The U.S. Capitol on the evening of September 30, 2025. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)
Both parties’ race to redistrict U.S. House districts in their favor could come to a tie after Democrats’ massive victory in Virginia on Tuesday, although even bigger changes are possible before the crucial midterm elections in November.
Virginia voters approved a constitutional amendment clearing the way for the state’s Democratic-controlled Legislature to redraw congressional district boundaries to favor Democrats in 10 of the commonwealth’s 11 U.S. House districts.
That could give the party four fresh seats in Virginia, although state court cases challenging the proposal have yet to be decided.
Former U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a Florida Democrat who now directs the Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University, said the results showed dissatisfaction with President Donald Trump and the nation’s capital in general.
“It sends a clear message to the administration, to the White House, to Washington, D.C., that they are not happy with the status quo and the policies coming out of Washington, that they want to see change,” she said in an interview Wednesday.
After 10 months of bitter back-and-forth that began with Trump pushing Texas Republicans to overhaul their congressional map to gain House seats, neither party has gained a significant lead.
But experts say this approach could have a lasting damaging effect on US democracy.
If Virginia’s proposal takes effect, Democrats would be favored in one more House district statewide than in 2024. accordingly the nonpartisan election research organization Ballotpedia.
Further changes, including a possible redesign of the House map by Florida lawmakers and a U.S. Supreme Court decision to strip federal Voting Rights Act protections for majority-black districts in Southern states, could shift the advantage back to Republicans.
Republicans currently narrowly control the chamber by a vote of 217 to 212, with one independent and five open seats after Democrat David Scott of Georgia died Wednesday.
Typically, the president’s party loses House seats in midterm elections, and Trump’s withering poll numbers and special election results suggest otherwise this year.
Good for the Democrats, bad for democracy
Elected Democrats largely described the results in Virginia as a victory for free and fair elections.
“The voters of Virginia have spoken, and tonight they stood up to a president who claims he is entitled to more Republican seats in Congress,” Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, wrote on X.
But the entire cycle could exacerbate political polarization, leading to less compromise and policymaking in Congress and a transfer of power to the executive branch, Erik Nisbet, the director of the Center for Communication & Public Policy at Northwestern University, said Wednesday.
“There were some quotes today from some leading Democrats about how you can’t bring a knife to a shooting and that this is the only way to save democracy and somehow streamline it,” he said. “It’s still bad for democracy in the long run…That means Congress is even more polarized and ineffective in the long run.”
Mucarsel-Powell, who represented one of the few competitive House districts in the country, also said redistricting would make legislation more complex.
“Redistribution doesn’t necessarily help the country as a whole,” she said. “As we become more polarized, I think redrawing these maps to favor one party or the other will only deepen the polarization. I think it makes it harder for members to reach consensus. I’ve seen it, right? If you represent a solidly red district or a solidly blue district, there’s really no incentive to compromise.”
Republicans are furious about the Virginia result
Republicans from Trump on down complained Wednesday that the result was unfair because it could give Democrats 91% of the seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, in a state where the party’s latest presidential candidate received just 52% of the vote.
In one post On his social media page Wednesday afternoon, Trump said the result was illegitimate – repeating without evidence his habitual claim in elections he lost that mail-in ballots were fraudulent – and called on the courts to “correct” the result.
“A rigged election took place last night in the great commonwealth of Virginia!” Trump wrote. “All day long the Republicans won, the mood was incredible, until the end, when of course there was a massive ‘Mail In Ballot Drop!’ gave! Where have I heard this before – And the Democrats have won another crooked victory!”
Questionable strategy
But the proposed Virginia map would only level the playing field after Trump launched a infrequent mid-decade redistricting cycle last year by asking Texas officials to redraw the state’s districts.
Texas’ fresh map could give Republicans five more House seats. But its creation sparked an arms race in which California added five fresh Democratic-leaning districts, effectively neutralizing Texas’ move.
Legislatures in Missouri and North Carolina responded by voluntarily redrawing their maps, while an Ohio constitutional amendment and a Utah Supreme Court decision led to fresh district boundaries in those states.
Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary under Republican President George W. Bush, lamented the results in Virginia but called them a self-inflicted wound. States should stick to redistricting once a decade after a census, he said, criticizing the GOP strategy of attempting redistricting in some states in the middle of the decade.
“Republicans will now lose seats across the country. If you’re going to start a fight, at least win it. The other side will always fight back,” he wrote. “This was all predictable and avoidable. We shouldn’t have started this fight.”
Fleischer linked to a post he wrote in August criticizing the GOP’s efforts in Texas as that state prepared to vote on the fresh map. A “mid-census change” was not the way to gain more seats in the House, he had said.
The National Democrats celebrated.
“House Democrats have destroyed Donald Trump’s nationwide gerrymandering program,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York wrote on social media Tuesday evening. “Maximum warfare, anywhere, anytime.”
What’s next?
Two other decisions could further change the landscape for the U.S. House of Representatives elections before November.
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments last year in a case challenging a provision of the Voting Rights Act that was interpreted to require districts in Southern states with a majority of blacks to have equal populations. Louisiana is challenging a lower court ruling that threw out a map that showed only one of the state’s six counties to be majority black, even though blacks make up about a third of the state’s population.
Depending on the size and timing of the conservative court’s ruling, several secure Democratic seats in the South could be at risk.
And in Florida, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis called the state legislature into a special session. is scheduled to begin next weekto consider a redistricting effort and other issues.
“Dummymander”?
Republicans in Florida have not fully embraced a push for redistricting, which could ultimately make some incumbents’ districts less reliably red. Gerrymandering involves spreading a party’s voters across multiple districts, making some individual elections more complex, especially in a potential election wave year.
“Republicans are pushing back and saying this actually diminishes the power that they have in some of these districts,” Mucarsel-Powell said. “Because if it does (a district that favors Republicans by five points), with all the overperformance that we’ve seen, including here in the state of Florida, it will most likely favor Democrats.”
In a press conference Wednesday morning, Jeffries all but dared Florida Republicans to dilute their districts in the U.S. House of Representatives. He compared the effort to the Texas map, which he said wasn’t as Republican as they thought, and called the Republicans’ entire effort a “dummymander” that would backfire.
“Look around and find out,” Jeffries said. “If they go down the path of a DeSantis dummymander, Florida Republicans will find themselves in the same situation as Texas Republicans, who are currently on the run.”
“Republicans are moving into the minority before a single vote is cast,” he added. “You started this war, and we will end it.”
