House Rating Changes: 17 Shifts in Florida, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Elsewhere

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE

— In addition to formalizing nine ratings changes in Florida following the state adopting a new Republican gerrymander, we also are making eight other changes.

— These come in some states that were at the center of Tuesday night’s electoral action: Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana, with others coming in Minnesota, North Carolina, and Texas.

— The Florida changes, on balance, help the GOP bottom line in the House, while the other changes benefit Democrats.

— Our overall House ratings show 213 districts rated as Safe, Likely, or Leans Democratic, 207 rated Safe, Likely, or Leans Republican, and 15 rated as Toss-ups.

Table 1: House rating changes in Florida

Table 2: House rating changes elsewhere

Explaining this week’s House changes

After Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) presented a new Republican congressional gerrymander of Florida to the state legislature, we proposed how we might rate the map if the legislature passed it without amendment. The legislature dutifully did so last week, and DeSantis signed the map on Monday. That triggered nine House rating changes, which are described in Table 1 above. The lion’s share of the changes are directly related to the map, most notably four previously Democratic-leaning districts moving to being either Toss-up (FL-25) or Republican-leaning to some extent (FL-9, FL-14, and FL-22).

There also is ongoing legal action in Florida over whether the map violates the state’s constitutional anti-gerrymandering provisions. Just as in Virginia, where the Supreme Court of Virginia continues to consider whether the process state Democrats used to put a recent, successful referendum before voters in order to gerrymander the map was lawful, we will unwind these rating changes if the new map is not ultimately used this fall because of legal action.

The headliner result from Tuesday night’s primaries in Indiana and Ohio was Trump-endorsed candidates defeating at least 5 of 7 incumbent Republican state senators in the Hoosier State. The Trump political operation’s extensive involvement in these races came after these Indiana Senate incumbents (and others) voted against a proposed partisan gerrymander of Indiana that would have delivered Republicans 1-2 new seats there. This result, which reconfirms Trump’s sway in internal GOP politics, may make it harder for GOP-controlled states to resist entreaties for gerrymandering action from the White House in the aftermath of last week’s Callais Supreme Court decision, which apparently gutted protections for majority-minority districts. The Indiana saga also involved individual state senators having to actually vote on a redistricting proposal, which clearly identified those who backed the White House and those who did not. Redistricting proposals that don’t advance to actual votes won’t produce such a clean scoresheet. Stay tuned.

Beyond the Florida changes, we have several other House ratings we’re making today, some of which involve races that were on the ballot in the Tuesday primaries.

These changes, plus those in Florida, leave the following House topline: 213 districts are rated as Safe, Likely, or Leans Democratic, 207 are rated Safe, Likely, or Leans Republican, and 15 are rated as Toss-ups.

The headliner change comes in Ohio, where there was not much action at the top of the ticket, as Sen. Jon Husted (R) and former Covid-era state Department of Health Director Amy Acton (D) were unopposed in their respective primaries, while their respective opponents, former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) and 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy (R), were only lightly opposed. Those races remain rated Leans Republican, although both are shaping up to be quite competitive, perhaps to the point where we might call them Toss-ups later in the cycle.

Toledo and northwest Ohio more broadly, which used to contain some of the state’s most telling swing counties prior to Trump along with swaths of the state’s most deeply bedrock Republican turf, is an important place to watch in determining whether Democrats can piece together a statewide plurality. It also hosts a marquee House race, as Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D, OH-9) seeks to continue what has been a more than four-decade congressional career.

Kaptur was hurt by the state’s new congressional map, which on balance certainly favors Republicans but is not a maximal GOP gerrymander. Trump’s 2024 margin in her red-trending district moved from roughly 6.5 points to 10.5 points, as it picked up some of that aforementioned bedrock Republican turf closer to the Indiana border while shedding some territory closer to Kaptur’s Toledo home base.

On Tuesday night, Republican primary voters formalized a rematch between Kaptur and her 2024 opponent, former state Rep. Derek Merrin (R). Additionally, there is set to be a Libertarian candidate on the ballot. Kaptur won 48.3% to 47.6% against Merrin in 2024, with a Libertarian getting about 4% of the vote. So Kaptur is trying to get a similar result with a similar alignment of candidates in a district that is about 4 points worse than the one that she won in 2024, but in a political environment that should be significantly better than 2024. That’s more suggestive of a Toss-up rating than Leans Republican, so we’re making that change.

Elsewhere in Ohio, and much lower on the list of competitive seats to watch, is Northeast Ohio’s OH-7, a Trump +11 district held by Rep. Max Miller (R) that extends south from the Cleveland suburbs. Miller has been in the news thanks to what appears to be an ugly divorce and child custody battle—his ex-wife is the daughter of Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH)—and national Democrats saw their preferred candidate, Brook Park City Councilman Brian Poindexter, get through the primary on Tuesday. We’re adding this district to Likely Republican as a deep sleeper.

Michigan’s primaries were not held Tuesday night, but the state did host an important state Senate special election: Democrats were trying to restore a 20-18 edge in the chamber following former state senator and now-Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet’s (D, MI-8) election to the U.S. House in 2024. The district, which covers Saginaw and Bay City, is red-trending, but it backed Kamala Harris by a point in 2024 (it backed Barack Obama by nearly 10 points in 2012). As has become customary in big special elections this cycle, Democrats turned in a significant overperformance of the 2024 presidential results, holding the seat by nearly 20 points. Granted, special elections don’t have to be predictive of November elections, and turnout is always going to be lower (total votes cast were only a little more than 50% of those cast in the 2022 election for this district). But this result in a state legislative district covering part of McDonald Rivet’s House district is another suggestion that she does not appear to be really vulnerable in 2026 despite representing a district Trump carried by 2 points in 2024. It’s also helpful to McDonald Rivet that her top challenger, Navy veteran Amir Hassan (R), hasn’t demonstrated much fundraising strength so far. This district moves from Leans Democratic to Likely Democratic.

Making the same move to Likely Democratic is a similar kind of district, IN-1, represented by Rep. Frank Mrvan (D). Harris carried this district by only about half a point, although Mrvan did markedly better, winning by 8.5 points (that both Rivet and Mrvan won by relatively clear margins in 2024 despite how competitive the districts were for president indicates the ancestral Democratic nature of these districts). National Republicans did see their favored candidate, Porter County Commissioner Barb Regnitz (R), get through the primary on Tuesday night, and she has loaned her campaign $1.5 million, so she does have some resources. But this just seems like the wrong year for Republicans to really put this race in play, even as 2028—for both electoral and redistricting reasons—may make it much more challenging for Democrats to hold. James Downs of National Journal had an informative report on the district earlier this week.

Let’s shift over the Indiana border back to Michigan. If the aforementioned MI-8 is a classic example of a red-trending but traditionally Democratic House district, MI-4 offers somewhat of an opposing example. Based in southwest Michigan, MI-4 includes both the Democratic city of Kalamazoo as well as portions of historically very Republican Ottawa County. While it would be inaccurate to say that MI-4 is zooming left, it has definitely become more competitive relative to Michigan as a whole: Mitt Romney carried it by 6 points in 2012 while he was losing statewide by nearly 10; by 2024, Donald Trump carried it by 5.5 points while winning statewide by a little under 1.5. National Republicans benefit from Rep. Bill Huizenga (R) running for another term here: He seemed like a real retirement possibility after losing out on a committee chairmanship and being blocked from running for U.S. Senate. The district also is redder downballot: Huizenga himself won by low double-digit margins in 2022 and 2024. But he has drawn a well-funded opponent, state Sen. Sean McCann (D). If 2018 showed us anything, it’s that historically-Republican places that nonetheless seemed to prefer the pre-Trump version of the GOP may be open to a Democrat under the right midterm circumstances. This district moves from Likely Republican to Leans Republican.

Also making that move is western North Carolina’s NC-11, where Rep. Chuck Edwards (R) is now the focus of a House Ethics Committee investigation into potentially inappropriate behavior toward young women on his staff. Axios reported some groan-inducing details, such as reporting that the married Edwards gifted a staffer “a custom puzzle that, when assembled, revealed an image of actor Adam Sandler alongside a handwritten note inviting the staffer to attend one of Sandler’s comedy shows with him,” Kate Santaliz of Axios wrote. Democrats were already high on nominee Jamie Ager (D), a farmer whose grandfather, Jamie Clarke (D), served in Congress in the 1980s, and Ager already has a 2-to-1 cash-on-hand advantage in the race. The district still backed Trump by a little under 10 points in 2024, and that partisanship is obviously helpful to Edwards. But the recent reporting about Edwards gives Democrats an easy line of attack on the incumbent in what was already an emerging race.

Besides OH-7, mentioned above, two other districts move from Safe Republican to Likely Republican this week.

In Texas, the sprawling El Paso-to-San Antonio-based TX-23 is vacant following Rep. Tony Gonzales’s (R) resignation; following a close primary that was heading to a runoff, Gonzales dropped out of the race and resigned after admitting to an affair with a staffer who later took her own life. That leaves firearms enthusiast Brandon Herrera (R) as the GOP nominee; his prolific YouTube library gives Democrats some lines of attack, although it’s also fair to say that the departed Gonzales was surpassing him in the controversy department before leaving office. It’s unclear whether lawyer Katy Padilla Stout (D) can really push Herrera in a Trump +15 district, although a swing back to Democrats in a Latino-heavy district could help her get in range (fortunately for Republicans, though, this district has a more stable Republican history than other Latino-heavy districts where Trump has improved more recently—he carried this district by 7 points even in 2016).

The other move comes in southern Minnesota’s MN-1. This district, under last decade’s lines, was one of the few bright spots for Republicans in 2018, as the late Jim Hagedorn (R) narrowly flipped it as an open seat following Tim Walz (D) leaving the seat behind to successfully seek the governorship. This used to be a swing district but it has moved to Republicans and Trump, backing him most recently by 12 points as Rep. Brad Finstad (R, MN-1) won by more in 2024. Finstad’s initial election, a 2022 special to replace Hagedorn, was a much more competitive 4-point win (Finstad won a November rematch with his special election opponent by about a dozen points, another illustration of how specials can be more competitive than general elections). Jake Johnson (D), a local high school teacher, did outraise Finstad in the first quarter of 2026. As we think about what a really big hypothetical Democratic wave might look like, we thought it made sense to highlight some places that typically haven’t been competitive lately but were in 2018, the last big Democratic year. MN-1 fits that mold even though it is very much a longshot Democratic target.

We also considered pushing a couple of other Safe Republican districts, the open SC-1 and TN-5, held by Rep. Andy Ogles (R), into Likely Republican this week. Both are double-digit Trump seats but Democrats have well-funded challengers emerging in each. However, we are going to wait and see what happens on redistricting in each state first—Republicans may change the maps in both states in an attempt to eliminate the lone Democrat in each, which would have ripple effects across the state. A Tennessee proposal emerged Wednesday morning that appears to radically change Ogles’s district as part of eliminating the Safe Democratic Memphis-based TN-9 and allowing the state to elect a 9-0 Republican delegation.

We’ll revisit these states once the redistricting situation clears up.

Kyle Kondik is a Political Analyst at the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia and the Managing Editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball.

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Views expressed in this column are those of the author, not those of Rasmussen Reports. Comments about this content should be directed to the author or syndicate.