Portside

As Americans have physically sorted themselves along ideological lines and as Big Data has dug into voting preferences on practically a house-by-house basis, it can be compelling to suggest that cartographers hold a skeleton key to U.S. elections. That’s definitely the assumption underlying the Trump administration’s red-state redistricting tour, which has already stormed through Texas, has dates booked in Florida, Missouri, Ohio, and possibly Indiana (whose leaders still sound indifferent on moving ahead), and is lying in wait for a Supreme Court go-ahead to shred other parts of the South.

In short, Trump and his allies are trying to erect impregnable walls around their own unpopularity; you can call it an attempt to steal the midterm election. But the universe of voters changes from year to year, and even in today’s polarized political environment, individuals change their minds. Exercises in mapmaking can amount to fighting the last war, with old information not fit to the current circumstances. That’s particularly true with new maps that are largely predicated on Donald Trump’s 2024 overperformance, particularly with Latino voters.

How much of an overperformance 2024 was, or whether it sparked a new realignment in American politics, is the key question. “Democratic performance writ large is almost certainly going to improve from 2024,” said Katherine Fischer, director of Texas Majority PAC, which seeks to elect more Democrats in the state. “To what extent, anyone who tells you is guessing or lying.”

It follows that slotting seats into red or blue corners based on one potentially ahistorical election is a dangerous play for Republicans, especially with the smaller, more engaged electorate that in increasing numbers opposes this president and his actions. The national political environment can overwhelm even the most data-heavy efforts by politicians to choose their voters.

Democrats aren’t relying solely on a blue wave to overpower gerrymandering. California’s redistricting election is on track for victory, according to Democratic pollsters. Maryland may take action to nullify a Republican seat. And gerrymandered congressional maps in Utah, in defiance of an anti-gerrymandering ballot measure, were finally ruled illegal by a state judge, who required the state to draw new maps that don’t crack liberal Salt Lake County four ways, a situation that will almost certainly create one solid-blue seat.

But Democratic fortunes in 2026 can also be tied to the instability of the Latino voting shift, particularly in Texas. Three of the five new “Republican” seats created in Texas remain contested territory; while Trump won all of them by double digits, in the same election, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) did not reach 52 percent in any of those seats. So Trump’s popularity is not automatically transferrable down the ballot even when he appears on it, and he won’t next year.

Exercises in mapmaking can amount to fighting the last war, with old information not fit to the current circumstances.

Those districts are all heavily Latino. TX-28 (90 percent Latino) and TX-34 (77 percent), two Rio Grande Valley seats, are currently held by Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, respectively. The new TX-35 (53 percent Latino), formerly a Democratic vote sink that stretched from San Antonio to Austin, is now a San Antonio–only seat that incorporates some of the city and its suburbs, along with outlying red counties. Joe Biden won both the new TX-28 and TX-34 districts in 2020, and only lost TX-35 by 1.9 points.

Trump’s Latino support shifted at least 13 points from 2016 to 2024; he shifted some Biden 2020 voters and took a large share of first-time voters. But House Republicans sharply underperformed Trump. And today, Latinos are snapping back away from Trump. An Equis Research poll from July showed Trump’s job approval among Latinos at just 35 percent, and one-third of Latino Trump supporters are thinking of voting Democratic in 2026. That number rises to half of Biden 2020–Trump 2024 voters. Other polling picks up similar trends.

That really changes how to think about districts with large numbers of Latinos. As Eli McKown-Dawson’s numbers show, if Texas Democrats win Hispanic voters 53-47 next year—Kamala Harris lost those voters to Trump 55-45—they would hold onto TX-28 and TX-34 and be a coin toss in TX-35. “If Latinos move somewhere in the middle of where they were in 2024 and in 2018, they won’t win some districts,” Fischer said.

In its redistricting analysis, Texas Majority PAC gave Cuellar a very good chance to retain his seats, Gonzalez a fighting chance, and even put TX-15, the other South Texas seat held by Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz, in play with the right candidate. Bobby Pulido, the likely Democratic nominee in TX-15, fits the profile, Texas Majority PAC added, though he would be a long shot.

Republicans didn’t weaken any of their incumbents, and the map cannot totally backfire. But the absolute best-case scenario for Democrats would be a Republican gain of just one seat in Texas. A more realistic optimistic scenario is Republicans +3, still substantially better than the R+5 expectation.

TX-35 could be more likely to flip to the Democrats in future years, as new voters migrate in. “New movers into the state are more Democratic than the current electorate,” Fischer said. “San Antonio is one of the fastest-growing cities in Texas … It is a thing Texas Republicans have dealt with in the past, they draw maps and in two to four years they look way different.”

Democrats still must persuade these swingy voters, which is not guaranteed. Indeed, the California maps that could move up to five seats into the Democratic column are similarly predicated on Latino voters coming home to Democrats. Swing-seat Democrats across the state are being shored up by getting an influx of Latino voters. If there really is a realignment, that won’t pan out; indeed, Latino support for Democrats in California has been steadily eroding.

The information we have to go on right now involves premature polling and unrepresentative special elections. Democrats have been tearing up special elections, winning a state Senate seat in Iowa this week with a 22-point swing from Trump’s performance in 2024; that now denies Republicans in the chamber a supermajority. But that Democratic winner only received 4,200 votes; a low-turnout, off-year August election should not be used to forecast a midterm. Generic ballot tests are starting to trend toward Democrats by as much as eight points, and those do have predictive power. But the consensus polling is closer to three points, and it’s still early days.

Democrats are concerned about their collapse in voter registration over the past four years, which has continued. But Texas Majority PAC sees that as a lagging indicator, where you would expect the party in power to gain ground after a big victory. They plan to engage in a targeted voter registration drive in Texas (the largest in state history, they claim) to pick up Democratic-leaning voters and persuade them to turn out.

Some of the uncertainty for the midterms involves how far gerrymandering will actually go. The Supreme Court is hearing arguments on October 15 on whether to obliterate what remains of the Voting Rights Act, opening the door for diluting racial minorities in congressional districts. Louisiana, whose maps are at issue in the case, has already scheduled a special session just in case the Supreme Court moves quickly, and the ripple effects would reverberate throughout the South. (This could also save the Texas maps, which even with some of the heavy minority participation are under a lawsuit claiming that they violate the racial gerrymander section of the Voting Rights Act.)

But there are some limits to unfair maps, even in the worst-case scenario. If voters are unhappy with Trump and display their anger next November, maps are unlikely to stop the House from flipping.

David Dayen is the Prospect’s executive editor. His work has appeared in The Intercept, The New Republic, HuffPost, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and more. His most recent book is ‘Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power.’

The American Prospect is devoted to promoting informed discussion on public policy from a progressive perspective. In print and online, the Prospect brings a narrative, journalistic approach to complex issues, addressing the policy alternatives and the politics necessary to create good legislation. We help to dispel myths, challenge conventional wisdom, and expand the dialogue.

Founded by Robert Kuttner, Paul Starr, and Robert Reich, read the original 1989 prospectus for the magazine.

To learn more about our history, check out this 2015 piece by Starr and Kuttner, reflecting on 25 years of politics and change.

American Prospect, Inc., is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation headquartered in Washington, D.C.

You can support our mission with a subscription or a tax-deductible donation.