Democrats won stunning victories on Tuesday in several districts that Republicans redrew over the last year and a half to benefit GOP candidates.
Those victories came in Florida, North Carolina, Alabama and Texas. All four states were part of a nationwide effort by Trump and allies to reconfigure the boundaries of congressional districts in the middle of the decade. Typically, states redraw congressional districts just once, at the beginning of each decade.
Perhaps no victory was more significant than that of Alabama congressman Shomari Figures, whose district was at the center of litigation over the fate of the Voting Rights Act. In ۲۰۲۴, Figures was elected to a district that was drawn after a court ruled Alabama’s congressional map diminished the influence of Black voters in the state’s Black belt. This year, the supreme court gutted the provision of the Voting Rights Act critical to that ruling and Alabama reinstated the old version of the map. Trump would have carried it by ۱۴ points in ۲۰۲۴, if it existed then, but Figures won anyway.
Democrats have won three of the four congressional seats in Florida that Republicans redrew this year in their favor, and are narrowly leading in the fourth. It’s a surprising result that underscores how strongly Democratic candidates are performing on election night.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis and Republicans who control the state legislature redrew the state’s congressional map earlier this year to create four new districts – the ninth, ۱۴th, ۲۲nd, and ۲۵th – that favored Republicans. Had the districts been in place in ۲۰۲۴, Donald Trump would have won all but one by double digits. He would have won the final district by about nine points.
But on Tuesday, Democrats wound up winning three of those seats. Democrats Kathy Castor, Pia Dandiya, and Jared Moskowitz are projected to win the ۱۴th, ۲۲nd, and ۲۵th districts. Democrat Darren Soto is leading in the ninth district.
In North Carolina, Democrat Don Davis won re-election in the state’s first congressional district in the eastern part of the state. The Republican-led district reconfigured the boundaries of Davis’ district so that Trump would have carried it by ۱۲ points had it been in place in ۲۰۲۴.
In Texas, the first state where Trump pushed for redistricting, Republicans were poised to gain anywhere from three to five seats. As votes were being counted, Democrats were favored Tuesday in many of those contests.
In addition to the districts in Florida, some of the new congressional districts in Texas and North Carolina appeared winnable for Democrats.
Nicholas Stephanopoulos, an election law professor at Harvard, cautioned against taking the wrong conclusion away from Democratic wins in the gerrymandered districts.
“Gerrymandering isn’t yielding the gains GOP hoped … IN A BLUE WAVE ENVIRONMENT,” he posted on X. “In a NEUTRAL environment, they’d be gaining around nine seats net. Even in this environment, their new maps will perform better than their old maps would have.”
Their victories came as part of what appeared to be a staggeringly strong night for Democrats in Florida. Trump easily won the state in ۲۰۲۴ and four years ago, Governor Ron DeSantis won the state by nearly ۲۰ points. The state that Barack Obama won twice had come to be seen as a kind of lost cause for Democrats.
Incumbent senator Ashley Moody bested Democratic challenger Angie Nixon by a narrow margin, and Republican Byron Donalds barely triumphed in the gubernatorial race that few observers initially believed would be close.
