Charlie Hunt
Since Democratic state lawmakers left the state, the gerrymandering drama in Texas and elsewhere has persisted. The goal of the Democrats is to stop the Republican-controlled government from implementing a mid-decade gerrymander that would give Republicans a number of more congressional seats.
President Donald Trump pushed for the Texas GOP move in order to guarantee that he would have a GOP-controlled Congress to work with following the 2026 midterm elections.
Democratic states like California and Illinois appear willing to reciprocate, while other Republican states like Missouri and Ohio might possibly adopt the Texas strategy.
However, this process is more complex than simply winning a few House seats because of a few elements. If the party is given districts that political scientists like me call “dummymandered,” they might even cause Republicans to rethink their harsh gerrymandering strategies.
Democrats can finally fight back
Republicans are already facing potentially disastrous retaliation from Democratic leaders in other states for their gerrymandering efforts, in contrast to the federal level where Democrats are almost kept out of power.
In an effort to offset Democrats’ losses in Texas, California Democrats, led by Governor Gavin Newsom, are pushing for a special election later this year when voters might choose new congressional maps for the state. If approved, these modifications would go into effect before the midterm elections the following year.
Other sizable states with Democratic majorities, like Illinois and New York, where governors J.B. Pritzker and Kathy Hochul, respectively, are in power, have also expressed a willingness to implement their own gerrymanders in an attempt to gain Democratic seats.
Currently, nonpartisan redistricting commissions are used to establish the borders of both California and New York. Hochul, however, recently stated that she is fed up with being pushed around while other states continue to gerrymander and refuse to implement redistricting reforms. According to Hochul, she would even consider changing the state constitution to do away with the impartial redistricting panel.
Governors like Hochul and Pritzker have welcomed the protesting Democratic lawmakers from Texas, often providing shelter for them during their self-imposed exile, though it is uncertain if these blue states will be effective in their attempts to fight fire with fire.
Dummymandering
Greed is another potential issue for either party hoping to increase its number of seats in this process.
Governor Greg Abbott promised to implement even more extreme gerrymandering in response to Democrats’ persistent absence from Texas. Abbott stated, “I might start expanding if they don’t start showing up.” It is possible that we will add six, seven, or eight additional Republican seats.
Abbott, however, might reconsider this tactic.
In state legislatures or, in this example, congressional delegations, parties that gerrymander their states’ districts are designing boundaries to enhance their own advantage.
Parties that gerrymander districts typically don’t aim to make them as unbalanced as possible in favor of their party. Rather, they want to create as many districts as they can that have a good chance of winning. In order to assist the party win more of these districts, they accomplish this by dispersing groups of people who are supportive over multiple districts.
Sometimes, however, the endeavor backfires: A party that tries to win as many seats as possible disperses its supporters too widely and fails to make certain districts sufficiently safe. In subsequent elections, the opposition party may gain more seats than anticipated as a result of these susceptible districts switching to the opposite party.
Dummymandering is the term used to describe this event, which has occurred previously. Even in Texas, where Democrats had a successful year nationwide in 2018, Republicans lost a sizable number of badly constructed state legislative seats in the Dallas suburbs.
Republicans may want to take note of this lesson, since Democrats are expected to win a sizable 2026 midterm election against an unpopular president.
There s not much left to gerrymander
The fact that there are so few districts left that are competitive enough for a governing party to seize for themselves due to extensive gerrymandering is one of the primary causes of dummymandering. There are two main reasons why this significant development has occurred.
First, the low-hanging fruit has already been picked over in terms of gerrymandering. Both Republican and Democratic-controlled states have already engaged in very heinous gerrymandering during past routine redistricting procedures, especially after the 2010 and 2020 censuses.
In general, Republicans have been better at the process, especially when it comes to increasing their seat shares in states they happen to govern that are very competitive, like Wisconsin and North Carolina.
Although Democrats received 35% of the 2024 presidential vote, they have also had success in states like Maryland, where there is only one Republican in nine seats. In 2024, Republicans received 37% of the presidential vote in Massachusetts, where Democrats control all eight seats.
Additionally, regardless of how the boundaries are drawn, gerrymanderable land has become harder to locate during the last 50 years. This is due to the fact that the electorate is more geographically divided among the parties.
This indicates that Republicans and Democrats are geographically separated, with Republicans living in rural areas and Democrats gravitating toward large cities and suburbs.
As a result, it is now more difficult than ever to create geographically sound districts that divide the votes of the opposing party and make it harder for them to elect a representative of their own.
The conflict over Texas redistricting today is essentially unexplored, regardless of how far either side is prepared to go. Though not often in such a blatant manner, mid-decade redistricting does occasionally occur, either at the hands of legislators or the courts.
And this time, the Texas attempt might lead to anarchy and a race to the bottom, in which each state takes up the challenge and attempts to change its electoral patterns whenever it is unhappy with the odds in the upcoming election, rather than just once every ten years.
Charlie Hunt teaches political science at Boise State University as an associate professor.
