After the 2024 election, Republicans exulted over Donald Trump’s surprisingly strong performance among Latino voters. This was a “historic realignment” of the electorate, the National Republican Campaign Committee said, one that would produce GOP victories for years to come.
So when Trump ordered Texas Republicans last summer to redraw the state’s congressional districts in the hopes of putting as many as five more seats in GOP hands, they thought one way to do it was to increase the number of Latinos in key districts. But that strategy — in fact, the GOP’s entire mid-decade redistricting plan — may be unravelling.
The “realignment” Republicans were hoping for was almost certainly a phantom; meanwhile, their redistricting move isn’t going much better.
Texas’ primary elections on Tuesday drew a remarkable turnout, especially on the Democratic side. As Politico noted, “In five different rural majority-Latino counties, more votes were cast in Tuesday’s Democratic primary than for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.” Turnout in majority-Latino counties was almost twice as high for Democrats as for Republicans, though both parties had hotly contested Senate primaries. State Rep. James Talarico, who won the Democratic nomination, ran up strong numbers among Latino voters, overcoming Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s advantage among Black voters.
The “realignment” Republicans were hoping for was almost certainly a phantom; meanwhile, their redistricting move isn’t going much better. When Trump started this fight last July — first in Texas, then moving to other red states — he may have figured that Democrats, whether out of weakness or indecision, would simply fold. But Democrats fought back, first and most significantly in California, and then in Virginia.
While the redistricting battles are still playing out, it’s looking far from the Republican triumph Trump might have initially expected. The parties may fight to a draw; at most, Republicans might net a couple of seats. In a year that increasingly looks like we’re headed for a blue wave, that wouldn’t be nearly enough to save the House GOP majority.
Two things are notable in the face of this likely GOP own goal.
First, all this district rejiggering is possible because in recent years, the Supreme Court has given parties almost unlimited power to redraw lines for partisan advantage. While the court’s decisions over the past decade have left it up to states to be as fair or unfair as they want, Democrats have been more likely to promote independent commissions to draw district lines. These commissions are in use in 11 mostly Democratic states, while all but a few Republican states have stuck with partisan redistricting. But redistricting in the middle of the decade — not after a nationwide census delivers new data on the distribution of the population but just whenever a state legislature feels like it — is highly unusual, an assertion of raw political power upending an established norm.
Mid-decade redistricting has happened before, most notably in 2003, when Tom DeLay, then one of the most powerful Republicans in Congress, engineered a redrawing of the Texas map that swung multiple seats to the GOP. It has been rare ever since — but there’s no law against it. And that’s the kind of thing Trump loves: a tool of power that others hesitate to use, until he picks it up and starts smashing.
After Trump got Texas to begin its redrawing, he told other red states to follow suit. Missouri and North Carolina complied, adding one likely Republican seat each. Other states, including Florida and Georgia, are trying, though court challenges leave those efforts in doubt. Trump did suffer a setback in Indiana, where the GOP-dominated legislature resisted his pleas and threats, ultimately voting to keep their existing map.
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Paul Waldman is a journalist and author focused on politics and culture.
