2026 Midterms Set To Be Least Competitive Due To Redistricting
It seems like as soon as President Donald Trump took office, he knew his second term was doomed from the start. Only halfway through his first year in office, Trump began pressuring governors in red states to begin rare, mid-decade redistricting efforts to protect the GOP’s narrow majority in the House. As a result of the nationwide redistricting battle that’s currently underway, the 2026 midterms are set to be the least competitive in modern history.
According to NPR, control of the House will be determined by a surprisingly small number of races in the upcoming midterm, with the primary elections largely determining who will be elected. “Right now, we only rate 18 out of 435 races as toss-ups, which means that less than 5% of Americans will truly be deciding who’s in control of the House,” David Wasserman, senior elections analyst for the Cook Political Report, told NPR.
This isn’t a new problem by any means. The Unite America Institute, a nonprofit that advocates for election reforms, has labeled it the “primary problem” and calculated that only 7% of voters elected 87% of U.S. House races in 2024. Nick Troiano, executive director of Unite America, told NPR that the redistricting efforts triggered by Trump have only exacerbated the issue.
“The primary problem is bad and getting worse,” Troiano told NPR. “We are about to enter a midterm election season that will be the least competitive of our lifetimes, which means that we will have, no matter who wins in November, the least accountable Congress of our lifetime.”
Last June, Trump asked Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to trigger a rare, mid-decade redistricting effort that would add more House seats in districts Trump easily won. Abbott complied, and after a fraught, drawn-out redistricting process, the Texas state legislature passed a new map that created five new House seats in districts favoring Republicans. California responded with a ballot measure that transferred the power to draw the state’s congressional maps from an independent redistricting commission to the state legislature. The measure passed, leading California to implement a new map that directly neutralizes the gains of the Texas map.
Similar redistricting efforts have taken place in Missouri, North Carolina, with Florida and Virginia also throwing their hat in the ring. Wasserman has found that these efforts haven’t given either Democrats or Republicans a “pronounced advantage” in the upcoming midterms.
“Instead, what it’s done is it’s eviscerated the competitive range of districts in which Americans have a real say over who controls Congress in November,” he told NPR.
According to Politico, the “primary problem” could be exacerbated by how the Supreme Court rules in Louisiana v. Callais. The case focuses on Section 2, which broadly prohibits race-based discrimination in elections. The Supreme Court has already heard the case and didn’t issue a ruling, but took the unusual step of rehearing it. The Supreme Court has already heavily weakened the Voting Rights Act, and if Section 2 is revoked, it would allow red states to redraw districts in a way that heavily diminishes Black voting power and could eliminate a wide swath of Democratic districts.
While the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the case in June, far too late for any redistricting to be done ahead of the 2026 midterms, it could potentially upend elections in the next two years, with even fewer people actually deciding who leads the United States. Be it through partisan redistricting or court rulings, the foundations of the United States’ democracy are being actively weakened, and there appears to be no one with real power doing anything about it.
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