After widespread defeats in final week’s off-year elections, Republicans ought to understand they made a foul wager by following President Donald Trump’s lead on mid-decade redistricting.
Determined to not lose the Home within the midterms, the president sought to rig the sport. He pressured legislatures in pink states to create new Republican-leaning districts, and lawmakers duly redrew their maps. That weakened some protected pink seats, however the GOP assumed that it could harm Democrats extra.
Final Tuesday’s outcomes display the folly of Trump’s gamble.
Wake-up name
Trump’s 2024 coalition is crumbling. To win in less-red Republican districts, the celebration will want all of the voters Trump pulled collectively to realize his 1.5 proportion level victory in 2024 — younger males, Latino voters and his MAGA base. However exit polls present that within the governors’ races in each Virginia and New Jersey, males and Latino voters deserted the GOP in large numbers, and in races throughout the nation, many supported Democrats.
In New Jersey, 68% of Latino voters broke for Democrat Mikie Sherrill. So did 56% of males below the age of 30. In Virginia, 67% of Latino voters went for Democrat Abigail Spanberger. So did 57% of males below 30. Many of those voters had voted for Trump final yr. The exit polls present that each Sherrill and Spanberger gained 7% of Trump’s 2024 voters, with Sherrill getting a whopping 18% of Trump’s Hispanic help within the state.
“This is our wake-up call,” stated U.S. Consultant Maria Salazar, a Miami Republican in a two minute post-election rant on X. “If the GOP does not deliver, we will lose the Hispanic vote all over the country, and unfortunately, it happened last night in New Jersey and Virginia.”
For months, Republicans bragged that Trump had captured 48% of the Latino vote throughout the nation in 2024. They assumed these voters would stick with them in 2026, and that grew to become a part of the GOP’s calculations in Texas to create 5 further Republican congressional seats.
That gambit is a traditional instance of taking Latino votes as a right, Mike Madrid, a Republican political guide, instructed me in August.
“This is a pocketbook, economic, working-class voter,” he stated. Assuming their help for Trump in 2024 was proof of a everlasting realignment was “believing their own press clippings here, which is dangerous,” he stated on the time.
In a Substack publish on Friday, Madrid may inform readers: “Told you so.” The Latino vote shift that helped construct Democrats’ blue wave final week “isn’t a realignment. It’s a dealignment,” he stated. Latino voters had been punishing the celebration in energy for his or her financial ache.
Trump’s disappearing coalition is simply a part of the president’s redistricting downside. The president’s efficiency is weighing GOP candidates down like an anchor at the same time as Democrats are buoyed by a brand new wave of enthusiasm.
The Republican gubernatorial candidates in New Jersey and Virginia misplaced by double digits. In Georgia, Democrats flipped two statewide Georgia Public Service Fee races by 25-point margins. In Pennsylvania, they held onto three Supreme Court docket retention contests. In final week’s Miami mayoral race, Democrats turned out in numbers that had been 14 factors greater than the presidential election final yr and opened the door for a Democrat to take management of the workplace for the primary time in 28 years, stated Matt Isbell, of MCI Maps, a Democratic information guide.
Republicans are hardly going to confess it, however they need to consider whether or not Trump’s push to ignite a redistricting arms race could have made it simpler for a blue wave to wipe out extra Republicans than if they’d left their maps alone.
Ohio Republicans have already minimize their losses. They accredited a map drawn by the state’s bipartisan redistricting fee that makes comparatively minor modifications to the present plan and permits Democrats to maintain their 5 seats within the 15-member delegation.
Kansas Republicans have additionally backed down. State Home Speaker Dan Hawkins stated on Tuesday that his chamber lacked sufficient help to name a particular legislative session to redraw the Home seat of U.S. Consultant Sharice Davids, the one Democrat within the state’s four-person congressional delegation.
The subsequent place to observe is Indiana, the place Senate Republican management has publicly stated they don’t have the votes to cross new maps, regardless of intense strain from Governor Mike Braun and the White Home.
Right down to DeSantis
That leaves Florida, the place Republican Governor Ron DeSantis is on a mission to get lawmakers to redistrict 5 of the eight districts Democrats maintain in Congress, which might weaken neighboring GOP seats in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa and Orlando.
As with the Texas gerrymander, Florida Republicans danger weakening pink districts that swung from Biden in 2020 to Trump in 2024 and “could just swing back,’’ Isbell told me. “I don’t expect Florida to go Democratic in the general election, but there are a lot of congressional seats that are swingy, and if you start screwing around with them and Democrats really surge, it’s going to make a big difference.”
Virginia Democrats, who swept Tuesday’s elections, additionally introduced they might attempt to amend their state’s structure to permit them to realize management over three of the districts held by Republicans. And New York and Colorado are additionally contemplating coming into the redistricting warfare. If Democrats comply with via, they might create as much as 30 further seats that favor Democrats — and primarily match the variety of districts Republicans say they might acquire in the event that they succeed with gerrymandering efforts in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Indiana, Ohio and Florida.
The underside line: There isn’t a assure that the voters that confirmed up in 2024 goes to be the one which goes to the polls in 2026. As a substitute of securing further seats in Congress, Trump’s redistricting gamble appears prefer it would possibly simply boomerang again on him.
Mary Ellen Klas is a politics and coverage columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. ©2025 Bloomberg. Distributed by Tribune Content material Company.
