Texas’s Gerrymander May Not Be the Worst Threat to Democrats in 2026

I think the upshot is that if the next wave of states goes as expected, the Republicans will build a modest advantage in the House of Representatives. I would say that the Democrats will have to win the popular vote by at least two or three points in order to be clearly favored to win the House, as opposed to today where if they win the popular vote, you should presume they’re likely to prevail.

When you look at the total number of seats that a party has targeted, it does not necessarily mean they will win all of those seats. And because the Republicans are mostly on offense, that tends to mean that the Democrats have it a little bit easier than some of the reporting makes it sound. Texas is a great example.

What do you mean by that?

Republicans have targeted five seats, but two of those seats they’ve made a little bit redder but not so red that they’re no longer competitive. That is not to say that the Republicans haven’t hurt Democratic chances in those districts, but the maps aren’t quite as challenging for Democrats as it appears when you hear that the Republicans have “added five seats.”

You said that, if these changes go through, the Democrats will need to win the House popular vote by a few points. I imagine you don’t consider that result unlikely given that it’s an off-year election with a Republican President.

Yeah, I think that if Democrats fail to win the popular vote by two or three points next November, that would be surprising and very disappointing for the Party. It would be very hard for them to turn around and blame redistricting for their woes. Strictly speaking, that would be true. They could have won. But I think they would have reasonably expected given that it’s an off-year election and given that Donald Trump’s approval ratings are as bad as they are, that they should be positioned to do even better than that. Democrats are up about four points right now on generic-ballot polls. So, if the election were held today, the Democrats would still be considered a favorite.

Do generic-ballot polls generally move toward or away from the incumbent party in the second year of off-year cycles?

They tend to move toward the party out of power. But Donald Trump is already pretty unpopular. So that would give me at least a little bit of pause of whether the Democrats have as much room to improve their standing as, say, Republicans did in the summer of 2srcsrc9 when Barack Obama’s approval ratings were still in the mid-fifties and there was still a whole nine months worth of fighting over the Affordable Care Act to come. But, generally speaking, as the President takes more actions, the public slowly becomes more inclined to vote for a check against him.

There is a Voting Rights Act case that’s going to come before the Supreme Court next month. My understanding is that this could have even more of an effect on the House than the redistricting wars that have taken place these last few months. Is that your understanding, too?

That is absolutely correct. The Voting Rights Act case could potentially put in peril just as many seats or more across the South where the Republicans have full control of the redistricting process and the only reason that Democrats have seats at all is because those seats are protected under the Voting Rights Act. If you add another eight seats to the Republican tally in the South—and it’s worth noting that those will be safely Republican seats, not seats that are potentially competitive—then we’re talking about the Democrats needing to win the popular vote by five or six points. And that’s the point where there’s a real chance that the Democrats could claim a pretty decisive electoral victory and yet fail to retake the House, or only barely retake it.

At issue in this case is whether the Voting Rights Act requires states to draw so-called minority-majority districts where there’s a racially polarized voting pattern and where a minority group exists in a compact place. So, in a place like Tennessee, for instance, the only Democratic seat is the one based in Memphis, where there’s a large Black population and where there’s a high amount of racially polarized voting. If the Tennessee state legislature had the freedom to do so, they could easily split Memphis up into a number of Republican-leaning districts, just like they have in Nashville. But they cannot do so, because of the Voting Rights Act.

Why are they able to do it in Nashville?

The Black population is smaller. If the Court does what Democrats fear, the amount of representation for Black voters in the Deep South would plunge and the Republicans would obtain a much more sizable structural advantage in the House of Representatives.

Let’s turn to Trump. In the 2src24 election, Trump showed political strength that he did not show in 2src2src, and certainly not in 2src16. He had more support among nonwhite groups, and his control of the Party seemed more complete. But looking at his approval rating, which the Times currently has at forty-three per cent, it seems that we are back in the situation that we were in for much of his first term. Is that your sense, too?