The state of Texas is redrawing its congressional map ahead of the 2026 midterm election. Given that it is a deep red state, the Republican-majority State Legislature is admittedly trying to make the map more favourable to President Trump’s party. As of now, the GOP holds 25 out of the Lone Star State’s 38 seats in its House delegation. Democrats hold 12, while one seat is currently vacant after the passing of Congressman Sylvester Turner in March 2025.
President Trump and other Republican leaders are admittedly looking to gain five more seats in the House of Representatives through the redistricting in Texas.
Evidently, this move has brought on accusations—or, rather, simply acknowledgement—of ‘gerrymandering’. It is an eponymous term after Elbridge Gerry, who served as Vice President under President James Madison briefly, from 1813 until his death in 1814. Prior to taking the Vice President’s office, as Governor of Massachusetts, he started the practice of redrawing a state’s congressional map in a manner that is more favourable to a party—in his case, the Democratic-Republicans. One of his new districts was mocked in the press for resembling a salamander, hence the term.
Thus, this is a practice that has been pursued by all political parties for over two centuries. Yet, 57 out of the 62 Democratic state legislators in the Texas House of Representatives thought it was enough of an excuse to leave the state. Due to their absence, not enough legislators were present at the session to ‘make quorum’, meaning to have enough assembly members to pass a binding resolution.
What’s more, some of the fleeing Texas state reps travelled to Chicago, Illinois to be received by Governor JB Pritzker. Illinois is a state that is notorious for its oddly shaped ‘spaghetti districts’, which advantages the Democratic Party in House elections. In the 2024 election, Republicans took 47 per cent of the generic congressional ballot vote in the state, yet only won three out of the 17 seats (17.6 per cent).
The geographic distributions of voters would typically favour the Republicans in House elections, given that their support base is living in sparsely populated rural areas, allowing them to control a larger number of geographically expansive districts. By contrast, the Democrats’ base tends to live in densely populated urban areas. It took a lot of gerrymandering efforts by Democrat-run states (with a lot of dividing of major cities into more than one Congressional district) to counterbalance that effect.
To illustrate that point: in the 2016 US House election, Republicans won the generic ballot vote by 1 point, and took 241 out of the 435 seats. In the 2024 House election, Republicans won the generic ballot by 2.7 points, yet only won 220 seats that time. This, however, also renders the threats from Democratic leaders—such as California Governor Gavin Newsom and DNC Chairman Ken Martin—to redistrict in blue states as retalition somewhat moot.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has threatened the ‘truant’ Democratic state representatives with expelling them from the state House, a proposal that was seconded by Governor Greg Abbott as well. In addition, the rules of the Texas House allow for a $500 per day fine for each assembly member who fails to show up for the session without permission, POLITICO reports.
So far, neither has been effective in getting the Democrats back to Texas to make quorum.
However, they will have to return at some point—and then, Republicans still have enough votes to redraw the state’s congressional district map, making the 2026 House of Representatives elections in the United States more competitive.
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