CHAOS: Those gerrymanders may backfire next year!

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2025

If next year actually happens: It isn't the fact that the Democratic candidates won. As we noted yesterday, it's the fact that they won by these margins:

New Jersey gubernatorial election, 2025
Mikie Sherrill (D): 1,805,244 (56.3%)
Jack Ciattarelli (R): 1,384,601 (43.1%)

Virginia gubernatorial election, 2025
Abigail Spanberger (D): 1,921,472 (57.2%)
Winsome Earle-Sears (R): 1,433,562 (42.6%)

Assuming that next year's elections proceed in a normal way—assuming that next year's midterms take place at all—those victory margins suggest that President Trump's low approval ratings may show up as bad vote totals for Republican candidates. 

Tuesday's election results suggest that there's a change in the air. We even direct you to the possibility voiced by Russell Berman in a new essay at The Atlantic, dual headline included:

‘None of This Is Good for Republicans’
Gerrymandering efforts look different after Election Day.

President Donald Trump’s gerrymandering war has never looked riskier for his party.

Prodded by Trump, Republicans earlier this year launched an audacious plan to entrench their congressional majority by redrawing House-district maps to squeeze out Democrats—anywhere and everywhere they could. The gambit was an exercise in political power and, coming outside of the traditional decennial redistricting process, without precedent in modern history.

Yet if Democrats feared not long ago that they would be locked out of a House majority, their decisive victories across the country [Tuesday] night have made them, arguably, the favorites heading into next year’s midterm elections.

[...]

“None of this is good for Republicans. It’s all their own doing, though,” [Mike] Madrid said. Latinos in Texas border towns may vote differently in 2026 than Latinos in New Jersey did this year. But the anti-GOP shift in this week’s elections could boost the Democrats’ chances of winning two and possibly three of the five Texas seats that Republicans redrew in their favor, Madrid told me. It could also open up even more opportunities for Democrats, because to create the additional red-leaning seats, Republicans had to cut into previously safe GOP districts. “The problem is they’re spreading their other districts thin as they’re getting greedy,” Madrid said.

Berman had spoken with Mike Madrid, "the longtime GOP strategist." As the leading authority notes, Madrid was once press secretary for the Republican leader of the California Assembly, though he later became a bit of a NeverTrumper.

In that passage, Berman is describing one of the ways the current redistricting efforts may backfire for the GOP in next year's House elections.

This potential problem was occasionally cited back when the redistricting war began. On Tuesday evening, the possibility of some such backfire occurring became more clear. 

Could Republican gerrymandering backfire? This is the way the backfire would happen, using the reconfigured House districts in Texas as a case in point:

The Texas legislature has created a bunch of new House districts. They were designed to create five additional districts which seemed to favor Republican candidates.

Having said that, sad! Those new Republican-friendly seats will only be Republican-friendly if Texas voters continue to turn out and vote the way they've done in the recent past. If sentiment among Texas voters begins to turn in the way which seemed to drive Tuesday evening's victory margins, it may turn out that some of those newly Republican-friendly districts won't turn to be Republican-friendly at all.

Given the possible change in voter sentiment, Madrid is suggesting that two or three of those five House districts in Texas may end up voting for the Democratic candidate next year. It's also true that, in order to create those newly Republican-friendly districts, some Republican voters were stolen away from other districts which were already Republican-friendly.

This creates the possibility that those other districts, which elected Republicans in the past, might slip out of the Republican camp as well. In other words:

In order to create five additional "red-leaning seats," Texas Republicans had to create some other districts which are now less red-leaning. If over voter sentiment changes, the GOP could imaginably lose some of those districts too.

So it could go in next year's elections, assuming those elections take place and if voter sentiment continues to turn against President Trump. 

So it could go next year! That said, it remains to be seen how the sitting president and his staff will react to the warning signs which appeared in Tuesday's elections. Things could get extremely hairy as we move through the coming year.

It isn't the fact the Democratic candidates won in Virginia and in New Jersey. It's the fact that those candidates won by such large margins.

How will the MAGA leadership cadre react to Tuesday night's results? We don't have the slightest idea, but that's a key part of the larger question.

Also, the Fox News Channel continues to do what it can to freeze its viewers in the pro-MAGA camp. Intellectual chaos spreads across the fruited plane as these efforts continue.

This afternoon: The New York Times lists "12 signs"

Tomorrow: As recently heard, though perhaps in a dream:

"I was never a D-minus student, but I play one on cable TV!"