How Redistricting Is Making the Midterms Less Competitive

All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for election in November, but fewer than a tenth of those races are likely to be competitive. And that number has been dwindling.

One culprit? The nationwide redistricting battles, in which Republicans and Democrats across the country have resorted to creative cartography to draw as many safe seats as possible as they fight for control of Congress.

Competitive districts — where a candidate leads a challenger by fewer than 10 percentage points — are increasingly rare. That is partly because many voters choose to live in communities with like-minded people, making many areas more politically homogenous and less competitive. And it is partly because parties are able to draw gerrymandered House maps, whittling down the number of swing districts even further.

“It’s a mutually reinforcing process,” said Eric Schickler, a political science professor at U.C. Berkeley.

Presidential candidates won about 28 percent of congressional districts with fewer than 10 percentage points in 2008. In 2024, that decreased to 20 percent.

Four swing districts vanished after Florida’s latest round of redistricting in April. Republicans redrew the state’s congressional maps. The new map retained only one district that would have been considered competitive in the 2024 presidential election.

Nearly 20 years ago, Florida had 14 competitive districts.

Texas’ new maps shifted seats in favor of Republicans and in the process wiped out the only two districts that would have been considered competitive in 2024.

Democrats have taken a similar route. Three swing districts disappeared in California when lawmakers redrew its map so Democrats could pick up seats.

Using presidential election results to analyze House races is far from a perfect forecast for the 2026 midterms. For one, voters don’t always cast ballots along party lines. And while voters overwhelmingly turned out for Republican candidates in 2024, the political environment in this year’s midterms is expected to favor Democrats.

But presidential results are a useful lens because of their high turnout and ability to offer a clearer view of partisan trends than congressional elections, which can be highly influenced by incumbency.

The lack of competition is bad for democracy, experts say. Voters have less of a reason to participate if races are not close, and they have fewer ways to force out leaders with whom they are unhappy.

“If you do away with competitive seats, you’re just going to get much less of a response when voters are dissatisfied,” Mr. Shickler said.

House members who occupy safe seats have fewer incentives to compromise or work across the aisle. Many can win by appealing to their party’s base, who are often more likely to vote in primaries.

That increases polarization and can lead to gridlock in Congress, according to experts. “We see that pretty well in our politics already,” said Asher Hildebrand, a professor of public policy at Duke University. “And we’re only going to see more of that as swing districts disappear.”

Mr. Hildebrand points to his home state of North Carolina, which went through two rounds of mid-decade redistricting within two years. Its legislature passed new maps in 2023 that left just two competitive districts. The latest map passed in October shifts one of those districts, currently represented by Don Davis, a Democrat, from one which Mr. Trump won by three percentage points in 2024 to one that he would have won by 12.

About half of voters in North Carolina voted for Kamala Harris in 2024. But only about a quarter of the state’s delegates are Democrats.

After the Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act, and with encouragement from the Trump administration, Republicans in several Southern states — Louisiana, Tennessee, Alabama and South Carolina — have moved quickly to redraw maps in their favor. Democrats have threatened to do the same in blue states.

Use the dropdown below to explore how districts’ 2024 presidential election results have shifted in each state that has passed new maps.