Any move by Democrats in Springfield to engage in a redistricting tit-for-tat with Texas Republicans is unlikely to yield a bonanza of new Democratic congressional seats from Illinois, a top expert in redistricting predicts.
More than two dozen Texas Democratic lawmakers have sought refuge in Illinois to block a vote on a plan pushed by President Donald Trump to redraw the Lone Star state’s congressional boundaries. Texas’ effort could move up to five U.S. House seats now controlled by Democrats into Republican hands.
To blunt those possible GOP gains in Texas, Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker has hinted Illinois might try to make his party’s dominance of the state’s 17-member congressional delegation even more lopsided through a new round of redistricting.
How or if that would happen remains to be seen. But given the way Illinois’ current map was drawn four years ago, eking out another Democratic district could be a tall order. Democrats hold a 14-3 majority in Illinois’ congressional delegation.
“I don’t think anyone’s certain that it is [possible] at this point to add another Democratic district to the current map here,” said Ryan Tolley, executive director of CHANGE Illinois, a nonpartisan, nonprofit group that has pushed for redistricting reform.
Democrats’ options with downstate districts now held by Republican U.S. Reps. Mary Miller and Mike Bost appear limited. They are generally not near any major, Democratic-rich urban areas, and Trump ran up 40 percentage point advantages in each over Democrat Kamala Harris during last year’s presidential election.
The third GOP district now occupied by U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood is still decidedly Republican but less one-sided. It skirts Democratic-friendly areas of Rockford, Peoria and Bloomington-Normal, and Trump’s advantage over Harris last year stood at about 23 percentage points.
Last week, Pritzker did not rule out an effort to reconfigure those districts in response to Texas.
“When Republican states are more often gerrymandering than Democratic states are, it seems like all bets are off,” the governor said. “We’ve got to consider all the options when they’re trying to take democracy away.”
The government reform group, Common Cause, gave Illinois’ last redistricting effort a failing grade, one notch below the D- it gave to Texas. The group faulted the congressional maps put into place by Illinois and six other states “due to egregious partisan and racial gerrymandering.”
Still, Pritzker has accused Trump, in particular, of “cheating” with his open advocacy for Texas redoing its congressional boundaries to safeguard his power in Washington during next year’s midterm elections.
“He knows he’s going to lose the Congress in 2026. That’s why he’s going to his allies and hoping that they can save him. And we’ve all got to stand up against this,” Pritzker said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “This is — it’s cheating. Donald Trump is a cheater. He cheats on his wives. He cheats at golf. And now he’s trying to cheat the American people out of their votes.”
But the window to do something in Springfield is narrow. Nominating petitions for the March 17, 2026, primary election already are circulating, and candidates begin filing their election paperwork with the state in late October.
House Minority Leader Tony McCombie, R-Savanna, told WBEZ she doesn’t think Pritzker has the political power to force it, noting Democratic supermajorities in the Legislature stymied a couple of his past legislative priorities.
“If [Illinois House] Speaker [Emanuel Chris] Welch wants to do it, then it will be done,” she said of a possible redistricting effort.
Welch’s office told WBEZ this week that it’s currently not on the table.
“We have no[t] had any new conversations about new congressional maps in the House,” Welch spokesman Jon Maxson said.
If Pritzker and Illinois Democrats do answer Texas with a new round of redistricting aimed at Illinois Republicans, Tolley worries about the impact of a political tit-for-tat.
“This fighting fire with fire? We’re just going to end up disenfranchising more and more people,” he said.
Alex Degman is based in Springfield and covers Illinois government and politics for WBEZ.