Alabama and North Carolina Defy Redrawn Maps
Rep. Shomari Figures spoke at an election night event in Montgomery, Ala., holding on to Alabama’s redrawn 2nd Congressional District. Across the country, Democrats secured sweeping wins on Tuesday in congressional districts that Republican state lawmakers had redrawn explicitly to boost their party ahead of the midterms.
Trump’s Mid-Decade Push Meets Resistance
Facing expectations of some losses in this election cycle, President Trump urged his party last year to take the extraordinary step of engaging in mid-decade redistricting efforts. By Tuesday night, many of those map-redrawing maneuvers had failed to deliver the expected firewall.
Florida and the Limits of GOP Strategy
In Florida, multiple Democrats—including Kathy Castor, Pia Dandiya, and Jared Moskowitz—won their races in redrawn districts, according to race calls by the Associated Press.
The Battlegrounds of North Carolina and Alabama
North Carolina presented a similar test. Democratic Rep. Don Davis successfully held on to his 1st District seat, even though state Republicans had redrawn the boundaries to make the district more competitive for the GOP. According to the Downballot, Trump would have won that redrawn 1st District by nearly 12 percentage points.
In Alabama, the margin was even steeper. Trump would have won the state’s redrawn 2nd Congressional District by even more, yet Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures held on to the seat, per AP race calls. Republicans in Alabama had redone the state map after the U.S. Supreme Court further weakened the Voting Rights Act earlier this year.
Latino Voters Shift Support to Democrats in Newly Drawn Texas Districts
Texas also saw map modifications pushed by Trump, marking the first state to redistrict at his urging. Yet a few of those newly drawn districts ultimately went to Democrats.
Republicans crafted the new maps anticipating that the coalition of voters who supported Trump in 2024 would support them this cycle. In Texas, the party was banking on gains made with Latino voters in new maps. Instead, many of those voters shifted their support to Democrats this year.
