The battle for control of congress isn’t just happening at the ballot box—it’s happening on maps. Lawmakers in Texas and California are in the middle of a gerrymandering war: Governors Gavin Newsom (D - CA) and Greg Abbott (R - TX) are attempting to exploit districting laws to redraw maps to favor their respective parties ahead of the 2026 midterm elections that threaten the slim Republican majorities.
There are 435 seats in the House of Representatives, and each one represents a district within states. Gerrymandering is when you redraw these district borders (i.e. redistricting) to optimize one party’s chances of winning. This is often done by grouping high concentrations of the opposing party into few, oddly shaped districts, leaving more districts with majorities for the favored party that don’t represent the other party fairly. This leaves one party with a vast majority of seats in the House despite only a small difference in voters.
While Republican-led states typically are ranked worse on Gerrymandering (e.g. The Princeton Gerrymandering Project), both Democratic and Republican state legislators have long participated in gerrymandering.
In the past, gerrymandering was typically “secretive” (attempts are fairly obvious, but the favored party would not admit it). But now, both California and Texas are openly seeking more seats.
For nearly the past hundred years, it has been standard for states to only redistrict after the census is collected in order to reflect changes in populations so they can maintain roughly equal populations in each district. However, in July, Texas legislators began an attempt to redistrict mid-decade, an extremely unusual move. But, they are open about the move being in order to take more seats in the House, with Trump even stating “We are entitled to 5 more seats” according to Politico. Knowing that the Texas Republican majority would pass the redistricted maps, Texas Democrats attempted to flee the state to stop the vote from happening, with the Texas House even sending out arrest warrants for the absent Democrats. They returned after two weeks believing they had succeeded in bringing national attention to the matter according to BBC.
How the new Texas map could affect voting results, based on the 2024 election results (via NPR)