KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE
— The overall national redistricting fight clearly tilted toward Republicans following their twin legal victories in the U.S. Supreme Court’s Callais case and in the Supreme Court of Virginia’s Friday decision to overturn a Democratic gerrymandering effort there on process grounds.
— Five House ratings move toward the Republicans following a sharpened GOP gerrymander in Tennessee and as Virginia reverted to its old map. Democrats do still have targets on the old Virginia map, though.
— The House map has taken on a larger GOP bias as a result of redistricting, although when it’s all said and done, the bias by one measure may essentially be the same as it was in 2018, when Democrats easily won the House.
Table 1: House rating changes
District
Old Rating
New Rating
Steve Cohen (D, TN-9)
Safe Democratic
Safe Republican
Ben Cline (R, VA-6)
Leans Democratic
Safe Republican
Jen Kiggans (R, VA-2)
Leans Democratic
Toss-up
John McGuire (R, VA-5)
Likely Democratic
Likely Republican
Rob Wittman (R, VA-1)
Likely Democratic
Leans Republican
The House map’s red tint
Friday morning’s bombshell, 4-3 decision from the Virginia Supreme Court ruling that Virginia Democrats did not follow the proper procedure in advance of setting up a statewide vote to allow them to gerrymander the state gave Republicans an edge in the redistricting wars, an edge that may expand a bit more before all is said and done.
While Virginia Democrats attempted a Hail Mary appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, and a New York Times report suggested that they were mulling very aggressive action to fight back against the ruling, it seems like what was going on among Virginia Democrats over the weekend was effectively venting as opposed to concrete planning. On Monday, Virginia state Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell (D) threw cold water on the idea of trying to implement the new map for 2026.
So Virginia appears as though it will be using the same map it used in 2022 and 2024 in November, and the rating changes above reflect that map.
The Democratic map would’ve made them favorites to varying degrees to flip four additional seats in Virginia. Under the current map, they have probably at least a 50-50 chance to defeat Rep. Jen Kiggans (R, VA-2) in a perennial battleground Toss-up Virginia Beach-based district; some chance of unseating veteran Rep. Rob Wittman (R, VA-1) in a historically Republican but Democratic-trending Peninsula-to-Richmond Leans Republican district; and a longshot chance to unseat Rep. John McGuire (R, VA-5) in a Likely Republican Central Virginia district.
Meanwhile, Republicans got the first of what should be several seats as the result of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Callais decision that effectively eliminates protections for majority-minority districts. Tennessee Republicans quickly carved up the Memphis-based TN-9, held by Rep. Steve Cohen (D). Map 1, from my colleague J. Miles Coleman, shows the two-party 2024 presidential results on the new map as well as the 2018 Senate results. That latter race, won by now-Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) against former Gov. Phil Bredesen (D) by a little over 10 points, represents the most respectable recent statewide showing for a Democrat in a major race.
Map 1: New Tennessee House map
Notice that Donald Trump won all 9 districts by at least 20 points. Additionally, note how the map “stress tests” against the 2018 Senate race: 3 of the 9 districts were extremely close in that race, although Blackburn carried the trio by less than half a point apiece. If Bredesen couldn’t carry any of these districts even in 2018, it seems highly unlikely any other Democrat could in 2026. This map puts all of these districts out of range for Democrats in almost all if not all imaginable circumstances, and we rate them all as Safe Republican.
The creation of the Tennessee map paired with the erasure of the Virginia map does tilt the overall House playing field red.
In our own ratings, the topline now has a light red hue, with 211 districts at least Leans Republican, 208 at least Leans Democratic, and 16 Toss-ups.
However, we do still think the Democrats are favored overall in the House, particularly if the environment does not improve for Republicans.
Remember that the election is still half a year away, and we can easily imagine many of the Toss-ups—as well as some of the districts where Republicans appear to be favored today—moving toward the Democrats over time.
In the short term, Republicans may be adding a few more seats to their tally: It is possible that Alabama, Louisiana, and South Carolina could flip a currently blue seat red before it’s all said and done. Additionally, there are still outstanding legal questions about GOP-drawn maps in Florida and Missouri. Florida’s state constitution does have fairly clear anti-gerrymandering provisions that one could reasonably argue that the new Republican gerrymander there violates, but the Florida Supreme Court is packed with allies of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), so that court very well may not rule against the map either in 2026 or into the future. Missouri’s map, meanwhile, appears likely to be the subject of a voter referendum, but there is an ongoing legal fight about whether the new map would be used in 2026 regardless of the referendum. So there’s a lot in flux, and perhaps even in states beyond those mentioned.
Still, let’s take a look at where the map sits now and assume legal action doesn’t change any currently-approved map. This accounts for the new maps in California, Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah.
We have been tracking the “median House seat,” which is the district right in the middle when one orders all 435 districts from where Donald Trump did the best in 2024 to where Kamala Harris did the best. The median seat is a way of measuring the partisan bias of the House as a whole.
Prior to any redistricting, the median seat was AZ-1, a suburban Phoenix seat held by Rep. David Schweikert (R), who is running for governor. It backed Trump by about 3 points while Trump won nationally by 1.5 points. So the median seat was 1.5 points to the right of the nation, indicating a very modest Republican bias.
The new House map’s median seat, as of today, is either WI-1, a southeast Wisconsin seat held by Rep. Bryan Steil (R, WI-1), or Rep. Zach Nunn’s (R, IA-3) Des Moines-based district: Both voted for Trump by 4.5 points. So the median House seat is about 3 points to the right of the nation.
It is possible that this will move a few more seats to the right based on pending redistricting elsewhere in the South, so it may be that the median seat is one that Trump won by more like 5 to 5.5 points.
Let’s say that median seat ends up 4 points to the right of the nation (so voting for Trump by 5.5 points). Interestingly, if the median House seat was 4 points to the right of the nation compared to the 2024 presidential results, that actually would be the same Republican bias as when Democrats won the House in 2018, at least based on this measure.
Back then, the median House seat was the Omaha-based NE-2, which had backed Trump by about 2 points in the 2016 election while Trump had lost the national popular vote by about 2 points, a roughly 4-point Republican bias.
Under such circumstances, and using their own analysis and assumptions about where the map ends up, analysts such as Nate Cohn and G. Elliott Morris suggested over the weekend that Democrats probably would need to win the House popular vote by 4 points to feel good about flipping the House. Democrats’ lead in House generic ballot polling now is more like 6 points, and Republicans face a number of big-picture headaches as Trump’s approval rating has dipped a bit under 40% and economic pessimism reigns.
This helps explain why the House still seems quite winnable for Democrats despite their significant recent setbacks in redistricting. Republicans have on balance improved their position on the House map, but not yet in such a way that they could reasonably be expected to defend the House majority in the event of a 2018-style Democratic performance (or a performance that is still strong for Democrats but not as strong).
Republicans, however, could defend the House if the environment is more like 2022, when they won the majority, but not by much.
(We plan to look at more comparisons between the 2018 and 2026 maps in a future issue, particularly when the dust settles on redistricting—assuming it ever does.)
