There are still many months to go before anyone is voting in the midterms, but as of today it's pretty clear that the Republican redistricting effort pushed by President Trump is going to be an advantage for the GOP. Even CNN is saying so.
A pair of court rulings – one from the US Supreme Court and now one from the Virginia Supreme Court Friday – have sharply recast the 2026 redistricting battles in the GOP’s favor...
...the redistricting battle has now clearly benefitted Republicans. And it will probably help them even more in years to come.
Most of our readers probably know the details of these two rulings, but the short version is that Democrats probably lost 4 seats in the Virginia ruling and several more with the Supreme Court ruling. So here's how things will probably shape up when you tally all of the redistricting that has taken place so far and that which is likely to happen in the next few weeks.
Applying these changes to the CNN redistricting tracker, it’s looking like Republicans will have drawn as many as 15, 16 or 17 new winnable districts for themselves for this year’s midterms, while Democrats will have drawn five – all of them in California...
That’s certainly a much better scenario for Republicans than two weeks ago.
Rather than Democrats having to flip the three Republican seats they needed to break Speaker Mike Johnson’s razor-thin majority, they could now effectively have to flip more than 10.
That's the good news. The bad news which CNN is also trumpeting, is that ten seats isn't much of a barrier in a midterm election. Back in 2018, the midterm election for Trump's first term, Republicans lost 40 seats. Then again, in 2022, Democrats only lost 9 seats.
There's no guarantee how things will go. All we can say at the moment is that the GOP's position is looking significantly better than it was 2 weeks ago. Now the results are going to depend on factors other than redistricting.
Most elections seem to come down to how people feel about the economy and the party in power's handling of it. If Trump can wrap up the blockade against Iran and gas prices drop a bit, things might start to look even better. If, on the other hand Iran drags this out for 3 more months and we see higher inflation and gas prices, well...10 seats might not cut it.
There are also a lot of unknown unknowns. As we've just seen with today's ruling, a lot can change in a matter of days or weeks. In general, predicting the future this far out is a fool's errand, but the general trend is clear. The party in power usually loses seats.
Finally, it's worth remembering that redistricting impacts more than just this election.
...it’s overly reductive to just look at how this will play out in 2026. That’s because all of this – and especially the US Supreme Court ruling – will reverberate for years to come.
And that’s where the GOP’s real likely gains could come in.
For one, even if these districts might not be red enough to go Republican in a good Democratic year in 2026, they’ll still favor Republicans in general. And they could well flip red in a better environment for Republicans – be that in 2028 or 2030...
Democrats could gain some power back by scrapping redistricting commissions in states they control and eliminating other state restrictions on partisan gerrymandering.
But Republicans are just in a better spot in state governments. The states where they hold the “trifecta” of both state legislative chambers and the governor’s mansion account for more seats.
Regardless of what happens this November, it has been a very good two weeks for the GOP.
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