WASHINGTON, United States: Donald Trump, knowing that the US president’s party almost always loses seats in midterm elections, launched an unprecedented push last year for states to redraw congressional district lines in favor of Republicans.

The redistricting gambit — a costly endeavor that provoked intra-party strife and Democratic reciprocation — ended up being no match for the gigantic anti-Republican wave in Tuesday’s vote, and possibly made matters even worse.

So-called partisan “gerrymandering” is practiced by both major US parties in states that allow it, but normally only once a decade, after each census.

Trump however openly called for Republican-led states to do rare mid-decade map redraws wherever they could, hoping to save a razor-thin majority in the US House of Representatives.

“Partisan gerrymandering works a little like a seawall — it helps prevent normal partisan tides from having much impact,” explained Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University and founder of the “All About Redistricting” website.

However, “a tsunami of turnout comes right over top of that seawall,” he told AFP.

And that’s exactly what happened on Tuesday, when voters — fueled by outrage over soaring prices, the Iran war and Trump’s norm-busting presidency — gave a shockingly high level of support to Democrats.

Texas lose ‘em?

In Texas, the state that kicked off the 2025 redistricting wars, maps were redrawn to net Republicans five seats in the House of Representatives.

That included tweaks to three predominantly Latino districts along the US-Mexico border, where Trump received larger-than-expected backing in 2024.

All three went to Democrats, including Texas’s 15th district, which was expected to be one of the most competitive races of the election.

Democratic candidate Bobby Pulido, a celebrity Tejano singer, beat incumbent Republican Monica De La Cruz by more than 20 percent, according to provisional results.

A majority of Latino voters backed Trump in 2024, sparking Democratic fears of a permanent realignment. However, according to a New York Times analysis, Democrats won the support of 69 percent of Latino voters in the midterms.

“I think they (Republicans) got profoundly overconfident everywhere across the country, particularly with respect to Latino voters,” Levitt said.

Eric Holder, the former US attorney general under ex-president Barack Obama who now leads an organization fighting Republican gerrymandering, helped push for Democratic-led states to defensively redraw their own maps.

California was one of the those states, adopting a referendum that aimed to flip five districts to Democrats to offset the expected Republican gains in Texas.

“The Trump plot to steal enough seats to keep control of Congress — the will of the people be damned — was systematically dismantled,” he said in a statement.

“And, given the opportunity, voters instead chose to elect a new Democratic majority,” he added.

‘Dummymander’

In North Carolina, Republican legislators hoped their redistricting efforts would net at least three Republican seats.

But the move appears to have backfired, in what analysts call a “dummymander” — by shifting too many reliably Republican areas out of districts considered “safe,” they left more seats vulnerable to an unexpectedly large Democratic wave.

With 14 House seats up for grabs in the southern state, Republicans hoped to win at least 10.

Instead, they could possibly only have three or four when all votes are counted.

Missouri also attempted to redraw district lines, but the move was ultimately blocked by courts. A referendum seeking to cement the Republican-favored maps also failed — with over 60 percent of voters in the state choosing “No.”

“I think that’s really significant because that shows Republicans voted against a Republican map,” Levitt said.

“That’s because people don’t like cheating, even when their own team wins.”