By Mary Ellen McIntire, CQ-Roll Call
WASHINGTON — The redistricting fights that underscored this year’s battle for the House could continue into the 2028 election cycle, although lessons from last Tuesday will likely shape those efforts.
House Republicans had hoped that new congressional maps in seven states would help them limit losses in the face of an unfavorable political environment. But nearly a week after the election, the GOP appeared on track to flip just three redrawn seats while losing a host of seats in Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Alabama that were reconfigured in their favor.
“The question is whether the results have let some air out of the (redistricting) balloon or not,” said Erik Nisbet, a professor at Northwestern University’s School of Communication.
Republicans may question the utility of redrawing more state maps in the 2028 cycle, while Democrats will need to weigh how to spend their political capital. But the new lines approved over the past year could still prove more favorable for Republicans in future elections.
“This was a wave election, and there’s no guarantee that the Democratic generic ballot would be D+13 — which is the reason why redistricting didn’t work for Republicans — in the next cycle,” Nisbet added.
New maps appear possible, if not likely, in at least a few states. Maryland voters last week approved an amendment that would clear the way for new boundaries ahead of the 2028 elections. Democratic Gov. Wes Moore, who easily won a second term last week, said he hopes to see a new map, citing the threat of President Donald Trump continuing to push for friendlier lines in GOP-led states. Maryland Democrats could draw a map that would favor them in all eight of the state’s House seats, including the Eastern Shore district of Rep. Andy Harris, the state’s lone Republican in Congress.
Advocates for a new map in Wisconsin got a boost last week when Democrats flipped both the state House and state Senate, setting up a Democratic trifecta. Gov.-elect David Crowley said he would sign a bill redrawing the state’s congressional map if legislators sent one to his desk.
Republicans in recent years have had a lopsided edge in the congressional delegation for Wisconsin, a perennial battleground state. But Democrats flipped two House seats last week, with Rebecca Cooke and Mitchell Berman unseating GOP Reps. Derrick Van Orden and Bryan Steil, respectively, bringing the state delegation to an even 4-4.
Democrats could also look to redraw the lines in New York and Virginia. Earlier this year, voters in the commonwealth approved a new map that would have given Democrats up to four pickup opportunities, but the Virginia Supreme Court later struck it down on procedural grounds. Even without the new map, Democrats flipped two House seats in Virginia last week and came within 2 points of flipping a third.
Democrats in New York, meanwhile, took initial steps toward mid-decade redistricting earlier this year, but 2028 is the earliest they could hold elections under a new map.
On the Republican side, several states have been mentioned as candidates for new maps in 2028.
Officials in GOP-led Mississippi have held hearings this year on redistricting, which could target Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson. Republicans are also aiming to redraw the state’s legislative lines ahead of next year’s off-year elections.
It’s not clear whether states that were unsuccessful in redrawing their district lines for 2026 will try again when their legislatures convene next year. Republicans in both South Carolina and Indiana fell short in their push to pass new maps and could decide to revisit the issue. But Democrats flipped a House seat in each state last week, and some Republican incumbents won reelection by narrower margins than usual. Still, Republicans maintained their legislative majorities in both states, though Democrats broke their supermajorities in the South Carolina and Indiana state houses.
An analysis by DecisionDeskHQ offers a potential warning sign for Republicans in the Palmetto and Hoosier states: Under the GOP-drawn maps that were not adopted for 2026, Democrats could have flipped even more seats last week.
Raising the white flag
Redistricting appears off the table in a handful of states where new maps for 2028 had once been considered possible.
Georgia’s outgoing Republican governor, Brian Kemp, said last week that he would not call a special session to address redistricting before the end of the year, after Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms was elected to succeed him.
There were no House flips in the Peach State in the midterm elections, though several Republicans won by closer-than-anticipated margins.
In New Jersey, Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill told the New Jersey Globe that she also did not “see a path forward for redistricting right now.”
Democrats flipped two House seats in the Garden State last week. Navy veteran Rebecca Bennett defeated Republican Rep. Thomas H. Kean Jr., while Cape May Mayor Zack Mullock scored a surprise win over GOP Rep. Jeff Van Drew.
With their new majorities in Washington, Democrats could propose legislation to ban partisan gerrymandering.
That’s something John Bisognano, the president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, anticipates happening, but he said Democrat-led states should be prepared to respond to new maps drawn in Republican-controlled ones.
“If they are going to continue to take those actions, Democrats in states across the country need to be prepared to respond, and we, of course, now have significantly more opportunities than we did before Tuesday to respond to those states,” he said.
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