Uh-oh, the GOP’s Texas gerrymander suddenly looking shakier

It’s one of the biggest tragedies of the 2025 presidential election: Donald Trump did exceedingly well with Latino voters. 

The very communities he mocked and demonized as “criminal” turned out for him in large numbers, driven by economic despair and the same disaffected energy that has boosted the GOP among younger voters.

But Republican arrogance, overreach, and hubris have once again opened the door for Democrats to rebound in the 2026 midterms.

The rightward Latino swing was dramatic in Texas, where Trump won Latino voters 55-45 in 2024 after former President Joe Biden carried them 58-41 in 2020. Flush with that success, Republicans made those gains the foundation of their mid-decade gerrymandering efforts—which have now been countered by a successful California ballot initiative.

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According to NPR, the new Texas map has an additional five districts that are expected to be safely Republican, four of which are in Hispanic-majority areas.

Redistricting is always a gamble. To create more GOP seats, mapmakers have to siphon off Republican voters from existing districts, making each one a little less safe. That kind of overreach is called a “dummymander”—when a party stretches its base too thin in pursuit of extra seats. 

On paper, it looks like a political masterstroke. But when the tide shifts, those artificially padded districts can collapse all at once. That’s exactly what happened in 2018, when the Texas GOP’s overextended map crumbled under the blue wave, flipping several seats to Democrats. 

The 2026 landscape could easily deliver a sequel, which looks a lot more possible after Tuesday’s election results. 

Democrats swept statewide races in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Georgia. In Virginia, the House of Delegates flipped from a narrow 51-48 GOP edge to a commanding 64-36 Democratic majority in a chamber that Republicans controlled as recently as 2023. 

Democratic voters are energized, and as Trump himself admitted after the vote, his absence from the ballot depresses Republican turnout.  

But just as the Latino swing toward the right was decisive in 2024, this reversal has been just as striking. Multiple polls show that Latino discontent with Trump had already been skyrocketing, and election returns bore this out. 

As Punchbowl News reporter Ally Mutnick noted, three heavily Latino counties in New Jersey that went to Trump in 2024 snapped sharply back to the Democrats. 

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Political analyst Ryan Matsumoto found an even starker example in heavily Latino Paterson, New Jersey. In one precinct, Biden crushed Trump 88.8% to 11.2% in 2020. Four years later, Trump narrowly edged out Kamala Harris 50.3% to 49.7%—a stunning swing of nearly 40 points. 

But in this year’s gubernatorial race, Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill obliterated GOP candidate Jack Ciattarelli 88% to 12%, almost perfectly restoring the 2020 margin. It’s a jaw-dropping reversal that shows just how fleeting Latino flirtation with the GOP really was. 

And if any state should be watching closely, it’s Texas, where the GOP built its redistricting strategy on the illusion of permanent Latino gains. And if Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is still serious about calling for a new map, these election results might’ve put the kibosh on that too.

The Trump experiment is over, and the backlash is fierce.

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