Did Republican efforts to redistrict the House turn into a dummymander?

Democrats have taken the House, and Republicans' unusual mid-decade campaign to redraw district lines appears to have backfired. CBS News projects Democrats will finish with somewhere from 251 to 268 seats. The map changes began after President Trump pushed Texas lawmakers to reshape their districts, and other GOP-run states followed. In several of them, the party now looks to have handed Democrats a result at least as good as before, an outcome known as a dummymander.

Texas is the clearest case: Republicans aimed to gain five seats, yet they hold 24 while Democrats rose from 13 to 14. In Ohio, a commission targeting Representatives Marcy Kaptur and Greg Landsman saw both win, and Republicans took only seven districts against the ten they previously held. Alabama's two majority Black districts stayed with their Democratic incumbents. Missouri's new map was blocked, and Democrats flipped a seat there. Indiana's state Senate refused Trump's request for a 9-0 map, and Democrats gained a third seat. South Carolina's Senate also rejected a redraw, and Representative Jim Clyburn won again.

North Carolina, Louisiana, Tennessee and Florida remain partly undecided, with several races still too close to call or headed to runoffs.

Summarized by PolitiKool from CBS News’s reporting. Read the full story at CBS News →