Voters across much of the South are casting ballots ahead of next month's midterm elections in congressional districts that were redrawn following calls from President Trump. He said it would help the GOP hold the House, where they currently outnumber Democrats 218 to 214.
In state legislatures over the last year, Republicans tilted about eight more seats their way than Democrats did in response. (That's an estimate, shown on the bar graph below.)
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But it's the voters who will decide whether it works.
Here's the catch: Republicans redrew districts partly on how people voted in the presidential election in 2024. Now the political mood has changed and many who voted for President Trump two years ago could be voting for Democrats, or not voting, in the midterms. The Republicans could lose many of the districts they targeted.
Usually, states redistrict early in each decade after the census. But Trump called on legislatures to do it now. It set off a chain reaction of political crises across the country that threw legislatures into the national spotlight.
Texas Republicans issued arrest warrants for Democratic legislators who'd left the state. The Louisiana governor suspended a primary after thousands of votes were already cast so the lines could be redrawn. In Missouri, the state supreme court found the Republican secretary of state in contempt for sticking with a GOP map that was not legally in effect.
In California and Virginia, Democrats won approval in statewide votes for redistricting in response to the Republicans in other states – only to have the courts toss out Virginia's plan. And when the Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act this spring, it fueled rushed legislative sessions to draw maps that often ended up weakening the voting power of minority communities.
In a few places, Republicans rejected Trump's call to redistrict, including dramatic votes in the Indiana and South Carolina legislatures. But overall, Trump prompted a cycle of mid-decade redistricting unlike any since the 1960s, when courts set the current rules.
Here's where states redistricted - or didn't.
Copyright 2026 NPR
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