The redistricting wars are in full swing. Texas Republicans say the new map they’re pushing through the state legislature could get the GOP an additional five seats in the House of Representatives. In response, Democrats in California have unveiled their own plan to redraw the Golden State’s maps and give them the upper hand. Similar battles are breaking out in Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois.
But Democrats just have fewer places than the GOP to pull off these maneuvers and, even where they are in control of state government, are more likely to face institutional obstacles like nonpartisan commissions specifically designed to prevent gerrymandering, the practice of deliberately drawing district lines to favor one party over the other. Therefore, the net results of these moves and countermoves are likely to favor the GOP.
How badly could all this hurt the Democrats in 2026? In all likelihood, not very. As The New York Times’ Nate Cohn has pointed out, other factors that make the midterm environment favorable to the Democrats will likely swamp the effects of any pro-GOP redistricting. As he notes, even with a Texas redistricting, the 2026 midterm map favors Democrats even more than the 2018 map, when the party won over 40 House seats in a major repudiation of Trump and the GOP.
But Democrats shouldn’t be panicking about this—yet. Their problems lie far deeper and go way beyond the marginal House seat in the 2026 election. Indeed, the garment-rending about the GOP’s redistricting efforts misses the harm done to Democrats by the continuing concentration of their partisans in ever-less competitive districts.
What I mean by that is that most Democrats in the House don’t have to worry about Republicans ever taking their jobs. Truly competitive swing districts are going extinct, thanks in large part to Democrats and Republicans moving away from each other, or what political scientists call “self-sorting.”
If anything, incumbent Democratic lawmakers only have to worry about challenges from other Democrats coming at them from the left. This is a problem for a number of reasons, not least of which is that there’s very little motivation for most of them to appear at all moderate.
