The Democrats’ thumping victories Tuesday are piling new pressure on blue states to redraw their congressional maps to strengthen the party’s position ahead of the 2026 elections.
Already, several states are forging ahead.
Virginia Democrats — fresh off a resounding victory in state delegate races — are advancing a constitutional amendment that would likely net the party two House seats, while national Democrats are preparing to send resources to the state to get voters to sign on.
Meanwhile, Democrats nationwide are using Tuesday’s wins to heap pressure on a Maryland legislative leader who is trying to stop the party’s plans to pick up an additional seat there. And some Colorado Democrats are pushing plans to redraw, even if their plans won’t come to fruition until 2028.
“We can’t stick our heads in the sand,” Colorado Attorney General and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Weiser said in an interview after Tuesday’s elections. “We got to live in reality. Colorado, like other states, has to be prepared to take action.”
It all amounts to a full court press for Democrats, who still find themselves at a deficit in the redistricting fight. California’s likely five-seat pickup is still not enough to fully thwart the as many as nine new red-leaning seats that Republicans have drawn across four states, including Texas and North Carolina. National Democrats, worried about falling behind in the fight, are using the big win on the west coast through California’s Proposition 50 — along with larger-than-expected margins in statewide races in Virginia and New Jersey — to pressure state Democrats who are reluctant to fully commit to the fight.
“All Democratic elected officials should take note and take heed of what is coming from the people,” National Democratic Redistricting Committee President John Bisognano told POLITICO.
Virginia’s Democratic-controlled state legislature needs to pass the proposed constitutional amendment once more next year. Then that move, like California’s, would have to go before voters, and it could net Democrats two more House seats. The Democratic-aligned House Majority PAC — which poured $16 million into Prop 50 — is similarly planning to be involved in Virginia’s ballot effort, said spokesperson CJ Warnke.
“We need to see the other states, the remarkable leaders that have been doing remarkable things, meet this moment head-on as well, to recognize what we’re up against in 2026,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said during his victory speech shortly after Prop 50 was called.
Even with widespread support from national Democrats — which itself is a marked difference compared to the good-government messaging of years past — party operatives acknowledge that they face significant obstacles to replicating California in other states, including structural barriers like state redistricting commissions.
“Should we be doing what California’s doing in more places? Hypothetically,” said Yasmin Radjy, executive director of the Democratic grassroots group Swing Left, ahead of Tuesday’s election. “Practically, we may have handcuffed ourselves too much in many of the places too much to be able to do that quickly.”
But Democrats say the big wins have energized efforts — even if they won’t come to fruition until after the midterms. In Colorado, Weiser is pushing for an amendment to the state’s constitution that would allow lawmakers to redraw the state’s maps instead of the current independent commission. Weiser’s plan — which he views only as a last resort and a response to GOP gerrymanders — could not happen before the midterms, he said, given Colorado’s constitutional amendment process.
“In a world where Republican states, one after another, break the norm of mid-cycle redistricting, it is neither responsible nor appropriate for Democratic states to say, ‘I’m staying on the sidelines,’” he said.
Democrats have also mounted legal challenges to block maps in Texas, Missouri and North Carolina, and Republicans sued Wednesday to try and block Prop 50’s implementation.
Republicans are hitting snags of their own, but the White House has not ended its push to redistrict wherever possible ahead of the midterms, hoping to shore up a majority in the House. Taken together, the party could draw more than a dozen seats through the mid-cycle process.
“I’ll put it to you this way: I think on balance, Republicans will end up netting seats from the redistricting process,” James Blair, the political director for President Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and the RNC, said in an exclusive interview with POLITICO’s “The Conversation” podcast Wednesday. “Republicans should take advantage of every tool they have in the tool chest that is legal to try to win elections, particularly when Democrats are doing that.”
Blair also now serves as White House deputy chief of staff.
Trump and his allies have embarked on their own pressure campaign, not unlike the one now unfolding for Democrats. Trump’s team has threatened primaries to wary GOP leaders, and the president himself has phoned Indiana lawmakers who continue to punt on a plan that would create two new GOP-leaning seats.
But Bisognano, the NDRC president, said Democratic states with structural blocks should continue to think about redistricting long term, even if a map can’t pass ahead of 2026.
“Each individual state has many more mechanisms at their disposal, they may all just not be immediate or not able to be implemented as quickly as California’s was,” he said, crediting Newsom for finding an expedient approach.
In the two states where Democrats face few structural barriers — Illinois and Maryland — national leaders have struggled to get local lawmakers on board before Tuesday’s election.
Maryland Democratic state Senate President Bill Ferguson has been a thorn in the side of Gov. Wes Moore. Moore earlier this week created a redistricting commission to push for new maps, but that’s unlikely to result in redrawn lines without Ferguson’s support.
Speaking to reporters hours after he announced the commission Tuesday, Moore denied he did so to pressure Ferguson to move in his direction before reiterating his justification that he wants Maryland to have “fair maps.”
“The legislature is going to have to play an important part of the process,” Moore said in Annapolis. “But I’m also very clear, there’s not one person that can stop a democratic process from happening.”
But Ferguson doubled down after Tuesday’s wins, saying the victories showed “we don’t need to rig the system to win.” A person close to Ferguson, who was granted anonymity to speak freely about Moore’s redistricting efforts, also argued that redistricting arguments heard by a state Supreme Court stacked with GOP appointees could ultimately backfire and possibly cost Democrats one or two seats.
“What [Moore] said was problematic,” the person said. “He essentially said our current 7-1 map is not fair.”
Ferguson’s comments on election night didn’t land well with one prominent Virginia lawmaker who is backing her state’s effort.
“Get our victory in Virginia out of your mouth while you echo MAGA talking points,” Democratic state Sen. L. Louise Lucas said on X. “Grow a pair and stand up to this President. This is just embarassing.”
In Illinois, Black Democratic lawmakers are fearful a new map would hurt Black representation in the state, something that’s continued to be a sticking point despite a trip from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
Despite a lukewarm reaction from some lawmakers, leaders of the Democratic-controlled Illinois General Assembly have been sent a redrawn map, according to three people familiar with redistricting discussions who were granted anonymity to speak freely. Members of the Illinois congressional delegation have also seen the proposed boundaries for each of their individual districts.
But Illinois legislators would have to call a special session to address a new map, where timing could jam things up. The primary election is in March, and ballots are finalized in January in order to be sent out in time to military personnel overseas.
“We’re watching what Indiana does. We’ve been looking at pairing with different states,” Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker said Wednesday, in a reference to blue states responding to red states that might take action on redistricting. “We don’t think it’s a good idea. Redistricting across the country, not a good idea.”
He accused Trump of “wanting to cheat” by pushing Texas to remap in favor of Republicans.
In many other Democratic-controlled states, it is laws that Democrats passed that are holding them up. New York and New Jersey both lack clear paths to redraw, operatives familiar with the redistricting landscape said.
Still, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that some of those structural barriers could be overcome. When Newsom first announced the Prop 50 campaign, many thought it could become a political embarrassment for the 2028 hopeful.
Instead, he was the first Democrat to get his party to act on redistricting, despite easier paths elsewhere.
“We organized in an unprecedented way,” Newsom said Tuesday. “In a 90-day sprint, people from all over the United States of America contributed their voices and their support for this initiative.”
Shia Kapos, Lisa Kashinsky and Gregory Svirnovskiy contributed to this report.
