What the Gerrymandering Wars Mean for the Midterms—and 2028

Nate Cohn is the chief political analyst for the New York Timeswhere he also oversees the newspaper’s polling operations. However, I wanted to talk with him this week about another topic he writes about: redistricting wars. They have once again leaned toward Republicans in recent weeks, after a controversial Supreme Court ruling and a setback for Democrats in Virginia, where they were blocked from passing their own gerrymander in hopes of thwarting successful redistricting efforts in Republican-majority states across the country. I also wanted Cohn, with whom I worked at The New Republicand who remains a friend, to provide a sense of how battles over redistricting are likely to play out in upcoming election cycles, and what those battles could mean for 2028 and beyond. Our conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below.

Over the past month, we have had a Supreme Court decision regarding the Voting Rights Act and several steps taken by Republican states to create safe congressional districts.

So, as you may recall, in 2025, Donald Trump launched a very unusual, if not unprecedented, mid-cycle campaign in which he sought to encourage Republican states to redraw their maps to the Republican advantage. A whole series of Republican states followed this path in the months that followed, foremost among them Texas, North Carolina and Florida. And it will likely give Republicans a significant number of seats in the House. What I think Republicans didn’t expect was that, earlier this year, Democrats appeared to be able to overturn those potentially lost congressional seats with their own gerrymanders in Virginia and California. But, over the past two weeks, this basic picture of Republican gerrymanders, largely undone by Democratic gerrymanders, has changed.

First, the Supreme Court significantly reduced the power of the Voting Rights Act and specifically gave states the ability to dismantle majority-minority districts, provided it was done for a “partisan” purpose. This allowed a number of Southern states to move forward in a whole new wave of gerrymandering, beyond what they were previously capable of attempting. We’ll see what the final tally is, but it’s possible that five or more seats currently held by Democrats could be flipped by this effort.

And then the second half of that is the Virginia Supreme Court struck down the new state map, which could potentially cost Democrats up to four seats. So between those two things, the balance of gerrymandering shifted quite sharply to the right. The impasse that existed has been broken and the Republicans now appear likely to gain a significant advantage heading into the midterm elections.

There are a few states that are still working on things, but you’ve calculated that, as things stand, the Democrats will probably have to win the national popular vote in the House of Representatives by about four points to prevail, right?

That’s correct. In this calculation, Republicans will have continued to dismantle majority-black districts held by Democrats in South Carolina, Alabama and Louisiana. In these three states, it is not necessarily a foregone conclusion that the Republicans will eliminate each of these Democratic seats, but given the Republicans’ conduct to this point, I would expect at least some of these Democratic districts to be eliminated.

There’s still a lot to do before the midterms because we’re so close to the elections, but can Southern Republican states do more in the next election to erase more minority-majority districts and give themselves even more seats?

There are many other districts that Republicans can try to eliminate before the 2028 election and will not try to eliminate before this one. One reason is that there are a number of Southern states where Republicans control the redistricting process but where primary elections have already been held, such as Texas and North Carolina.

A second factor is that the 2026 elections are looking pretty good for Democrats, which could prompt some caution in Republican gerrymandering efforts thus far.

RIGHT. In Texas, Republicans gave themselves what they thought were five more likely seats, but polls suggest there could be a Democratic wave this year, so it’s possible those five seats won’t vote Republican. And other states might not want to take similar risks.

Yeah. They could have gone further if the Supreme Court had restricted the power of the Voting Rights Act’s requirement before redistricting. They could have made several of the state’s majority-Latino districts even more Republican and essentially put them out of the game. And then the second thing to consider is that because the 2026 midterm elections are shaping up to be very Democratic, Republicans may not want to go too far, lest it endanger some of their own seats.

What can Democrats do in the future and what do you expect from them? I’ve heard ideas suggesting that blue states could go even further in places like California – which already created more blue districts last year – could try to adopt a map where all fifty-two districts would likely be blue. How realistic is all this?

This question is difficult to answer because, in most blue states, Democrats face significant constitutional obstacles to attracting even more serious gerrymanders. Just to take the California example you mentioned: California already had to amend the state constitution last year to create more blue districts. There are other blue states where more aggressive redistricting efforts would take equally aggressive action. New York and Colorado are good examples of states where Democrats could potentially create more blue seats, but to do that they would have to amend the state constitution, and we don’t know if they can do that, or how soon they could do that, because many states have different provisions for how to amend their state constitution. Some of these processes do not allow them to act quickly.

We just saw it in Virginia. Virginia tried to change its state constitution, and the state Supreme Court stepped in and said it didn’t follow the correct procedure, so Democrats would go back to the drawing board. They’re appealing to the Supreme Court, but I think they have an argument, interesting to say the least, that the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision depends on an interpretation of what “election day” means; there’s maybe a one in a hundred or a tenth of a percent chance that the Supreme Court will hear their case on this. It’s far more likely that Virginia Democrats will have to try again in the next election cycle with another vote to amend the state constitution and another referendum to try to get voters to draw a more aggressive map.