July 13, 2025
Redistricting battles continue to play a pivotal role in shaping the political landscape ahead of upcoming elections, with key states like Wisconsin and Texas at the center of intense scrutiny.
In Wisconsin, the state Supreme Court recently declined to revisit challenges to the congressional map, leaving a district plan that critics say favors Republicans despite a closely divided electorate. Meanwhile, in Texas, Governor Greg Abbott (R) has added congressional redistricting to a special legislative session, where Republicans aim to strengthen their House majority. These developments highlight ongoing legal and political struggles over how district lines are drawn—and the significant impact those decisions have on party control in Congress.
Wisconsin
In a surprising turn of events, the Wisconsin state Supreme Court justices announced that the panel will not hear the Democratic cases that were petitioning for a re-drawing of the state’s congressional districts.
Before the 2024 election, the Badger State high court ordered changes for the state Assembly and Senate boundaries but simultaneously refused to alter the congressional map. Considering that at least two of the justices said during their respective campaigns that the congressional map should be re-drawn, the 2023 pronouncement was eyebrow raising. The same decision late last month from a slightly different 4D-3R court came as a shock to most.
All of this judicial action likely favoring Republicans at least to a degree, seemed to bolster the chances of Wisconsin also reconfiguring its eight-district federal plan as the Democrats wished.
Seven-term US Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Town of Vermont/Madison) summed up the feeling of many Democrats when he said to an Associated Press reporter in response to the court’s announcement that, “it’s good that Wisconsin has fair maps at the state level, but we deserve them at the federal level as well. Unfortunately, gerrymandered maps for members of Congress will remain in Wisconsin.”
Democrats such as Rep. Pocan believe the map is out of balance from a partisan perspective because a domain that typically returns very close statewide election results yields a 6R-2D congressional map. They proclaim, according to the AP story, that the congressional map “violates the state constitution’s requirement that all Wisconsin residents be treated equally.”
This partisan gerrymandering argument has rarely succeeded because the claimants suggest that people who voluntarily join a political party should be given the same civil rights protections that minority groups enjoy.
The rejoinder argument is that two of the six Wisconsin Republican seats are highly competitive. Rep. Bryan Steil’s (R-Janesville) southeastern 1st District carries a partisan lean of 49.4R – 48.3D according to the Dave’s Redistricting App statisticians, but the Congressman has won twice under this district configuration with a pair of 54% victories.
In the state’s western 3rd District that Democrat Ron Kind represented for 26 years before Republican Derrick Van Orden (R-Prairie du Chien/La Crosse) won the seat in a 2022 open contest, saw the new incumbent scoring successively tight 51.3 and 51.8% victories to flip the seat. Dave’s Redistricting App calculates the 3rd District partisan lean at 48.9D – 48.5R. Thus, the Democrats’ argument that these two districts are gerrymandered Republican seats has been hard to sell.
Despite the Wisconsin map not being re-drawn, we can expect to again see hard fought campaigns in Districts 1 and 3, and each could flip. Democrats may have a harder time finding a strong candidate to oppose Rep. Steil because he has already beaten some of the top Democrats in the region as was the case in November when he turned back former US Representative Peter Barca, but the district can still go either way.
The candidate story is different in District 3. In 2024, businesswoman Rebecca Cooke (D) came within 2.7 percentage points of upsetting Rep. Van Orden. She will face Democratic primary competition in 2026 from Eau Claire City Council President Emily Berge and Eau Claire City Councilwoman Laura Benjamin so her path to renomination must overcome partisan obstacles.
Ms. Cooke, however, now armed with such diverse ideological Democratic endorsements from the House Blue Dog PAC, which is the more moderate internal party organization, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) from the far left faction, still must be considered the presumed favorite for the Democratic nomination.
In Wisconsin, though the state Supreme Court justices recently said they would not hear the congressional redistricting case before them, a new lawsuit has been filed. A group called the Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy filed the lawsuit claiming the current map is an “anti-competitive gerrymander,” distinguishing their claim from the partisan gerrymander lawsuit the Supreme Court refused to hear according to an Associated Press news story. An anti-competitive gerrymander refers to all incumbents rather than those of one particular party.
The Wisconsin suit was filed in before a Dane County circuit court where the plaintiffs will likely get a favorable ruling. The process, however, will be lengthy as appeals to any lower court ruling will occur before again reaching the state Supreme Court. Therefore, it may be a longshot to see the Wisconsin map redrawn before the 2026 midterm elections.
In Wisconsin’s eight congressional districts, we see similar patterns relating to President Trump’s performance in reference to the DRA partisan lean figures. There, President Trump carried six of the state’s eight districts on his way to a 49.6 – 48.7% statewide victory. His vote total exceeded the DRA partisan lean in six of the eight districts. The only seats where he underperformed in relation to the Republican benchmark were in District 5 (Rep. Scott Fitzgerald-R), which ironically is the most Republican district in the state, and District 4 (Rep. Gwen Moore-D), Wisconsin’s most Democratic seat.
Redistricting notwithstanding, Wisconsin will be an important US House battleground state in 2026. Republicans, however, are now breathing a sigh of relief while Democrats are expressing continued disappointment at the state Supreme Court’s most recent redistricting action.
Texas
In recent weeks, Texas has surged back into the national political spotlight. One of the most consequential developments is Governor Abbott’s decision to add congressional redistricting to the agenda for the special legislative session set to reconvene on July 21, 2025. The move comes amid growing pressure from national Republicans, including the White House, who view redrawing the map as a critical opportunity to gain additional seats in the 2026 midterm elections and potentially block Democrats from netting the three seats to claim the House majority.
The Texas situation is much different than Wisconsin, and Republican leaders may be able to produce a new map that increases the current plan’s 25R-13D split. Because the state has grown by over 2.1 million people since the 2020 census was released, translating into a 7.3% growth rate, the mid-decade estimates suggest that the state’s current 38 districts are already significantly imbalanced from an equivalent population perspective. To put the Texas growth figure into context, the national rate of population increase during the same period is 2.6%.
South Texas appears to attract the most attention in the special session. Using the Dave’s Redistricting App statisticians’ partisan lean calculations (methodology employed to develop the partisan lean figures can be found on the following About Data link from the DRA website: About Data – Dave’s Redistricting App), we generally see the Republicans overperforming in the region.
Under the current Texas plan, the DRA partisan lean calculation correctly projected which party would hold the particular congressional district in 37 of the 38 CDs. The only officeholder to win a congressional seat where the opposing party held the partisan lean advantage occurred in South Texas District 15 where two-term GOP Rep. Monica de la Cruz (R-McAllen) held her seat with a 57-43% majority. The DRA 15th District partisan calculation gives the Democrats a 4.1% point advantage.
President Donald Trump carried 27 of the state’s 38 CDs, including three seats where the partisan lean calculation favored the Democrats. In addition to District 15, Mr. Trump also topped Kamala Harris in District 28 (Rep. Henry Cuellar; D-Laredo) and 34 (Rep. Vicente Gonzalez; D-McAllen). All of these CDs are located in South Texas.
Thus, the Trump performance largely destroys part of the Democrats’ racial gerrymander argument because he carried these three districts that have overwhelming minority populations.
In District 34, the voting age minority population figure is 90.5% and 88.5% Hispanic. Mr. Trump won the district with a 51.8 – 47.4% majority. In District 15, the minority Voting Age Population (VAP) figure is 82.4% with the Hispanic VAP at 78.9%. President Trump carried this district with a 58.5 – 40.7% strong majority. District 28 has a minority VAP of 80.7% with a Hispanic VAP of 72.9%. The Trump winning margin here is 53.2 – 45.9%.
There are 19 Texas districts where White voters are the majority of the Voting Age Population. Mr. Trump won 18 of the 19. The one exception that supported Kamala Harris was Rep. Lloyd Doggett’s (D-Austin) 37th CD that stretches from Austin to San Antonio down the I-35 corridor.
Eighteen of the Texas congressional districts feature majority minority populations. Of those, Mr. Trump won nine of the 18 seats and exceeded the Republican benchmark in all eighteen. Mr. Trump also exceeded the DRA partisan lean GOP benchmark in the nine majority minority seats that Ms. Harris claimed. These statistics, to a significant degree, at least partially spoil the Democrats’ Voting Rights Act racial gerrymandering arguments.
Regarding the partisan lean figures from all of the Lone Star State’s 38 congressional districts, Mr. Trump exceeded the Republican benchmark in 32 of the seats. In the 14 districts where Democrats hold the partisan lean advantage, Mr. Trump exceeded the Republican benchmark in all.
In six districts the Trump performance failed to reach the Republican benchmark, even though he carried each of the seats. Those where the President finished below the GOP partisan mean were TX-2 (Rep. Dan Crenshaw-R), TX-3 (Rep. Keith Self-R), TX-22 (Rep. Troy Nehls-R), TX-24 (Rep. Beth Van Duyne-R), TX-26 (Rep. Brandon Gill-R), and TX-38 (Rep. Wesley Hunt-R).
Thus, the Trump performance largely destroys part of the Democrats’ racial gerrymander argument because he carried these three districts that have overwhelming minority populations.
Looking ahead, many observers expect the redistricting effort to center on four Democratic-held districts: TX-9 (Rep. Al Green), TX-18 (Sylvester Turner), TX-29 (Sylvia Garcia), and TX-33 (Marc Veasey).
