How Redistricting Scrambled the Crossover District List—and How It Could be Scrambled Even More

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE

— In the 2024 election, just 16 congressional districts voted differently for president and for U.S. House. Democratic House candidates carried 13 Donald Trump-won districts, and Republican House candidates carried 3 Kamala Harris-won districts.

— Redistricting, however, has altered the picture and expanded the number of crossover districts. Based on the maps in place now, there are 24 crossover districts: 16 Trump-district Democrats and 8 Harris-district Republicans.

— Many of these newly-created seats are designed to flip to the party that won the district for president. If 2026 is like 2018, Democrats may have a more lopsided number of crossover districts than they did in 2024.

— Further redistricting moves in states like Florida, Maryland, New York, and Virginia could expand the number of crossover seats.

Table 1: House rating changes

The updated “crossover” districts

This cycle’s ongoing redistricting machinations have increased, at least temporarily, the number of crossover districts each side is defending in November’s election. These are districts that were won by one party for president but the other for House.

In at least some of these seats, the incumbent party is “defending” the seat only in name. For instance, a Republican is not going to be able to win the new UT-1, a blue seat centered on Salt Lake City created by court intervention. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D, MO-5) really only has a chance to return to Congress if the map is reversed or put on hold for 2026 because of a looming referendum on the new map, which appears likely to go before voters at some point.

Another seat that should be a writeoff for Republicans is the new CA-1, which Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R) held before, sadly, dying suddenly last month. The special election to fill his unexpired term will be held concurrently with the June primary—if no one gets over 50% in the all-party first round of voting, there will be a runoff in August. The special election for the rest of LaMalfa’s unexpired term is Safe Republican, but the election for the currently vacant seat under the new lines is now Safe Democratic (we previously had it as Likely Democratic). We also are taking this opportunity to move several other California districts from Likely Democratic to Safe Democratic, effectively just as a housekeeping matter: Once the new California map was approved by voters in November, Republicans really lost the opportunity to compete for many of these seats in the context of 2026. So the seats held by Reps. Josh Harder (D, CA-9), Mike Levin (D, CA-49), Dave Min (D, CA-47), Raul Ruiz (D, CA-25), and George Whitesides (D, CA-27) all go to Safe Democratic. Rep. Kevin Kiley (R, CA-3) has not yet announced where he may seek reelection and Rep. Ami Bera (D, CA-6) is now running in the redrawn, Democratic-leaning CA-3. That district may eventually go to Safe Democratic soon as well. The one thing that could potentially scramble things in California is if Democrats get shut out of the gubernatorial race because two Republicans finish in the first two spots, as is theoretically possible (there are several prominent Democrats running while only two prominent Republicans are). We figure that won’t end up happening but it could have ripple effects down-ballot if it does. On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a longshot challenge from Republicans seeking to throw out the new California map.

Harder, one of the members listed above, was one of the two House Democrats elected in a Trump-won district in 2024 who saw his district changed into a Harris seat through redistricting. The other was another California member in a Central Valley-based district, first-term Rep. Adam Gray (D, CA-13), who saw his district go from backing Trump by more than 5 points to backing Harris by a few tenths of a point. We previously moved Gray from Toss-up to Leans Democratic after voters approved the map in November. The other preexisting crossover members (11 Democrats and 3 Republicans) remain in their respective categories.

Table 2 shows the “crossover” members based on the current lines. This takes into account the remaps in six states (California, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Utah) as well as districts that remain the same.

Table 2: Crossover district House members based on 2026 congressional map

Source: District-level presidential results from the Downballot for districts that have not changed this cycle and Dave’s Redistricting App for districts that have changed.

As of this writing, there are now 16 Trump-Democratic districts and 8 Harris-Republican districts.

But the upcoming election will “sort” many of these districts.

We currently favor Democrats to flip 5 of the 8 Harris-Republican districts (the exceptions are CA-48, NY-17, and PA-1, and those are all Democratic targets of varying quality). Meanwhile, we currently favor Republicans to flip 7 of the 16 Trump-Democratic districts, although Democrats have a fighting chance in several of them: for instance, the open ME-2 is rated just Leans Republican, as are Reps. Don Davis (D, NC-1) and Marcy Kaptur (D, OH-9) despite their already Trump-won districts being made redder in 2025 redistricting.

Assuming Democrats win the House—and we continue to favor them to do so—there almost certainly will be an even greater imbalance in the House in terms of crossover districts, with Democrats holding a decent number of Trump-won districts and Republicans likely holding just a few Harris-won seats. The number of crossover districts immediately following each election since 2000 is shown in Table 3.

Table 3: Crossover House districts, 2000-2024

The 2018 results, which featured 31 Democrats winning in Trump-won seats and only 3 Republicans winning in Hillary Clinton-won seats, was a dramatic disparity, and this did end up contributing to a comeback for Republicans in 2020, in which they ended up netting about a dozen seats despite losing the White House. That imbalance, if it comes as part of Democrats flipping the House in November, would likely give Republicans targets in 2028 to try to flip it back.

Here in 2026, we are also likely going to see more changes to this crossover list as more incumbents see the ground shift underneath them. New York Democrats won a lower-court victory recently as they try to force a pro-Democratic redraw of Staten Island-based NY-11, held by Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R), although that case is being appealed and it’s unclear as to whether the redraw will happen. Top Virginia Democrats said that they would unveil a proposed pro-Democratic remap of the commonwealth by the end of January, but as of this writing here in early February, the map has not yet emerged, and there appears to be Democratic infighting about how to craft the map. Beyond that, there is an ongoing legal dispute about whether Virginia Democrats followed the proper procedure in presenting a constitutional amendment to voters, which is currently slated for April 21. Republicans themselves recently won a lower-court victory to attempt to block the Democrats’ efforts, too, but Virginia’s highest court will have to wade into this, as will voters, assuming the vote actually happens.

Florida is also set to pursue a pro-Republican remap later this year. And then there is Maryland, where Democrats want to net a new seat but face obstacles in passing their preferred map (we analyzed that proposal in the Crystal Ball earlier this week). Beyond 2026, other states may pursue redistricting in advance of 2028—and then that presidential election will re-set the presidential baseline across all the districts.

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.

See Other Political Commentary by Kyle Kondik.

See Other Political Commentary.

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.