Midterm elections put redrawn congressional districts to the test
Redrawn congressional districts face a critical test in the upcoming midterm elections as the battle for control of the House heats up. Bill Hemmer breaks down the balance of power, focusing on critical changes in California, Florida and Texas. He analyzes October 2026 polling data showing a 12-point shift among Hispanic voters.
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Under intense pressure from the White House and conservative activists, Indiana Republicans resisted an effort to redraw the state’s congressional map to favor the GOP ahead of the midterms. Now, with Republicans reeling from major election losses, a state lawmaker who helped block the plan believes the opposition may have spared Indiana’s GOP delegation a political wipeout.
President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance pushed Republican-led states to redraw congressional maps mid-decade, but the strategy failed to deliver several anticipated pickups as Democrats flipped seats previously considered safely Republican.
Indiana Senate President Pro Tempore Rod Bray, R-Martinsville, who helped lead opposition to the proposed redraw, told Digital that the plan could have devastated the state’s Republican congressional delegation.
“[H]ad we made a change to redistricting, we’d’ve ended up with something like 8-1 or 7-2 [favoring Democrats] — I really do believe that,” Bray said.
REDISTRICTING EFFORTS BLOW UP IN REPUBLICANS’ FACES AMID HISTORIC HOUSE LOSSES
Former RNC chair Michael Whatley, left, meets with Rep. Tim Moore, R-N.C., in Gastonia, N.C. (Cornell Watson/Getty Images)
Vance personally pressed Indiana Republicans to redraw their congressional districts, visiting Indianapolis twice and meeting privately with lawmakers, including Bray. Trump also advocated for a redraw and singled out Bray while warning Republican holdouts that they could face MAGA-backed primary challengers. Digital contacted the White House and the vice president’s office for comment but did not receive a response before publication.
North Carolina offered a prominent example of the risks Republican mapmakers faced as Democrats won districts the GOP had expected to hold.
Former North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore, R-Kings Mountain, helped engineer the state’s Republican-friendly redistricting strategy, only to lose his own congressional seat to Democratic political newcomer LaKesha Womack. Moore did not respond to a request for comment.
National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Richard Hudson, R-N.C., who led House Republicans’ campaign arm, also lost his Fort Bragg-area seat to former West Virginia state Sen. Richard Ojeda. Democratic Rep. Don Davis, meanwhile, survived despite the addition of Republican-leaning areas such as Emerald Isle and Down East to his district.
Western Carolina University political scientist Chris Cooper warned before the election that North Carolina Republicans risked spreading their voters too thin.
A representative looks at a congressional redistricting map during debate of a congressional redistricting plan in the House Chamber at the Capitol in Austin on Aug. 20, 2025. (Jay Janner/The Austin American-Statesman via Getty Images)
“They can’t spread too much thinner, or else they’ll be at risk of what folks call a dummymander, where you end up hurting yourself,” Cooper told Axios in April.
In Florida, Democratic Reps. Jared Moskowitz and Lois Frankel, whose district includes Mar-a-Lago, survived despite redistricting efforts intended to improve Republican prospects. Democrat Pia Dandiya also won a redrawn district near Lake Okeechobee considered a “Trump +10” seat.
In Texas, Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez also survived in districts along the U.S.-Mexico border that Republicans had sought to make more favorable to their candidates.
Those results suggest that Republican redistricting failed to produce several anticipated pickups. Whether the strategy actually cost the party seats, however, remains a separate question from whether a broader Democratic wave overwhelmed districts that had become more Republican on paper.
“Given how the newly proposed maps would have added even more Democratic voters in seemingly safe Republican districts, it is possible the redistricting, had it gone through, would backfire and actually would have given Democrats more seats,” University of Indianapolis political scientist Laura Merrifield Wilson told Digital.
Voters overwhelmingly agreed that congressional district lines should be drawn by a nonpartisan commission ()
Wilson noted that Democrats flipped only one of Indiana’s nine congressional districts.
“As it was, they did flip (Rep. Victoria Spartz’) IN-5 from red to blue and that was a district that was considered ‘solid Republican’ at the beginning of this election cycle,” Wilson said.
“Adding more Democratic voters to those Republican districts could have actually tipped the scales in favor of the Democratic candidates.”
Bray explained why he believed the rejected map would have put more Republican seats at risk.
“If you take the Democrat strongholds in the state of Indiana that are Marion County and obviously Northwest Indiana, and then you spread those out amongst all the congressional districts among the state, by definition you’re going to weaken these other congressional districts,” Bray said.
He added that redrawing district boundaries would also force Republican incumbents to campaign in unfamiliar territory, potentially weakening their existing fundraising and constituent networks.
Resisting the White House came with political consequences for Indiana Republicans. Wilson noted that most Republican state senators who opposed the redraw and subsequently faced primary challenges lost their races, with Sens. Greg Goode, R-Terre Haute, and Spencer Deery, R-West Lafayette, among the exceptions.
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“The redistricting debacle proved to be a waste of time, energy, and money,” she told Digital.
Bray said he believed resisting the redraw was worthwhile.
“There was an immense amount of political capital spent on both sides of this darn thing,” Bray said. “It was not a good idea to start, at least from my perspective.”
“Indiana didn’t want it,” he added. “I think the results would have been far worse had we done it. So it was worthwhile. Yes.”
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The election leaves Republicans confronting two possible explanations: Their aggressive redistricting may have spread GOP voters too thin, exposing previously safe seats, or the Democratic wave may simply have been too powerful for even Republican-friendly maps to withstand. For Indiana Republicans who resisted Trump’s demands, the results offer a measure of vindication, though the consequences of adopting the rejected map remain uncertain.
“You can get far too cute with redistricting if you want to, and some folks think that they have the means or the science to just draw maps and come up with a result that they can guarantee,” Bray said. “That is not the case.”
“We continue to hold elections for a reason. Because sometimes the results are not exactly what we expect.”
