When Republicans engaged in a wave of partisan and racial gerrymandering in the lead-up to the 2026 elections, Democrats feared that the GOP had rigged the system to keep itself in power. Instead, Democrats were able to outorganize Republicans and leverage discontent against President Trump and his allies to pull off a set of stunning victories across the country.
Shomari Figures wins in Alabama, Democrats defy GOP gerrymandering in Florida and Texas
CNN reported that Democrats have won at least 10 of the 15 congressional districts that were targeted by Republican redistricting in the run-up to the 2026 midterm elections, with Democrats holding onto one or more seats in Florida, Texas, Ohio, Alabama and North Carolina. The number of Democratic holds will likely increase as election results are finalized. Democrats additionally appear to have picked up seats in California and Utah, where redistricting favored the Democratic Party. Democrats’ victories included Alabama’s Shomari Figures, who won reelection despite Republicans redrawing his district in a process that had previously been deemed racist by the Supreme Court. “We know what happened with this district,” Figures told his supporters as he announced his victory. “We know about the redistricting efforts. We know what the district was, what the district is now. But we had a job to do, and so we put our hands to the plow and we did not look backwards. We kept moving forward.”
In Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis and the GOP-led state legislature enacted one of the most extreme gerrymandering schemes, Republican redistricting efforts completely failed. All four districts that were redrawn to make them GOP-friendly stayed in Democratic hands. Democratic incumbent Reps. Jared Moskowitz, Darren Soto and Kathy Castor all won reelection after having their districts redrawn to advantage their Republican challengers, and Democrat Pia Dandiya won the open seat in the redrawn 22nd District, which covers an area that Trump won by over 10 points in 2024. Together, the results left Florida Republicans and Democrats with the same number of representatives in Congress that existed before this process started. “I think they had a bad calculator,” summed up Miami-based Democratic consultant Jeff Garcia of Republican efforts in the state. Results were even worse for Republicans in Texas, another early adopter of partisan redistricting. In addition to Republicans losing the statewide races for Senate and governor, Republican candidates for the U.S. House lost four of the five districts that had been redrawn in their favor, in addition to two other districts that were not redrawn. Texas is therefore set to send one more Democrat to Congress than it currently has.
Democrats potentially break even in Louisiana and win big in North Carolina
While Republican states like Texas and Florida launched partisan redistricting efforts in 2025 at the urging of President Trump, a second wave of blatantly racial redistricting happened this summer after the Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in its Louisiana v. Callais ruling. Despite Louisiana being ground zero in this racial gerrymandering, Republicans have not yet won the 6th District, which was redrawn from being predominantly Black to being predominantly white. While the redistricting led incumbent Rep. Cleo Fields to not seek reelection, opening up the seat to a 10-candidate race, Democrat Chauna Banks and Republican Blake Miguez are now heading to a Dec. 12 runoff after each received about 19% of the vote in the crowded field. Meanwhile, Democratic Rep. Troy Carter won reelection Tuesday after Republicans left his district predominantly Black because some Republicans worried that further gerrymandering might dilute their own districts.
The backfiring of Republican gerrymandering is perhaps best illustrated in North Carolina. In addition to former Gov. Roy Cooper winning the state’s U.S. Senate race, which was not directly impacted by redistricting, Democrats appear to have flipped at least five congressional seats, which could shift North Carolina’s U.S. House delegation from 10 Republicans and four Democrats to as many as 10 Democrats and four Republicans. Notable among these House results is that Republican Rep. Tim Moore, who previously led redistricting efforts in his former position as speaker of the North Carolina House, lost reelection to Democrat Lakesha Womack in the district that Moore helped gerrymander. Democrats regained control of the North Carolina House for the first time since 2010, though they appear to have fallen short of regaining control of the state Senate.
Together, Tuesday’s election results showed Democrats achieving an overwhelming victory in a set of contests that Republicans attempted to rig in favor of the GOP. These results not only represent a major collective victory for Democrats across the country, but they also repudiate the idea of blatant partisan gerrymandering as a substitute for appealing to voters.