During the 2026 election cycle, Republicans enacted a series of gerrymanders — partisan redistricting efforts — in a handful of states, drawing congressional maps designed to hand their party a disproportionate edge over Democrats in those states' House delegations. The timing was notable because congressional maps are normally drawn just once a decade, after each census, rather than being rewritten between them. Democrats responded with a successful redistricting effort in California and an unsuccessful one in Virginia.

Gerrymandering carries obvious consequences for fairness and democracy, and it is often described as a system in which politicians choose their voters rather than the other way around.

There is also a practical risk for the party holding the pen: these efforts can fail when their architects overreach. Spreading supportive voters across many districts can tilt additional seats in a party's direction, but if those voters are spread too thin, the strategy can backfire and deliver seats to the opposition — particularly in a “wave” election year that breaks against the mapmakers. This unintended outcome is commonly known as a “dummymander.”

So, with large Democratic majorities poised to enter the 120th Congress, which convenes in January 2027, did Republican gerrymandering actually end up costing the party seats in the U.S. House? The answer is not as clear-cut as it might appear.

Dummymanders in North Carolina and Ohio?

Republican state legislatures in Ohio and North Carolina redrew their congressional maps in 2025, designing districts intended to maximize the number of House seats their party could win. Despite both states remaining traditionally competitive in statewide contests, the legislatures produced maps filled with seats Republicans expected to capture: 12 of the 15 new districts in Ohio and 11 of 14 in North Carolina contained majorities of voters who backed Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election.

But in 2026, Democrats nationwide won dozens of seats that had previously seemed out of reach, including districts Trump carried by double digits in 2024 — many of them heavily gerrymandered Republican seats. In Ohio and North Carolina, the breadth of the midterm backlash against Trump and his party left many of the seats Republicans had targeted, including some Trump won by as many as 20 points, in serious jeopardy.

In the end, the Democratic wave overcame so many Trump-won seats in these states that their incoming congressional delegations may be more Democratic than they would have been without the gerrymanders.

Democrats held the line in the deep South

Texas and Florida also targeted a series of Democrat-held seats for capture in 2026. Nine such seats across the two states, along with a vulnerable seat held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures in Alabama, were the targets of gerrymanders that created new districts Trump won in 2024, all by 9 percentage points or more. But once the 2026 Democratic wave swept through the deep South, these gerrymanders were effectively neutralized. Despite the gains the party projected, Republicans in these three states appear likely to enter the 120th Congress with delegations the same size as those they held in the 119th.

Other Republican attempts succeeded, but only barely. In Tennessee's 9th District, the state's last remaining Democratic seat was gerrymandered into a district Donald Trump won by 21 points in 2024. Republicans did hold the seat as expected, but only by 2,500 votes — just over 1 percentage point.

Gerrymanders that worked — and didn't

Many of these gerrymanders were not maximally successful. But were they true dummymanders? In North Carolina and Ohio, it does appear Republicans overplayed their hand by counting on past Trump voters in a national environment that proved strikingly favorable to Democrats.

In Ohio, a gerrymander aimed at a two-thirds Republican majority in the state's House delegation will deliver the party less than half of that in the 120th Congress. The result ended up being more representative, roughly in line with the two parties' 2026 popular vote shares in the state.

North Carolina was a more drastic dummymander. Republicans designed districts intended to win nearly two-thirds of the state's congressional delegation, but the party is currently poised to hold, at best, less than one-third of its seats.

California, which Democrats gerrymandered in reaction to Republican moves elsewhere, is a partisan success story: the state is projected to send only 8% of its House delegation as Republicans, despite 30% of voters statewide backing the GOP.

In Texas and Florida, the story is more complicated. Democrats in those states retained most of the seats their Republican legislatures had targeted, thanks to historic shifts among Hispanic voters who had backed Trump in the 2024 election.

But gerrymanders can be effective well beyond the marginal districts they target. Taken as a whole, Texas' and Florida's district boundaries were drawn so favorably for Republicans that even a Democratic tsunami managed only to keep those states' delegations identical in the next Congress, since many other districts remained safely Republican. In these states, Republicans still hold a larger share of House seats than their popular vote margins would suggest — and in a less Democrat-leaning election cycle, many of these gerrymandered seats could very well shift back toward the GOP.

Failed GOP gerrymanders would have produced an even bigger blue wave

As poor as the 2026 midterms were for Republicans, the outcome could have been even worse. Some Republican-led states may consider themselves fortunate that their attempts to gerrymander failed in the run-up to the election.

In traditionally Republican states such as Missouri and Utah, courts struck down gerrymanders that would have created a series of districts Trump won by around 20 percentage points. Had those maps stood, Democrats' startling success in similar districts across the country could have netted them as many as five additional seats in these states.

A similar dynamic played out in Indiana and South Carolina, where new maps pushed by Trump failed in their state legislatures. Those maps were intended to produce even more lopsided Republican gains, but analysis from the Cook Political Report found they might have netted Democrats as many as six of South Carolina's seven House seats and eight of Indiana's nine. Instead, Democrats seem likely to end up with only a pair of seats in each state.

What's next in the gerrymandering wars?

The 2026 election cycle demonstrates that gerrymandering is a far more complex and dynamic proposition than pundits and parties often treat it to be. Wave elections of this size can overcome the intended effects of gerrymandered maps, but subsequent elections may find those maps far more effective. Parties also tend to draw gerrymandered maps based on the previous presidential election's results — a benchmark that may grow less reliable as voters continue to make unexpected choices.

Both red and blue states are also dealing with the aftermath of the Louisiana v. Callais Supreme Court decision, which made gerrymandering along racial lines easier to pursue without court intervention. Over the next two years, Republicans may attempt to implement even more new maps in additional states, particularly in the South; those new districts will likely aim to dilute majority-Black districts no longer protected by the Voting Rights Act. Democratic state governments, meanwhile, appear poised to continue their pushback against last cycle's Republican efforts with gerrymanders of their own.

But the Republican redistricting failures of the 2026 cycle, including their near misses, should make both parties cautious about future attempts.

Charlie Hunt, Associate Professor of Political Science, Boise State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.