Republicans started the redistricting war, but will they win it?

Riding high into his second term after defeating Kamala Harris and winning the popular vote, President Donald Trump claimed Republicans were “entitled to five more seats” in Congress from Texas – setting off a campaign to redraw the congressional map at the expense of Democrats.

The comments marked the start of a high-stakes, nationwide redistricting fight before next year’s elections, with Republicans looking for opportunities to insulate their majority from the typical headwinds the president’s party faces in midterm elections.

The map battle may not be over, but heading into 2026, what appeared to be a Republican advantage may be moving closer to a wash between both parties.

At first glance, Trump and Republicans appeared to have the upper hand: the GOP controlled the levers of power in more states than Democrats – who, for years, have championed nonpartisan redistricting measures and constitutional amendments in blue states.

“Initially, it looked pretty good for Republicans to gain some seats,” Shawn Donahue, a redistricting expert at the University of Buffalo, told ABC News.

Heading into the fall, Texas Republicans adopted a map that could net the GOP as many as five new seats next year, while a legally required effort in Ohio and a review of North Carolina and Missouri’s maps resulted in the potential to flip a couple more Democrat-held seats.

Together, more than half-a-dozen dozen pickup opportunities appeared ready to insulate what was House Speaker Mike Johnson’s three-seat margin — and potentially raising the hurdle Democrats would have to clear in 2026 to recapture the House.

With Republicans in Florida, Indiana and Nebraska also exploring their possibilities, the GOP seemed to have the wind at its back.

But after November’s elections and a flurry of court activity, the GOP may no longer be in the driver’s seat.

Their momentum was blunted by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s efforts in California, where a seemingly long-shot bid to get voters to approve a new map until the end of the decade passed with overwhelming support – shoring up a handful of purple seats for Democrats, putting up to five Republican-held districts in play next year, and raising Newsom’s national profile.

Democrats’ strong performances in Virginia and New Jersey also raised new questions about the durability of the Republican support among Latinos in the new districts in Texas.

At the same time, Virginia’s legislature approved a new constitutional amendment that would allow Democrats to redraw the state’s maps next year, in a move that could result in as many as three new Democratic seats.

In Utah, a state judge rejected a GOP redistricting plan, paving the way for a new map with a solidly Democratic seat in Salt Lake City, absent any successful challenges from Republicans in the state.

Democrats in New York also filed a lawsuit to challenge what appeared to be an insurmountable hurdle of a state constitutional amendment. If successful, that effort could help Democrats flip an additional House seat around New York City.

In Indiana, where Trump has, so far unsuccessfully, pressed Republicans to adopt new congressional maps, state Sen. Mike Bohacek announced he would vote against the Trump-backed proposal over the president’s use of an offensive term for people intellectual disabilities in a social media post, ahead of the legislature reconsidering redistricting early next month.

In Wisconsin, the state supreme court is taking up two redistricting cases that could potentially lead to a new map that could favor Democrats in up to two House districts.

“Maybe there is still a chance to gain some seats but Democrats could come out ahead,” Donahue said. “There’s still a lot of uncertainty going into 2026.”

The Texas plan has also been caught up in court: After a lower court judge struck down the map as an illegal gerrymander, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott appealed to the Supreme Court where Justice Samuel Alito temporarily paused the lower court ruling — keeping the map in place for the time being — as the entire court decides in the coming days whether to give the green light for 2026.

The high court also has a pending decision in a case from Louisiana that could roll back section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, potentially allowing states to eliminate majority-minority districts currently held by Democrats.

How the court rules in that case, could further scramble the congressional map, according to analysts, which could eliminate many Democratic districts in southern states.

Jonathan Cervas, a redistricting expert at Carnegie Mellon University who was appointed by a court to draw New York state’s current congressional map amid a legal dispute, told ABC News that at this point, Republicans may only realize “minimal gains” from the White House-led redistricting fight when the dust settles.

“Even without Texas map being overturned, the Democrats are probably winning this war” at this point, he said.

Cervas also criticized both parties for revisiting maps for political gain in ways that could leave voters with fewer competitive districts in which to cast votes.

“The people are losing. Every time we gerrymander for partisan gain, voters are worse off,” he added. “A minus plus a minus is a bigger minus.”

To be sure, the fight is not over: Florida Republicans could revisit the issue next year in the GOP-leaning state. And President Trump can still make-or-break political careers of Republicans across the country who push back on efforts to reshape the midterm battlefield.

“The moral of the story is once you open a can of worms, you never really know what you’re going to get,” Donahue said of the redistricting battle. “Or like Forrest Gump said, it’s ‘like a box of chocolates.'”