Dem
47
GOP
53
As Texas goes, so goes Missouri. Now every Republican-controlled state may try to gerrymander the living daylights out of its congressional map. Texas went first and Missouri may go second. Gov. Mike Kehoe (R-MO) has called a special session of the state legislature for the sole purpose of changing the boundaries of the Kansas City-based MO-05 to change it from D+12 to something Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) can't win. It is simply a naked power grab, with no excuses. We have the power to pick up another House seat so we are going to do it. End of story. The whole concept of fair maps and competitive races is so last century.
If every state that can do it does it, who comes out ahead? A key question is whether gerrymandering can prevent the winner of the national popular vote from winning a majority in the House. The New York Times' Nate Cohn has crunched the numbers and made a guess how much of a win in the national popular vote the Democrats would need in various scenarios.
A key input is what happens in California. If Proposition 50 passes and the California map changes, the results are quite different than if it loses. If California does not redistrict and Texas, Missouri, Ohio, and Indiana do, then it would take a +2.9% popular vote win for the Democrats to capture the House. If Florida does it, too, it would take a +3.4% blue win. That is not impossible, but is a challenge.
If California does redistrict, that changes a lot. If it stops with Texas and California, the Democrats would merely have to be +0.3%. If Missouri, Ohio, and Indiana do it, it would take +1.6%. If Florida does it as well, it would take +2.3%. That might well be feasible for the Democrats. And that is assuming Illinois can't knock off any of the three remaining Republican representatives. If Texas, Missouri, Ohio, Indiana, and Florida all do it, Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL) will pull out all the stops and the Illinois map will be crazypants absurd, but he can probably squeeze out another seat or two. At that point, it will be all-out war. The independents absolutely hate this and if the Democrats made a big deal in 2026 about "Texas Republicans started this," that could really motivate the independents to punish the Republicans, especially if the Democrats proposed some kind of reform to end gerrymandering altogether and ran on it.
Cohn tried an exercise in gerrymandering himself. He found it very difficult to draw a map in Florida that gave the Republicans two new safe seats without endangering some Republican incumbents. In particular, if Latinos revert to their traditional voting patterns in 2026, Republicans might be able to create two new districts they can win but could well lose one or two existing districts. After all, there are a lot of Democrats in South Florida and they have to go somewhere. (V)