Texas Republicans redrew the state's congressional maps at President Donald Trump's request, aiming to expand their hold on the U.S. House in the midterm elections on November 3. According to Dagens Nyheter, the maneuver has instead created openings for Democrats, as falling public confidence in Trump and a map built on 2024 presidential results leave the party defending thinner majorities.
The Swedish daily reports that Republicans currently hold 25 of Texas's 38 House seats. With the new boundaries, in theory they could reach 30. The party brought in Adam Kincaid, a Virginia-based redistricting specialist, who identified a way to add five seats on paper, Dagens Nyheter writes.
Why it matters
Redistricting normally happens once a decade, tied to the census, because that is when states gain or lose congressional seats. Texas changed its maps in 2025, partway between the regular redraws, and the timing is what drew Democratic anger — not the practice itself, which Dagens Nyheter notes dates back to 1812 and has been used by both parties.
The move also set off a wider map war. Several Republican- and Democratic-led states followed Texas's lead, and California Governor Gavin Newsom took a leading role, with his state redrawing its own boundaries to give Democrats five additional seats, according to the paper.
A neighborhood split three ways
Dagens Nyheter's reporting centers on Ramón Telles, a 41-year-old Democrat in north Austin whose street is decorated for Halloween with skeletons, ghosts and gravestones. His neighborhood, once part of the 37th district, was divided into three.
Standing at a road near his home, Telles stretched out his arms: to his right lay District 11, stretching roughly 500 kilometers west past Odessa; to his left, District 17, which he now belongs to and which reaches about 200 kilometers north. The districts cover rural land populated almost entirely by Republicans, the paper reports, while extending into Democratic-leaning Austin to pick up voters who previously shared a representative.
"It feels very strange that my neighbor belongs to one member of Congress and I belong to another," Telles told Dagens Nyheter, adding that residents who want to raise local problems must contact politicians whose headquarters sit some 700 kilometers apart. He described the redraw as a monster that "has come and taken big bites of the neighborhood," caring only that those it takes are Democrats.
Telles, who is himself a Democratic activist, told the paper he knows his own party is also at fault. He favors handing map-drawing to an independent commission rather than the parties in power — a system some states already use — and suggested that technology could one day help, with a tool given population and party data and asked to propose maps matching how people actually vote.
The map's weak point
Governor Greg Abbott has defended the new boundaries by arguing that Texas has grown more Republican over the years and should therefore hold more seats. Dagens Nyheter notes that even before the redraw, the party held 65 percent of the state's congressional seats while Trump took 56 percent of the presidential vote in 2024.
The maps were drawn using 2024 presidential statistics, with strong districts diluted by voters from the opposing side to produce more districts with a narrow edge for the party in power. The main constraints are equal population and geographic contiguity.
That reliance on presidential results is where critics inside and outside the party see trouble. Dagens Nyheter reports that many districts contain voters willing to back Trump for president but Democrats for Congress, particularly in south Texas, home to many residents of Latin American background. In Zapata County on the Mexican border, Trump won 61 percent in 2024 while Democratic Representative Henry Cuellar took 67 percent in the same election.
Because Republican districts were diluted, the party no longer holds as commanding a majority in them, the paper reports — meaning the new lines could work in Democrats' favor.
The political backdrop has also shifted in the year since the maps passed. Dagens Nyheter cites tariffs and the war with Iran feeding inflation, rising debt, and scrutiny of the immigration agency ICE over its treatment of migrants. Opinion polls show record-low confidence in Trump, according to the paper.
Democratic politicians, including Senate candidate James Talarico, left the state to stall local politics and draw attention to the redraw, though the new maps were eventually approved. Telles told Dagens Nyheter that the redistricting has stirred public engagement, and that many districts are home to farmers hit hard by high diesel prices. With Republicans in power for 30 years, he argued, they can no longer shift the blame.
Watch whether the five-seat Republican gain survives contact with November's ballots — and whether other states' retaliatory maps land the same way.
