Election Takeaways: Newsom Won Big Home Court Battle over Redistricting, but the National Gerrymander War Has Just Begun
A look at the impact and implications of Tuesday's stomping of Donald Trump by Democrats of every persuasion - and why pro-democracy Americans should not be popping champagne corks just yet.
The morning after one of the biggest wins of his 30-year political career, Gavin Newsom tempered his inevitable triumphalism with a note of caution addressed to “my fellow Democrats.”
“We cannot rest after last night’s victories. Donald Trump certainly is not,” the California governor wrote supporters, as Proposition 50, his signature anti-Trump ballot measure, held an enormous 64-to-36 percent lead in statewide voting.
“We need Virginia ... we need Maryland ...we need our friends in New York and Illinois and Colorado -- we need to see other states meet this moment head-on as well,” he said in his post-election night email.
For Newsom, who employs hyperbole the way lesser beings use oxygen, the admonition was more than humblebrag rhetoric by a lean-and-hungry pol whose aspirations for national office suddenly are trending straight up: it also was a blunt admission that the overwhelming passage of Prop. 50 is just the start, not the finish, of a venomous state-by-state struggle to determine the literal political map for the crucial 2026 mid-term elections for the House of Representatives.
On a night when Democrats of every stripe, from center-left East Coast soccer moms to a South Asian, Swedish-style metro socialist, delivered a coast-to-coast drubbing of Trumpism, it was Prop. 50 that inflicted the most practical and consequential political reverse on the mob boss president.
Here is a look at the still-unfolding implications of Prop. 50, and four other election takeaways:
The Gerrymander Forever Wars. With right-wing Republicans controlling all three branches of the federal government, Trump has swiftly and aggressively rolled out a tyranny-of-the-minority regime in his first year in office, whose policies and actions, according to recent polling, most Americans oppose*.
And with the GOP now a cult-like, thoroughly corrupt and wholly-owned subsidiary of Trump Inc., he knows no one with political authority can or will try stop his authoritarian project — unless and until Democrats reclaim a shred of institutional power by winning back the House next year.
Newsom’s high-risk, high-reward Prop. 50 was born after Trump called on the obedient Republican governor and legislature in Texas last summer to carry out an unusual, mid-decade redrawing of its House district maps to give his party an additional five seats in the mid-terms.
In Newsom’s state, districts have long been determined by a non-partisan redistricting commission, but Prince Gavin gambled that Democrats and independents in liberal California would respond to his call to suspend its process, in the name of fighting back against the asymmetric political warfare being waged by Trump.
On Tuesday, his gamble paid off big-time.
While the Prop. 50 campaign proceeded, however, a batch of other states jumped into the redistricting fray -- Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio - for starters, while a number of others — Florida, Indiana, Utah, Illinois, Maryland and New York — are now either in the preliminary process of redistricting or considering it.
This means that while California may have checked Trump’s Texas play, the national political landscape has been transformed into an uncertain and shape-shifting chessboard, as partisan moves and counter-moves produce multiple scenarios almost by the day. And it explains why Newsom is sounding the call for reliably blue states to follow California in concocting partisan gerrymanders.
The reliable Cook Political Report offered this post-election assessment of the state of play:
California’s new map will offset the gains that Republicans should make in Texas as a result of their new map, which was drawn at the behest of Trump. Republicans have also passed new maps in North Carolina, Missouri, and Ohio — though the new Ohio map was less advantageous for the GOP than anticipated — and a new court-ordered map in Utah could allow Democrats to pick up a seat.
Meanwhile, Democrats are moving forward with redistricting in Virginia that could allow them to pick up another two to three seats. Like in California, Virginia has a redistricting commission that would typically oversee the map-drawing process, and voters will need to approve a ballot amendment to enact a more favorable map — though that looks more attainable after Proposition 50 passed by a comfortable margin. Republicans may also redraw lines in Indiana and Florida, although their efforts to gerrymander in Kansas appear to have hit a dead end.
Altogether, Republicans are probably on pace to pick up three to seven districts through redistricting alone. While that gives them a better shot at keeping control of the House in 2026, their current three-seat majority and the darkening national political climate mean that they remain in a precarious position heading into 2026.
Jim Crow II looms. An even bigger wild card that could re-shape districts in the mid-terms is a case now before the U.S. Supreme Court, Louisiana v. Callais.
Plaintiffs in Louisiana are challenging that state’s current districts, saying that the use of race in drawing them, as a criteria to ensure equal representation to Black voters, is unconstitutional.
The use of race in redistricting was a core tenet of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, known as Section 2, but during a hearing on the case last month, the right-wing supermajority on the court seemed poised to gut that portion of the Voting Rights Act. A decision is likely in early 2026, which could deliver a seismic shock to the mid-terms, and possibly lead to rapid and widespread, neo-Jim Crow redistricting across the South, soothing white grievance in the name of curing alleged reverse discrimination.
Troy Carter and Cleo Fields, Louisiana’s two Black representatives in the House, wrote in a recent New York Times essay about the stakes of the case:
America stands at a crossroads. We can either move forward, ensuring that every community — Black, white, urban, rural — has a voice in shaping our future, or we can slide back into a past where the decisions are made by only some.
The Voting Rights Act is not a relic. It is a living promise to all Americans that our democracy belongs to everyone. For nearly 200 years, Black Americans had virtually no representation in our collective governance. Section 2 was enacted to right that wrong.
It remains as vital today as it was when it was first signed into law 60 years ago. The law represents progress on our nation’s trek to a more perfect union. We must not allow the erosion of its promise; not now, not in Louisiana, not anywhere, and not on our watch.
So there’s that.
What comes next. Newsom was not alone in warning Democrats against over-exuberant celebration in the wake of Tuesday night’s repudiation of Trump.
Marc Elias is a superstar voting rights attorney, who has won countless cases on behalf of Democrats, most notably during Trump’s attempt to steal the election in 2020, and also is founder of Democracy Docket, an essential and comprehensive source of accurate and factual pro-democracy reporting focused on legal matters.
In his Wednesday after-action column, Elias both acknowledged that Democrats had won a national blowout, and expressed clear-eyed understanding of what lies ahead:
It was hard to find any good news for Republicans at all. Not only did Democrats win every key race, but they did so with high turnout. Republicans cannot claim that their voters stayed home. This was a clear referendum on Donald Trump and the Republican Party — and voters chose Democrats by wide margins.
But let’s not pop the champagne quite yet. History has taught us that this is precisely when Donald Trump is most dangerous — and when Republicans turn to voter suppression, election subversion and worse. With the 2026 midterm elections less than a year away, Trump is already plotting his next moves.
Elias then delineated eight counter-attacks that he foresees from Trump and MAGA world now:
Republicans will falsely claim they lost because of fraud.
Trump will try to ban several popular methods of voting.
Republicans will further exploit the levers of federal power.
Trump will claim the power to count ballots, tabulate results and certify elections.
Extreme Republican gerrymandering will accelerate.
Republicans will ask courts to legitimize their actions.
Political prosecutions will increase
The legacy media will fail us.
Further Reading. Three excellent election post-mortems.
“Verdict Number One: America Has Big-Time Buyer’s Remorse about Trump” - Michael Tomasky, The New Republic:
Why did all these things happen? One reason. Well—one man, but many reasons. Because food prices are still high. Because energy prices are up 11 percent. Because soybean farmers have been getting screwed. Because this man and his party have not passed a single law to try to make working people’s lives better (15 years after Obamacare—still no health care plan!). Because it turns out Americans don’t want masked and out-of-control quasi-vigilantes rounding up brown people willy-nilly. Because they don’t want thousands of decent people to lose their jobs just because those jobs happen to be in the federal workforce. Because they don’t want transgender people to be persecuted (Spanberger’s opponent went wild with anti-trans ads; they obviously failed). Because they don’t want a gangster president to bulldoze the White House.
A solid majority of Americans detest these things. And, while MAGA people can tell themselves all the fairy tales they want, the plain truth is that they detest Donald Trump.
Last night proved that Americans hate what Trump is doing to the country. It’s going to get worse. Democrats can’t let voters forget it.
“How Voters Shifted in Virginia, New Jersey and New York Elections” - Eric Lau, Clara Ence Morse, Nick Mourtoupalas, Patrick Marley, Azi Paybarah, Lydia Sidhom and Hannah Dormido, The Washington Post:
Voters shifted sharply to the left across Virginia, New Jersey and New York City in elections Tuesday, sweeping into office Democrats who focused on affordability and capitalized on frustration with President Donald Trump.
More than 2 million New York City voters — the most since 1969 — turned out to elect a democratic socialist as mayor, rejecting a former governor who was once a standard-bearer for the Democratic Party.
Four years ago, Republicans saw a wave of support that gave them the governorship in Virginia and kept the New Jersey race much closer than Democrats expected, while a moderate Democrat replaced a more liberal one in New York City Hall. This time, the energy in all three places shifted distinctly toward Democrats and the left of the party.
“Extra! A look at election-coverage highs and lows” - Margaret Sullivan, American Crisis:
Finally, I was struck by this Election Day prediction, a Bluesky post from the intrepid former NBC News reporter Ben Collins, who left the network to relaunch The Onion, where he is the CEO.
He wrote: “I think a thing we’ll learn tonight is that people fucking hate what is going on and they will straight-ticket vote against anyone involved in starving people while pillaging the country and kidnapping their neighbors. I don’t think it matters at all who that person is.”
That’s something Collins couldn’t have written while employed in mainstream media, which undoubtedly is part of why he’s doing something very different now.
* Where Trump stands today. Here is the latest polling aggregation about Donald Trump from the Cook Political Report, which tracks public opinion of the president based on combining 21 high-quality surveys.
Lead image: City of Cornelius, North Carolina.