Republicans are betting their mid-decade redistricting gamble will pay off

Republicans are now making the case that their 2026 redistricting gambit might just save their House majority in November.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, in a memo shared first with POLITICO, argues that the GOP effort to redraw maps across several states has created "structural dynamics [that] favor Republicans," shrinking the number of competitive House districts — and forcing Democrats to go deeper into conservative areas.

The NRCC does not specify the number of districts that Republicans made safer through redistricting — most estimates hover around nine — but it does point to how much the House map has changed since 2018, when Democrats gained 43 House seats during President Donald Trump's first term.

The committee claims that not only does it have an advantage in nearly all of the most-competitive seats that were carried by Trump in 2024, but that redistricting has also strengthened the GOP's margins across many of the 40-plus districts Democrats are targeting this fall.

"The composition of the House battlefield has completely flipped," the memo reads.

In 2018, Republicans controlled 23 districts that Hillary Clinton carried in 2016 and 42 districts where Trump failed to breach a 50 percent majority.

In 2026, there are instead 23 Democrats representing districts Trump won in 2024, and there are just 14 Republicans representing districts where Trump received less than 50 percent of the vote.

The memo is a notable acknowledgement from the NRCC that the mid-cycle redistricting gamble was worthwhile to shore up the GOP's House majority, even as the committee largely stayed out of the pressure campaigns in statehouses nationwide, deferring to the White House and Trump's allies to navigate that push.

The committee takes specific aim at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's target list in its analysis.

"Across the 44 Republican-held seats Democrats claim to target, Trump averaged 53.2 percent in 2024. By comparison, across the 43 seats Democrats flipped in 2018, Trump averaged just 46.6 percent in 2016 and never once won a majority," the NRCC writes.

But rather than a sign of a tougher battle this fall, Democrats attribute that statistic to former Vice President Kamala Harris' underwhelming candidacy. And even before redistricting, the DCCC's target list stretched deep into Trump country.

"Democrats are poised to retake the House Majority and Republicans know it. It's why they've resorted to trying to rig the midterms through illegal gerrymanders and voter suppression, but it won't work," DCCC spokesperson Viet Shelton said in a statement.

Democrats still have plenty working in their favor headed into November. The party has continued to overperform 2024 numbers by double digits in special elections, and voters are continuing to sour on Trump, whose approval ratings have hit a record low for this term, especially on the economy.

Polling also shows Democrats with a consistent advantage on the generic ballot, though it's a smaller advantage than they had in the 2018 cycle.

Gerrymandering has been a tool long used by both parties, but the 2026 cycle unleashed new aggressive use, which was supercharged by the Supreme Court's ruling limiting a key provision of the Voting Rights Act in April.

Republicans have gained the edge ahead of the midterms, even as some states resisted, while some of Democrats' biggest efforts to counter the GOP were thwarted in the courtroom.

And there's no end in sight for either party. Democrats are laying out an ambitious cross-country plan for 2028, and more Southern states that did not have time to redraw for the midterms are poised to enter the arena, too.