2026 Redistricting War May Save GOP House

Though history says that Republicans are likely to lose control of the U.S. House of Representatives this November, the ongoing “redistricting war” in several key states has upended conventional wisdom – and could mean that the GOP retains its majority in the next Congress.

The redistricting war is, of course, the political struggle between Democrat and Republican states to gain an edge in the 2026 midterms by engaging in mid-decade redrawing of congressional districts. The focus is on increasing the number of safe seats controlled by each party in an attempt to impact the balance of power in the House.

To accomplish this goal, Republican legislatures in red states are drawing partisan maps that concentrate Democrat voters in as few districts as possible and diluting their strength in the remaining districts, while Democrats are doing the inverse in blue states.

But Republicans currently appear better positioned to prevail in this war. Here’s where things stand now.

Texas

The Lone Star State began the current spate of mid-decade redistricting by creating a new congressional map that will net Republicans up to five additional seats by targeting Democrat-held districts in areas around Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and the border. This was inevitably challenged by Democrats in court, but that effort ended on December 4, 2025, when the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling allowing Texas to use its new map for the 2026 elections.

This should give the GOP control of 30 of the state’s 38 districts. While Democrats accuse Republicans of abusing the system to gain an unfair political advantage, Republicans argue that Texas needs mid-decade redistricting since the state has gained millions of new residents since 2020, and thus the current maps are now unbalanced.

Additionally, national Republicans argue that increasing the share of Republican seats in Texas and other red states counteracts an unfair advantage enjoyed by California, Illinois, and New York due to the large population of illegal aliens in those blue states.

Ohio

The Buckeye State was required by law to create a new congressional map in 2025 because the one used in the 2022 and 2024 elections failed to garner enough bipartisan legislative support.

The new map was passed by the General Assembly in September 2025 and favors Republicans by netting the GOP at leasttwo additional seats. The Ohio Redistricting Commission unanimously passed this congressional map. This will likely hand Republicans control of 12 of the state’s 15 House seats.

North Carolina

The Tar Heel State adopted a new map in October 2025 that strengthened the partisan advantage already enjoyed by Republicans, and the GOP is expected to pick up two additional seats.

Like most of the new congressional maps favoring Republicans, this one faced a legal challenge from Democrats, but a federal appeals court ruled in late November that the state could use the redrawn congressional map in the 2026 midterms.

The result of this ruling will be to increase the state’s 10-4 Republican advantage to 12-2.

Missouri

Show-Me State lawmakers finalized a redistricting strategy in September 2025 designed to strengthen the current six to two Republican advantage by adding at least one seat. Republican Governor Mike Kehoe signed the new House map into law on September 28, 2025.

Democrats have filed three lawsuits and called for a referendum on the new map. For these challenges to succeed, they must be resolved by the March 31 candidate filing deadline, which is a de facto legal deadline for implementing new congressional maps.

Florida

Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has announced that he will call a special legislative session in April in order to “ensure that Florida’s congressional maps accurately reflect the population of our state.” The current partisan balance of the Sunshine State’s congressional delegation is 20 Republicans and six Democrats, and a new map will likely increase the Republican advantage by at least two seats.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, Democrats have already exhausted most of their redistricting opportunities by drastically redrawing their maps after the results of the 2020 census were released. Seven of 16 states where Democrats control the legislature and the governorship already have no Republican districts, and very few of the remaining nine have any chance of gaining seats. The exceptions where Democrats could pick up a few seats are California and Virginia.

California

Governor Gavin Newsom has grabbed a lot of headlines by denouncing the Texas redistricting plan. California was notably one of the first states to adopt anti-gerrymandering provisions to supposedly take mapmaking out of the hands of politicians (an effort that merely shifted mapmaking from elected liberal partisans to unelected liberal partisans who gerrymandered the state anyway).

At the behest of Democrat leaders in Sacramento, California voters nonetheless passed Prop 50 last November. Officially titled the “Election Rigging Response Act,” Democrats sold it to voters as a “direct response to the partisan power grab orchestrated by President Trump and state leaders in Texas.”

But Prop 50 is in some jeopardy. On January 23, the Trump DOJ asked the Supreme Court to block California’s new congressional map from taking effect because it is riddled with racially gerrymandered districts. The Court is considering the case even now.

Virginia

A high-profile redistricting battle has also burst onto the scene in Virginia. Currently, Democrats control six of the Commonwealth’s 11 U.S. House districts, while Republicans control the other five. But Democrats are now attempting to enact a 10-1 map that would net Democrats four seats.

That effort has also run into legal trouble, however.

In 2020, more than 65 percent of Virginia voters passed a constitutional amendment that created the Virginia Redistricting Commission (VRC), taking redistricting out of the hands of politicians in Richmond. As a result, if Democrats want to draw new maps now, they will need to win approval from voters on another constitutional amendment changing the mapmaking process again.

According to the Virginia Constitution, both chambers of the legislature must pass a proposed amendment twice, with an election in between the votes. Then, the governor must sign off on it before it is officially placed on a ballot for voters to approve or deny.

Democrats rushed a first vote on the proposed amendment last October, followed by an election in November that saw the party pick up seats in the House and Democrat Abigail Spanberger win the governorship. Things appeared set for an April special election on the amendment.

But then came a bombshell ruling from Circuit Court Judge Jack Hurley last week. Hurley agreed with Republicans that Democrats had failed to follow proper procedure on their first vote on the amendment last October, and thus the requirements of the Virginia Constitution had not been met.

Undeterred, Democrats went ahead and passed the amendment through the State Senate anyway, sending it to Governor Spanberger’s desk for approval. They have pledged to appeal the ruling.

Now, the future of Virginia’s redistricting effort will likely be in the hands of the Virginia Supreme Court. While the court’s seven justices are nominally nonpartisan, four are seen as “Republican” picks, while three are seen as “Democrat” picks. This could be bad news for Democrats’ hopes of a redistricting victory in the Old Dominion.

Unless both California and Virginia resolve their legal hurdles soon enough to use their new maps in 2026, Republicans are likely to emerge from the redistricting war with eight to ten pick-ups. Moreover, it’s possible that the U.S. Supreme Court could issue a ruling soon in Louisiana v. Callais striking down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. This could result in the redrawing of ten additional “majority-minority” districts in Republican states.

Either of these outcomes would very likely allow the GOP to defy history and hold the House in November.

David Catron is a Senior Editor at the American Spectator. His writing has also appeared in PJ Media, the American Thinker, the Providence Journal, the Catholic Exchange and a variety of other publications.