The blue wave swamped Trump’s redistricting wall

POLITICO · Andrew Howard · 2026-11-05 10:00 UTC

While Republicans didn’t yield the gains they hoped from redistricting, the effort was crucial in the small handful of seats they were able to flip.

President Donald Trump went all-in on an unprecedented mid-decade redistricting push to protect the GOP’s House majority. The blue wave washed right over it.

In a normal year, Republicans’ multi-state push to redraw seats should have handed them as many as a dozen extra seats. But in a historically large wave year — Democrats are on pace to win the national popular vote by roughly a 13-point margin — Republicans ended up netting just two seats.

In Texas, Republicans who kicked off the national fight thought they could pick up five more House seats with their new map. Instead, they won just one. In Tennessee, their gerrymander netted one seat — but they’re also on track to lose another deep-red seat that surprisingly flipped. The party’s only clear win is in Louisiana, where they’ll likely gain a seat in a race that is headed to a runoff.

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