Race to the bottom? Redistricting ahead of the 2026 U.S. elections

Henrik Helsen
17 hours ago
5 min read

In 2026, the United States will hold congressional elections, with voters choosing 435 Representatives and 35 states electing a U.S. Senator. The outcome of these contests is incredibly important because it will determine the extent to which President Donald Trump is able to pursue his political agenda in the last two years of his term. Consequential American elections are nothing new. But these ones have an added twist.

Like the UK, elections to the US House of Representatives are done on a “first-past-the-post (FPTP)" basis. Each of the 50 states is composed of between one and 52 districts. Notwithstanding the fact that some states have a slightly different electoral procedure, generally the candidate with the most votes is elected. In the UK, a lot has been made of the fact that winning candidates often only win pluralities, leading to seemingly undemocratic outcomes. However, there are only two major parties in the US, so generally the winning candidate also has a majority of the votes. Given the lack of tactical voting, American politicians have sought other ways to maximise their chances of winning.

In the UK, the geographical boundaries of parliamentary constituencies are determined by an independent body, the Boundary Commission. In some American states, redistricting (as it is formally called) is controlled by state legislative bodies, who are under the control of elected partisan politicians. These politicians have employed increasingly sophisticated map-drawing technology to draw in-state boundaries in such a way as to maximise the number of potential seats they can win – a practice known as gerrymandering.

The fundamental premise of gerrymandering is to reduce the voting power of individuals who are likely to vote against the map-drawer's preferred party. Individuals who live in competitive districts have the most voting power. This stands to reason, as a voter in a hypothetical constituency that is regularly decided by one vote has the potential to be a lot more influential than a voter in a constituency where the margins are in the thousands or more. Hence gerrymandering’s core aim is to move opposition voters into uncompetitive districts. For ease of explanation, we will have two parties, the Stripy Party and the Spotty Party and assume that a map-drawer from the Stripy Party is trying to maximise the number of seats that his side will win in a conventional first-past-the-post election.

Given the aim of diluting Spotty electors’ voting power, there are two main mechanisms through which this happens - “packing” and “cracking”. Packing involves moving as many Spotty voters as possible into districts where a Spotty candidate is certain to win anyway. This means these voters are no longer available to vote in competitive districts. Cracking is the opposite – it means distributing Spotty voters across districts where the Stripy candidate is likely to win. Although this may reduce the Stripy candidate’s margin of victory, they will win the seat anyway and like before these Spotty voters will be removed from more competitive districts.

A visual demonstration of “packing” and “cracking”, taken from the MIT Election Lab

Gerrymandering is nothing new. In fact, the term originates from the name of Governor Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, who in 1812 oversaw the drawing of a district apparently resembling a salamander with the express purpose of favouring his own party - thereby making him the original “gerrymanderer”.

The practice lay mostly dormant until just after the 2010 census. Republicans in Wisconsin, who had won significant majorities in the state legislature (on the back of fair maps) employed advanced statistical tools as part of a project known as REDMAP to draw highly aggressive district lines at both the state and congressional level. These left them with six of the eight congressional seats in Wisconsin - even though the state is politically evenly split.

President Donald Trump’s demand in July 2025 that Texas redraw its maps in order to add more Republican seats added a whole new dimension. This was a highly unusual move – districts are usually only redrawn in the year after the decennial census, to reflect changing population patterns. These changes could add up to five Republican lawmakers in that state. In response, California lawmakers introduced a referendum regarding the redrawing of that state’s districts to cut out five Republicans. Potential changes are under consideration in Virginia and Florida, among other states.

It is not hard to see that the abuse of map-drawing power to favour one’s own political party is bad for democracy. Voters should choose their elected representatives, not the other way around. However, despite predictions of a gerrymandering “race to the bottom”, a variety of constraints have shown that there are limits on how far they can try to press their own advantage. Districts in Democratic-run states are often drawn by independent commissions, who have usually produced maps providing no discernible advantage to either party. In Republican-run states, referendum initiatives on the new lines (in the case of Missouri) and a general unwillingness to redraw districts at a time when their party is facing political headwinds mean that a proposed spate of boundary changes has not (yet) materialised.

Although tit-for-tat redistricting is still ongoing, the result of the so-called “redistricting war” has therefore been a tentative stalemate. This term, the Supreme Court has heard oral arguments concerning the constitutionality of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. If overturned, lawmakers would be permitted to use race as an explicit factor when drawing districts, potentially reducing the number of legally-protected, heavily Democratic, majority-minority seats that are found in the southern states. However, the lack of a ruling

has emphasised the message that reciprocal redistricting has been mostly fruitless, leaving open the possibility of a nationwide independent redistricting commission. If Democrats take control of Congress in 2026, such proposals might move a step closer to reality – a win for fair maps and voters alike.

The views and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Warwick Economics Summit.

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