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DONALD TRUMP WON’T BE SAVED BY MAPS  
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David Dayen
August 29, 2025
The Atlantic
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_ Gerrymandering in red states is predicated on Republicans holding
Trump’s support in 2024, particularly from Latinos. That could be a
bad bet. _

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As Americans have physically sorted themselves along ideological lines
and as Big Data has dug into voting preferences on practically a
house-by-house basis, it can be compelling to suggest that
cartographers hold a skeleton key to U.S. elections. That’s
definitely the assumption underlying the Trump administration’s
red-state redistricting tour, which has already stormed through Texas,
has dates booked in Florida, Missouri, Ohio, and possibly Indiana
(whose leaders still sound indifferent
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moving ahead), and is lying in wait for a Supreme Court go-ahead to
shred other parts of the South.

In short, Trump and his allies are trying to erect impregnable walls
around their own unpopularity; you can call it an attempt to steal the
midterm election. But the universe of voters changes from year to
year, and even in today’s polarized political environment,
individuals change their minds. Exercises in mapmaking can amount to
fighting the last war, with old information not fit to the current
circumstances. That’s particularly true with new maps that are
largely predicated on Donald Trump’s 2024 overperformance,
particularly with Latino voters.

How much of an overperformance 2024 was, or whether it sparked a new
realignment in American politics, is the key question. “Democratic
performance writ large is almost certainly going to improve from
2024,” said Katherine Fischer, director of Texas Majority PAC, which
seeks to elect more Democrats in the state. “To what extent, anyone
who tells you is guessing or lying.”

It follows that slotting seats into red or blue corners based on one
potentially ahistorical election is a dangerous play for Republicans,
especially with the smaller, more engaged electorate that in
increasing numbers opposes this president and his actions. The
national political environment can overwhelm even the most data-heavy
efforts by politicians to choose their voters.

Democrats aren’t relying solely on a blue wave to overpower
gerrymandering. California’s redistricting election is on track for
victory, according to Democratic pollsters
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Maryland may take action to nullify a Republican seat. And
gerrymandered congressional maps in Utah, in defiance of an
anti-gerrymandering ballot measure, were finally ruled illegal
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a state judge, who required the state to draw new maps that don’t
crack liberal Salt Lake County four ways, a situation that
will almost certainly create one solid-blue seat
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But Democratic fortunes in 2026 can also be tied to the instability of
the Latino voting shift, particularly in Texas. Three of the five new
“Republican” seats created in Texas remain contested territory;
while Trump won all of them by double digits, in the same election,
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) did not reach 52 percent in any of those seats.
So Trump’s popularity is not automatically transferrable down the
ballot even when he appears on it, and he won’t next year.

Exercises in mapmaking can amount to fighting the last war, with old
information not fit to the current circumstances.

Those districts are all heavily Latino. TX-28 (90 percent Latino) and
TX-34 (77 percent), two Rio Grande Valley seats, are currently held by
Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, respectively. The
new TX-35 (53 percent Latino), formerly a Democratic vote sink that
stretched from San Antonio to Austin, is now a San Antonio–only seat
that incorporates some of the city and its suburbs, along with
outlying red counties. Joe Biden won both the new TX-28 and TX-34
districts in 2020, and only lost TX-35 by 1.9 points.

Trump’s Latino support shifted at least 13 points
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to 2024; he shifted some Biden 2020 voters and took a large share of
first-time voters. But House Republicans sharply underperformed Trump.
And today, Latinos are snapping back away from Trump. An Equis
Research poll
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July showed Trump’s job approval among Latinos at just 35 percent,
and one-third of Latino Trump supporters are thinking of voting
Democratic in 2026. That number rises to half of Biden 2020–Trump
2024 voters. Other polling picks up similar trends
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That really changes how to think about districts with large numbers of
Latinos. As Eli McKown-Dawson’s numbers show
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if Texas Democrats win Hispanic voters 53-47 next year—Kamala Harris
lost those voters to Trump 55-45—they would hold onto TX-28 and
TX-34 and be a coin toss in TX-35. “If Latinos move somewhere in the
middle of where they were in 2024 and in 2018, they won’t win some
districts,” Fischer said.

In its redistricting analysis
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Cuellar a very good chance to retain his seats, Gonzalez a fighting
chance, and even put TX-15, the other South Texas seat held by
Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz, in play with the right candidate.
Bobby Pulido, the likely Democratic nominee in TX-15, fits the
profile, Texas Majority PAC added, though he would be a long shot.

Republicans didn’t weaken any of their incumbents, and the map
cannot totally backfire. But the absolute best-case scenario for
Democrats would be a Republican gain of just one seat in Texas. A more
realistic optimistic scenario is Republicans +3, still substantially
better than the R+5 expectation.

TX-35 could be more likely to flip to the Democrats in future years,
as new voters migrate in. “New movers into the state are more
Democratic than the current electorate,” Fischer said. “San
Antonio is one of the fastest-growing cities in Texas … It is a
thing Texas Republicans have dealt with in the past, they draw maps
and in two to four years they look way different.”

Democrats still must persuade these swingy voters, which is not
guaranteed. Indeed, the California maps
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could move up to five seats into the Democratic column are similarly
predicated on Latino voters coming home to Democrats. Swing-seat
Democrats across the state are being shored up by getting an influx of
Latino voters. If there really is a realignment, that won’t pan out;
indeed, Latino support for Democrats in California has been steadily
eroding [[link removed]].

The information we have to go on right now involves premature polling
and unrepresentative special elections. Democrats have been tearing up
special elections, winning a state Senate seat in Iowa
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week with a 22-point swing from Trump’s performance in 2024; that
now denies Republicans in the chamber a supermajority. But that
Democratic winner only received 4,200 votes
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off-year August election should not be used to forecast a midterm.
Generic ballot tests are starting to trend toward Democrats by as
much as eight points
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and those do have predictive power
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But the consensus polling is closer to three points, and it’s still
early days.

Democrats are concerned about their collapse in voter registration
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the past four years, which has continued. But Texas Majority PAC sees
that as a lagging indicator, where you would expect the party in power
to gain ground after a big victory. They plan to engage in a targeted
voter registration drive in Texas (the largest in state history, they
claim) to pick up Democratic-leaning voters and persuade them to turn
out.

Some of the uncertainty for the midterms involves how far
gerrymandering will actually go. The Supreme Court is hearing
arguments on October 15 on whether to obliterate what remains of the
Voting Rights Act [[link removed]], opening the
door for diluting racial minorities in congressional districts.
Louisiana, whose maps are at issue in the case, has already scheduled
a special session
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in case the Supreme Court moves quickly, and the ripple effects would
reverberate throughout the South. (This could also save the Texas
maps, which even with some of the heavy minority participation are
under a lawsuit claiming that they violate the racial gerrymander
section of the Voting Rights Act
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But there are some limits to unfair maps, even in the worst-case
scenario. If voters are unhappy with Trump and display their anger
next November, maps are unlikely to stop the House from flipping.

_DAVID DAYEN is the Prospect’s executive editor. His work has
appeared in The Intercept, The New Republic, HuffPost, The Washington
Post, the Los Angeles Times, and more. His most recent book is
‘Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power.’_

_THE AMERICAN PROSPECT is devoted to promoting informed discussion on
public policy from a progressive perspective. In print and online,
the Prospect brings a narrative, journalistic approach to complex
issues, addressing the policy alternatives and the politics necessary
to create good legislation. We help to dispel myths, challenge
conventional wisdom, and expand the dialogue._

_Founded by Robert Kuttner, Paul Starr, and Robert Reich, read the
original 1989 prospectus for the magazine.
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_To learn more about our history, check out this 2015 piece by Starr
and Kuttner
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reflecting on 25 years of politics and change._

_American Prospect, Inc., is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation
headquartered in Washington, D.C._

_You can support our mission with a subscription
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* Donald Trump
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* Gerrymandering
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* Red States
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* republicans
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* latinos
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* texas
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* voter registration
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* Supreme Court
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