July 30, 2025: How to gerrymander your way to a House majority

The Playbook Podcast

POLITICO

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3.9 • 699 Ratings

🗓️ 30 July 2025

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

We’re halfway between the usual once-in-a-decade redrawing of congressional maps. So why are we talking about redistricting in 2025? As the White House looks for ways to keep its Republican House majority in the 2026 election, it’s pressuring red states to shift their maps and squeeze out a few more GOP seats. And that risks setting off a redistricting arms race, with big red and blue states threatening to one-up each other and remake the 2026 electoral map — literally. Playbook’s Adam Wren and Zack Stanton game out the scenarios in key states, and tell you what else you need to know today.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Presented by the Vapor Technology Association.
0:09.0	Hello, I'm Adam Wren.
0:10.7	And I'm Zach Stanton. It's Wednesday, July 30th.
0:13.4	And this is the Playbook podcast.
0:15.6	As you can hear, I have our own playbook editor, Zach Stanton, joining me on the podcast today.
0:20.8	So good to be here, Adam.
0:21.9	Good to be with a fellow Midwesterner, always.
0:25.4	And without further ado, here's what's driving the day.
0:28.4	The big story today is the mid-cycle redistricting battle that we're seeing play out,
0:32.2	both in D.C. and in state capitals across the country.
0:36.1	Zach, it's 2025.
0:37.8	We're just only halfway through the redistricting process.
0:41.7	We don't have another census until 2030.
0:45.0	Still, the White House is really pushing red states to give this a look now ahead of the
0:50.4	2026 midterms.
0:52.0	What do you think of the White House as calculus here? It seems that they're looking at historical reality, which is26 midterms. What do you think of the White House this calculus here?
0:55.0	It seems that they're looking at historical reality, which is that midterms tend to go
0:58.9	fairly poorly for the incumbent party. And right now, Republicans have a House majority, but a very
1:04.6	narrow one. And the White House wants to keep that majority. So their thinking is that if they can
1:09.5	go to a few different Republican states
1:11.7	and pressure those state legislators and governors to maybe squeeze a couple more Republican
1:17.2	seats out of their map, to redraw to gerrymander, that they can pad the House majority
	...

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