. The case asks whether Louisiana could, in accordance with the Voting Rights Act, split one majority African American congressional district into two, thus creating an additional Democratic seat. Their actions were challenged by a group that called themselves “non-African American voters” who argued that racial gerrymandering violated the 14th and 15th amendments.  

The arguments in the case reach far beyond the issue of an additional Democratic district for Louisiana. A decision in this case could permanently dismantle Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and affect many districts, especially in the South, that were drawn to ensure that Black voters were represented. While estimates vary, some say that a decision in this case could create up to 19 more Republican seats—either in 2026 or beyond.  

Finally, these battles are not over. In fact, historical data suggest that mid-decade redistricting is most common when congressional majorities are thin and fluctuate from one election to the next. In the turbulent years after Reconstruction and before the landslide election of 1896, which solidified Republican power for decades, mid-decade redistricting was common. With the two parties close, states frequently drew new maps mid-decade. Between 1878 and 1892, Ohio redrew its congressional district boundaries seven times, resulting in different maps for five consecutive House elections.    

The legal and political precedents set in 2026, in combination with razor-thin House margins, could usher in a new era of mid-decade redistricting as each party scrambles to carve out seats that will secure a majority.