Nate Cohn is the chief political analyst at the New York Times, where he also oversees the newspaper’s polling operation. I wanted to speak with him this week about another subject he writes about, though: the redistricting wars. They have once again tilted in the Republicans’ favor in recent weeks, after a controversial Supreme Court decision and a setback for Democrats in Virginia, where they were blocked from pushing through their own gerrymander in the hopes of offsetting successful redistricting efforts in Republican-majority states across the country. I also wanted Cohn—with whom I worked at The New Republic, and who remains a friend—to give a sense of how battles over redistricting are likely to play out in the next several election cycles, and what those battles may mean for 2028 and beyond. Our conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below.
Over the past month, we have had a Supreme Court decision about the Voting Rights Act, and several moves by Republican states to create safe congressional districts.
So, as you may recall, in 2025, Donald Trump began a highly unusual, if not unprecedented, mid-cycle campaign where he sought to encourage Republican states to redraw their maps to the advantage of Republicans. A whole series of Republican states followed through on that over the ensuing months, with Texas, North Carolina, and Florida chief among them. And this will likely net the Republicans a meaningful number of seats in the House. What I think the Republicans didn’t expect was that, earlier this year, the Democrats seemed like they were mostly able to cancel out those likely-to-be-lost congressional seats with their own gerrymanders in Virginia and in California. But, over the last two weeks, that basic picture of Republican gerrymanders mostly cancelled out by Democratic gerrymanders has changed.
First, the Supreme Court substantially narrowed the power of the Voting Rights Act and specifically gave states the ability to dismantle minority-majority districts, as long as it was being done for a “partisan” purpose. That’s allowed a number of Southern states to move forward with an entirely new wave of gerrymandering, beyond what they were able to attempt previously. We’ll see what the final tally is, but it’s possible that as many as five or more seats currently occupied by Democrats could be flipped by this effort.
And then the second half of this is that the Virginia Supreme Court struck down the state’s newly gerrymandered map, which has the potential to cost Democrats up to four seats. So between those two things, the balance of gerrymanders has lurched pretty abruptly toward the right. The stalemate that existed has been broken, and the Republicans now seem likely to obtain a meaningful edge heading into the midterms.
There are a couple of states still working things out, but you calculated that, as it stands now, Democrats will likely need to win the national House popular vote by about four points to capture it, right?
That’s right. In that calculation, the Republicans will have followed through with dismantling Democratic-held majority-Black districts in South Carolina, Alabama, and Louisiana. In all three of those states, it’s not necessarily a foregone conclusion that the Republicans will eliminate every one of those Democratic seats, but given the conduct of Republicans at this point, I would expect that at least some of those Democratic districts will be eliminated.
There is only so much more that can happen before the midterms, because we are so close to the election, but is there more that Southern Republican states can do in future elections to erase other minority-majority districts and give themselves even more seats?
There are many more districts that the Republicans can try to eliminate ahead of the 2028 election that they will not attempt to eliminate before this one. One reason is that there are a number of Southern states where Republicans control the redistricting process, but where primary elections have already been held, like Texas and North Carolina.
A second factor is that the 2026 election is shaping up to be a pretty good one for Democrats, which may induce some amount of caution in Republican gerrymandering efforts to this point.
Right. In Texas, Republicans gave themselves what they thought would be five more likely seats, but polls suggest that there may be a Democratic wave this year, so it’s possible that not all five of those seats will vote Republican. And other states might not want to take similar risks.
Yeah. They could have gone further if the Supreme Court had narrowed the power of the Voting Rights Act requirement before they had redistricted. They could have insured that several of the state’s majority-Latino districts were even more Republican and put them essentially out of play. And then the second thing to consider is that because the 2026 midterm election is poised to be so Democratic, the Republicans might not want to stretch too far, out of fear that doing so would endanger some of their own seats.
What can Democrats do going forward, and what do you expect them to do? I’ve heard ideas suggesting that blue states could go even further in places like California—which already created more blue districts last year—could try to pass a map where all fifty-two districts are likely blue. How realistic is all this?
It’s a tough question to answer because, in most blue states, the Democrats face meaningful constitutional obstacles to drawing even more serious gerrymanders. Just to take the California example you mentioned: California had to amend the state’s constitution already in order to create more blue districts last year. There are other blue states where more aggressive redistricting efforts would take similarly aggressive steps. New York and Colorado are good examples of states where the Democrats could potentially create more blue seats, but to do it, they would have to amend the state constitution, and we don’t know whether they can do that, and how soon they could do it, because many states have different provisions about how to amend their state’s constitution. Some of those processes don’t allow them to do it quickly.
We just saw that in Virginia. Virginia attempted to amend its state constitution, and the state Supreme Court intervened and said that they didn’t follow the correct procedure in doing so, so Democrats will go back to the drawing board. They are appealing to the Supreme Court, but I think they have an argument, which is at least interesting, that the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision depends on an interpretation of what “election day” means; there’s maybe a one-per-cent chance or a tenth-of-a-per-cent chance that the Supreme Court would hear out their case on it. Much more likely is that the Virginia Democrats will have to try again in the next election cycle with another vote to amend the state constitution and another referendum to try to get voters to draw a more aggressive map.
