To help Republicans maintain control in Washington, President Donald Trump is urging Republican-led states to redraw their congressional district maps to favor Republicans and pick up additional seats ahead of the November 2026 midterm elections.
Currently, Democratic-led states are responding.
On Tuesday, Nov. 4, Californians will vote to decide whether a Democratic-led redistricting plan can move forward. They hope their efforts can eventually offset Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s own remapping.
New states are also floating the idea of redistricting, but few have concrete, realistic plans. This is because redistricting typically occurs at the beginning of every decade, and some states prohibit mid-decade changes altogether. California and Texas are the states with the most seats by far, giving them more weight in determining who controls the U.S. House of Representatives.
USA TODAY applied voting data from past elections to potentially newly elected districts to simulate the potential impact of these changes and what it would mean for voters across the country. Here’s how we did it and what we learned.
To compare district maps, we used voting data from the 2024 presidential election. In California, this is available by jurisdiction through a statewide database. This data can be further broken down by census blocks, which provide a detailed view of how people voted. These census blocks can be aggregated by both current and proposed maps.
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According to our analysis, California could flip six seats from Republicans to Democrats in the 1st, 3rd, 9th, 13th, 41st, and 48th districts. But that’s not certain. The 13th District will end with a slim +0.5 point lead for Democrats, and the 48th District will see a slightly larger +3.4 point lead for Democrats. The other four seats could end up with healthy margins of at least +10 points.
Here’s a closer look at how the margins (differences in the percentage of people who voted for each party) would change in California’s districts under the proposed map. For example, in California’s 35th Congressional District, former Vice President Kamala Harris won 53% of the vote to Trump’s 43%, giving him a 10-point lead over the Democrat.
There is one thing to note about this data. The precinct data used was the most complete we could find, but data was redacted for precincts with fewer than 10 voters. This removed approximately 0.05% of all eligible voters.
In Texas, districts are overlaid on current and proposed maps to show how elections will play out. Republicans gained three seats through redistricting and could improve their lead by two more seats.
To perform this analysis, we assumed that Californians and Texans would vote as they would in the 2024 presidential election. But if the past is any indication of the future, the 2026 midterm elections could look very different than the general election, unless President Trump or the Democratic presidential nominee is the frontrunner. Another caveat is that presidential results may differ from U.S. House elections. And although it’s not guaranteed, the president’s party is usually punished in midterm elections. Still, an overall analysis reveals how the balance of power may change.
Since 1934, only three presidents have allowed their party to win a House seat in a midterm election. The majority lost office in the first midterm elections in 2018, including Trump, who lost 40 seats to Republicans.
In a year marked by aggressive tariffs, immigration crackdowns and environmental rollbacks, President Trump’s approval rating in a Gallup poll fell during his second term from 47% in January to 41% in October.
Other states are also considering updating their maps (to varying degrees), including Florida, Kansas, Indiana, Maryland, Utah, Illinois and New York, according to Reuters.
Other states with final or advanced plans:
- Missouri Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe has signed new maps to fill new seats, but he faces lawsuits and a possible statewide vote to defeat them.
- North Carolina also approved new maps in October to flip one Democratic seat.
- In Virginia, Democratic lawmakers are working to amend the state’s constitution to change the map in 2026.
- In Ohio, lawmakers reached an agreement on new maps aimed at flipping two Democratic seats, including one held by Rep. Marcy Kaptur, the longest-serving woman in Toledo state legislative history.
Looking forward, here is the current balance of power in the House of Representatives and the number of seats in each state.
This is a developing story and may be updated.
For a complete breakdown of how we analyzed this data, you can read our methodology on this GitHub page.
