California’s ‘Election Rigging Response’ Restores an Uneven Playing Field

The battle for control of the U.S. Congress in the wake of the 2026 elections has already begun. If the 2026 results are consistent with previous midterm elections, the party controlling the presidency is expected to lose seats in Congress. Since active Republican members of Congress only outnumber active Democrats today by 219 to 213, based on history, the odds favor Democrats gaining a majority after the midterms.

To improve these odds, Republicans controlling the Texas state legislature have redrawn their congressional districts. Typically, redistricting is done every ten years after the official U.S. Census results are available. In those instances, redistricting is necessary because states with high population growth over the past decade will gain seats, and those states with lower rates of growth will have to give up seats. But Texas Republicans decided recent shifts in voting patterns in their state made it probable that a round of partisan redistricting would result in the state picking up five additional Republican members of Congress after the 2026 elections.

California is now returning the favor, with other states, blue and red, potentially also getting involved. But it is important to note that California’s heavily gerrymandered congressional districts yield an overrepresentation by Democrats that greatly exceeds the degree to which Republicans are overrepresented in Texas’s congressional delegation. Using the 2024 election results as a proxy, 58 percent of Californians voted for Harris, while Democrats control 83 percent of the state’s seats in Congress—that’s 25 percent overrepresentation. Meanwhile, 56 percent of Texans voted for Trump, while Republicans control 66 percent of the state’s seats in Congress—that’s only 10 percent overrepresentation.

The implications of California’s disproportionate advantage through gerrymandering exceeding Texas by 15 percent translate into about five congressional seats favoring the Democrats. This means that if the current redistricting in Texas pays off in the form of five more Republican congressional seats, the respective partisan advantages are equalized between the two states.