GOP Seats in Congress and Texas House
Shuffled to Toss Up Amid Trump Poll Woes
Capitol Inside Rankings
Capitol Inside
April 22, 2026
The Democrats appeared to pull ahead in a war on redistricting that Texas Republicans started after the voters in Virginia narrowly approved a new congressional map on Tuesday night in a development that's designed to give the Democratic Party four more seats there.
The redistricting plan for U.S. House districts in Old Dominion emerged from a statewide election as a constitutional amendment with 52 percent of the vote. The Virginia vote appeared to give the Democrats a razor-thin lead in the redistricting sweepstakes that GOP leaders and lawmakers in the Lone Star State got under way last summer with the reshaping of the House map that President Donald Trump ordered them to craft in special session with a handful of new seats for Republicans.
Former President Barack Obama praised the voters in Virginia for the new map. "Congratulations, Virginia!," Obama said in a post on X late last night. "Republicans are trying to tilt the midterm elections in their favor, but they haven’t done it yet. Thanks for showing us what it looks like to stand up for our democracy and fight back."
Democrats could pick up as many as 10 House seats on maps that voters endorsed in California and Virginia while adding a congressional district in Utah to their total take as a result of a federal court ruling that prompted its redrawing. The GOP would be in position to flip nine House seats if won every district that it targeted in redistricting plans in Ohio, Missouri, North Carolina, Louisiana and Texas.
The GOP could reclaim the advantage in the redistricting sweepstakes of 2025 and 2026 if Florida Republicans produce a new map as expected in an upcoming special session there. The Florida plan is expected to target three House districts there for partisan takeovers at the polls in November. That would put the Republicans back in front with a dozen potential pickoffs - two more than the running count for Democrats.
But Texas Republicans based their projections for the new map on the levels of support that Trump received in targeted districts in 2024 when his popularity was peaking. The ruling Texas party is favored in three of the districts that were drawn for partisan conversions with a fourth ranked as a toss up by most of the national political handicappers.
Capitol Inside has the GOP favored in two of the targeted Texas districts with a third rated as a coin flip. But Democratic U.S. Reps. Henry Cuellar of Laredo and Vicente Gonzalez of Brownsville are both favored here to win another term in the rankings for the general election in Texas districts that the Republicans at the statehouse reconfigured for taking over.
Regardless of the outcome of the fight in the Sunshine State, Democrats still appear to have a better than even chance of taking back the House majority this fall. The ratification of the map in Virginia could be a potentially fatal setback for the GOP - as a consequence - in the fight to save the majority in the lower house of Congress.
The Cook Political Report has Democrats as the favorites in 217 congressional races in 2026 compared to just 202 for the GOP with 16 contests rated as toss ups.
more to come ...
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