States join redistricting fight before 2026 midterms. Here’s where they stand
Californians’ have until Election Day on Nov. 4 to make their voices heard on a ballot measure backed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom that would limit Republican representation in Congress in the Golden State. The state joins more than a dozen across the nation pushing to update congressional boundary maps, also known as redistricting.
The push started after President Donald Trump told reporters in July he’s leading the Republican party’s effort to redraw maps, with intentions to pick up more seats in the 2026 election and fortify the party’s control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Typically, a president’s party loses seats in midterm elections.
“Just a very simple redrawing where we’ll pick up five seats,” he said of Texas.
Republicans hold a narrow majority in the house, 219-213. Three seats are vacant, according to the House.
Samuel Wang, a neuroscience professor and election statistician at Princeton University, projected most of the redistricting efforts to succeed, but the broader issue rests in how the U.S. Supreme Court rules in Louisiana v. Callais, a case concerning the Voting Rights Act’s provision on fairness in representation.
“Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is under direct attack,” he told Straight Arrow News. “And that’s not going to be pretty.”
Gerrymandering harms voters, representation
Each state’s enacted and proposed maps include an A-F grading from Princeton University’s Gerrymandering Project. It’s a nonpartisan hub that reviews legislative maps, demographic data and state election laws to measure whether a proposal promotes gerrymandering — changing electoral maps to favor a certain party, race or wealth class — or not. Grades come from the project’s Redistricting Report Card.
Wang created the project to track and gauge how states are gerrymandering districts in a party’s favor. Ratings range from A to F. Nearly half of the nation has an A rating for having fairly drawn districts with little-to-no partisan advantages.
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The term “gerrymandering” is a conflation of former Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry and a mythical salamander symbolic of an oddly shaped district.
Reducing the number of competitive districts may help certain parties, but Wang said the voters feel the brunt more. That’s because campaigns around getting people to cast their ballots gets reduced to one district, but is intensified.
“So the reduction in competition is going to have a massive effect on the ability, on the positive side, for canvassing and turning out the vote to make a difference,” he said. “On the negative side, for efforts to discourage voting to have an effect.”
He noted the push to expand the House past its current 425 seats, but said that wouldn’t resolve gerrymandering that happens on a congressional and state level. What does is independent citizen-run commissions, which Wang said several states have.
“If you take power away from legislators and put it either into the hands of citizens or a court,” Wang said, “in either instance, the outcome is much more balanced between the parties, and there’s more competition for seats.”
Redistricting across the nation
States joining in on the redistricting showdown include California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Utah, Texas and Virginia.
“The big picture here is that the distance between the political parties, ever since the 1990s, has gotten wider and wider, where there is very little to be gained from compromising or working with the other party, and the greatest gains come from simply having more votes,” Wang said.
So far, California is the only state taking the issue to the ballot, while states legislatures debate over what their congressional districts look like. The districts are redrawn after the decennial census to reflect population changes, whether it’s eliminating, adding or changing districts. This process of adding or subtracting House seats is called reapportionment. The boundaries create the areas for which a member of the House of Representatives will cover.
So, how is the fight panning out across the 14 states?
California
Election polls opened on Oct. 6 for Californians to decide whether or not to pass Proposition 50, a ballot measure tied to how the state redraws its congressional districts. Newsom and other Democrats have campaigned for the measure in response to Texas’ high-profile fight, meanwhile Trump and Republicans are pushing residents to reject the question.
According to the California Secretary of State, a “yes” vote means the state would use newly drawn maps starting next year, and would stay in effect until the state’s Citizens Redistricting Commission draws new boundaries following the 2030 census. A “no” vote would keep the current maps, which the commission drew, until after the 2030 census.
If voters pass the measure, it would adopt a new map where Democrats could gain up to five seats in the House.
Princeton University’s Gerrymandering Project gave the state’s 2021 congressional maps a B for giving advantages to incumbents, creating uncompetitive elections but having fairly compact districts. It gave Newsom’s proposed map an F for being significantly advantageous for Democrats.
Florida
The redistricting craze in Florida is over for now after a Florida Supreme Court ruled, 5-1, on July 17 that maps the state’s legislature adopted in 2022 should be used immediately for the 2026 midterm elections, according to court records.
The new map that Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, drew in 2022 reportedly disadvantaged Black voters by eliminating a Black-majority district in northern Florida. The state’s top court ruled that restoring the district would create a racially-dominant area, and run afoul of the Constitution’s equal protection clause.
The League of Women Voters, Black Voters Matter and several other groups filed the lawsuit. DeSantis created the new map after he vetoed versions that kept the northern Florida district together.
Justice Jorge Labarga was the lone dissent in the opinion, according to court records. Justice Charles Canady recused himself from the case.
“By foreclosing further litigation, the majority’s decision now allows to remain in place a congressional redistricting plan that is unconstitutional under the Florida Constitution,” Labarga wrote.
The Gerrymandering Project gave Florida’s 2025-adopted map an F for giving a significant Republican advantage, but having relatively competitive elections and compact districts.
Illinois
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., traveled to Illinois Monday morning to push state Democrats to consider a mid-decade redistricting effort, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. The state’s maps have been in effect since 2021 after the state lost a district due to a population decline, according to Loyola Law School’s All About Redistricting data hub.
His move was met with mixed reaction. State Sen. Willie Preston, a Chicago Democrat who chairs the Illinois Senate Black Caucus, told the Sun-Times he’ll oppose any map that dilutes Black votes and will lobby against it.
Gov. JB Pritzker, who filed petitions Monday for a third gubernatorial term, told the newspaper it’s possible for mid-decade redistricting to happen due to pressure from Trump and other Republicans outside of Illinois.
The state’s Republican Party Chair Kathy Salvi said in a statement that Pritzker and other Illinois Democrats have already “gerrymandered Illinois to hell and back,” and noted the state received an F grade in 2021 from Princeton’s Gerrymandering Project for significant partisan advantages, uncompetitiveness compared to other maps and for having more county splits than typical.
Indiana
The Hoosier State adopted a new map in 2021, effective until 2030. But with the pressure of the 2026 midterm elections, Gov. Mike Braun, a Republican, called for a special legislative session to start on Nov. 3 to consider changing the state’s congressional maps, according to a release from Braun’s office.
The Gerrymandering Project gave the state’s 2021 map an A for having no partisan advantages, being competitive relative to other maps and having very compact districts.
Kansas
Republicans in the Kansas Senate secured enough signatures in their chamber Monday to call a special session, senate leader Ty Masterson announced on X, to redraw the state’s congressional maps. The legislature still needs 84 signatures from the State House of Representatives, which House Speaker Dan Hawkins, a Republican, hasn’t made announcements about.
He told the Kansas Reflector, the local affiliate of States Newsroom, that there are “many crucial issues percolating that require a special session.” Gov. Laura Kelly is opposed to a mid-decade redistricting since it would rely on population totals from the 2020 Census, the newswire reported.
The Gerrymandering Project gave Kansas’ 2022 map an F for having a significant Republican advantage, but a similarly competitive election compared to other maps and fairly compact districts.
Louisiana
Hotly contested congressional maps in Louisiana drew national attention as the Supreme Court agreed to hear a lawsuit over the boundaries. The litigation — Louisiana v. Callais — challenges a provision in the Voting Rights Act that gave Black Americans representation in Congress.
The proposed map was created in 2022 with one Black majority district out of six. Black residents sued and won, as they argued the state should have two Black majority districts since 30% of the state’s population is Black.
Other residents sued after a new map with two Black majority districts was made, arguing that it violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause and the 15th Amendment’s prohibition against race-based voter discrimination. A Trump administration lawyer joined the fight and told justices in October that a second Black majority district violates the Constitution.
“It is saying you have to create a district for Black democrats that you would never create for white Democrats in a Republican state,” Principal Deputy Solicitor General Hashim Mooppan told the court.
The state’s legislature, which Republicans control, passed bills Wednesday designed to delay the state’s spring elections, NBC News reported. The bills would move the May 16 elections to June 27 and April 18’s to May 30.
Louisiana’s 2022 map received an F rating from the Gerrymandering Project for packing Black votes into a singular district, which sparked the Supreme Court lawsuit. In absence of the rating, the project said the map doesn’t give an advantage to any party and is similarly competitive relative to otter maps with fairly compact districts.
Maryland
Maryland, holding an A rating from the Gerrymandering Project for its congressional maps, could likely not join other states in redrawing its maps. State Senate President Bill Ferguson, a Democrat, told his fellow Democrat senators in a late Tuesday letter he wouldn’t seek a special Senate session to discuss the state’s congressional maps.
“Despite deeply shared frustrations about the state of our country,” Ferguson said in the letter first reported by Politico, “mid-cycle redistricting for Maryland presents a reality where the legal risks are too high, the timeline for action is dangerous, the downside risk to Democrats is catastrophic, and the certainty of our existing map would be undermined.”
The Gerrymandering Project said the state’s 2022 maps don’t present an advantage to one party, has similarly competitive elections compared to previous maps and has non-compact districts.
Maryland currently has one congressional district held by a Republican.
Michael Thomas/ Getty Images
Missouri
Gov. Mike Kehoe, a Republican, signed the state’s new map into law, which was created by state Republicans in September. It erased the Kansas City seat currently held by Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II.
“We believe this map best represents Missourians, and I appreciate the support and efforts of state legislators, our congressional delegation, and President Trump in getting this map to my desk,” Kehoe said in a statement.
But not all residents feel that’s true. According to Kansas City-based radio station KCUR, about 3,000 volunteers have been gathering signatures to get a ballot referendum that would give voters the option to keep or reject the new map. They need more than 106,000 signatures by Dec. 11 to make the November 2026 ballot. It’s unclear how the referendum will affect concurrent midterm elections.
The state’s 2022 congressional map received an A rating from Princeton’s gerrymandering lab for having no partisan advantage, similarly competitive seats compared to other maps and fairly compact districts. That rating dropped to an F for the 2025 proposed map for creating a significant Republican advantage.
Nebraska
A mid-decade redraw could be difficult in Nebraska as the unicameral legislature needs all 33 Republicans to start a special session, Politico reported. State Sen. Merv Riepe, R-Griswold, told the outlet he’d be opposed to redistricting as it “looked like simply a party maneuver.”
Riepe stood against Trump’s past initiatives — at one time being censured by his state’s GOP — in blocking a push to change Nebraska’s electoral vote split to winner-take-all and blocking a near-total abortion ban.
The state’s 2021 congressional map earned an A rating from Princeton’s Gerrymandering Project for not posing any partisan advantages, having very competitive elections compared to previous maps and fairly compact districts.
New York
The Empire State’s 2022 congressional maps earned an A rating from the Gerrymandering Project as it had no partisan advantages. A lawsuit from a group of voters could change the state’s boundaries as they said the 11th Congressional District disenfranchises Black and Latino voters. The district covers Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in New York State courts, claims the district’s boundaries don’t currently reflect demographic changes or “modern communities of interest.” Washington, D.C.- based Elias Law Group said the current map doesn’t account for an increase in Black and Latino residents and a decrease in white residents in the area. It’s the only GOP-held district in New York City.
U.S. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, a Republican who represents the district, called the lawsuit “frivolous” and said the state’s independent redistricting commission, Democrat-controlled legislature and Democrat governor enacted the maps in 2022.
“We defeated them twice before and we’ll do it again,” she wrote on X.
The Princeton-based lab also added that New York’s maps are similarly competitive relative to past iterations and had very compact congressional districts.
North Carolina
North Carolina lawmakers approved new congressional maps in response to Newsom’s map in California. State House Majority Leader Rep. Brenden Jones, a Republican, said on X that the governor and “the radical left are trying to rig the system.”
Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, cannot veto redistricting legislation due to state law.
But the new map legislatures pushed through near-immediately faced a new lawsuit, as voters claimed it erases Black voting districts. The Oct. 23 supplemental complaint alleged that Senate Bill 249, which modifies North Carolina’s congressional districts, diluted Black votes in the Mecklenburg and Piedmont Triad areas in the southwestern part of the state, and broke up the 1st Congressional District in the northeastern section of the state.
“Under the 2025 Plan, Black voters are extremely unlikely to elect candidates of their choice in either district,” according to court papers.
The complaint was filed in the Williams v. Hall lawsuit, which challenged districts the state’s General Assembly drew in 2023, radio station WUNC reported. According to court papers, the 2023 lawsuit went to trial, but a verdict wasn’t reached.
The Gerrymander Project rated North Carolina’s maps with an F because it presents a significant Republican advantage and very uncompetitive elections compared to previous maps, but does have fairly compact districts.
Ohio
In Ohio, the state’s map needs to be replaced by the end of this year for 2026, per state law. The General Assembly failed to vote on a map in September. Republicans on the state’s Redistricting Commission appeared to strike a deal late Wednesday with the body’s Democrats ahead of the Halloween deadline.
A new map is required for next year’s midterms after the 2021 map passed along partisan lines. They met Thursday afternoon to reportedly discuss the compromise.
The deal, as Punchbowl News reported, modifies boundaries of state Democratic Reps. Emilia Sykes, Greg Landsman and Marcy Kaptur, which gave Sykes a slight advantage, while the others gained possible Republican voters.
Democrats, on the other hand, retained abilities to contest seats held by GOP Reps. Max Miller, Mike Carey and Mike Turner. Democratic Reps. Joyce Beatty and Shontel Brown retained a stronghold in their districts.
The state’s current map has a D rating from the Gerrymandering Project for poor fairness to Republicans, but promotes very competitive elections compared to previous maps and has fairly compact districts.
Utah
Utah’s congressional maps have been tangled in litigation after Utahns narrowly passed a ballot measure in 2018 that set standards for how political boundaries are created and established an independent commission, according to Ballotpedia.
The lawsuit, filed by the League of Women Voters, ended in August after the state Supreme Court ruled the state’s 2021 districts violated the ballot measure’s prohibition on gerrymandering, according to Campaign Legal Center, which represents LWV in the litigation.
The state’s Supreme Court rejected an extraordinary application for stay in the League of Women Voters of Utah v. Utah State Legislature lawsuit, which the state filed. The rejection meant that the legislature’s 2021 map violated the state’s constitution due to the 2018 ballot measure.
The LWD presented two new maps that are now in deliberations and must be approved by Nov. 10 for the midterms, the Campaign Legal Center said. The Utah News Dispatch reported that the legislature also passed a map during a special session in October for the state judge to consider.
Utah Republican Party Chair Robert Axson founded Utahns for Representative Government to repeal the constitutional amendment to “restore accountability in redistricting,” according to the group’s website. They need 170,000 signatures by Nov. 15 to start the initiative, and 70,000 by Nov. 18 to hold a referendum.
Princeton University’s gerrymandering lab rated Utah’s 2021 maps with an F. It said the maps give a significant Republican advantage, but election competitiveness is average compared to previous maps and it has fairly compact districts.
Sara Diggins/ The Austin American-Statesman via Getty Images
Texas
The Lone Star State ignited the contested national debate over how congressional maps are made and the competitiveness of elections favoring Democrats and Republicans. The fight made national headlines when Texas Democrats fled the state just before votes were cast on the Republican-led efforts.
The new maps gave Republicans a five-seat advantage, which Rep. Greg Casar, a Democrat who could lose his seat, called “illegal voter suppression of Black and Latino Central Texans.” It reduced Democratic-favoring districts from 12 to 8 by consolidating Casar’s district into another.
Trump had encouraged Republican-led states to redraw maps over the summer, telling Fox News he saw the party picking up five seats in the Lone Star State. They currently have a 25-13 advantage over Democrats.
The state’s Senate and House of Representatives passed the new maps, but face litigation over gerrymandering. The League of United Latin American Citizens and several voters sued Gov. Greg Abbott and others in 2021 to challenge the state’s congressional maps, according to Democracy Docket, a liberal thinktank focused on litigation in politics. They filed an amended complaint on Aug. 23, arguing that the map disenfranchises Black and Latino voters and violates the Voting Rights Act as well as the 14th and 15th Amendments. The parties await a federal district court ruling about if the maps will be used or not.
The Gerrymander Project gave both the 2021 adopted and the 2025 proposed maps an F rating. Both were rated for having a significant Republican advantage with poorly, non-compact districts, but the competitiveness of the elections were average compared to other maps.
Virginia
Democrats in Virginia pushed forward a constitutional amendment during a special session in the House of Delegates by a 51-42 party line vote to allow the General Assembly to draw congressional maps next year, The Washington Post reported late Wednesday.
The proposal would empower the General Assembly to draft new congressional maps before the decennial census if other states are doing the same, according to The Post. If signed into law, the assembly retains the powers until 2030, and then the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission draws maps again.
Despite the proposal’s passage, it still has to pass through the state Senate, which Democrats narrowly control, and then go back through the General Assembly following Virginia’s Nov. 4 gubernatorial elections. Along with the governor, the attorney general and all 100 House seats are on the ballot, according to Virginia’s Department of Elections.
It came after three GOP lawmakers had their petition for an emergency restraining order on the session rejected. According to the States Newsroom affiliate Virginia Mercury, the lawsuit that contests the expanded purpose of the special session will continue. They argue that only the governor can call a special session and it must adhere to declared topics, which was for fiscal matters.
House Minority Leader Terry Kilgore, a Republican, is a plaintiff in the litigation and said at the state capitol it’s about “defending Virginia’s constitution and ensuring elections remain fair.”
The state’s current map earned an A rating from the Gerrymandering Project for having no partisan advantages, similarly competitive elections and fairly compact districts.
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