Will Hoosiers shoot themselves in the foot?

A look ahead at 2026 suggests that Indiana legislators would be wise to hedge their bets.

(Note: the big news for the week is the Supreme Court greenlighting the new Texas gerrymander. That’s more complex than it looks. I will write about that soon. -Sam)

Gerrymandering is terrible, a blight on democracy, blah blah blah. We all know this song. It is a true song, but stop for a moment.

Today I want to make a new point: drawing a gerrymander in Indiana will hurt Hoosier Republicans’ self-interest.

What happened in Indiana?

Yesterday the Indiana House voted for a new Congressional map. This is the latest in a series of unprecedented anti-democracy offenses across the nation. The next step is for the state Senate to vote on the plan. But if they approve the map, they will shoot themselves in the foot. The reason is that considering likely electoral dynamics in 2026, they will freeze their state out of influence in the next Congress.

Indiana’s hedge against national partisan change

Indiana’s current Congressional map elects 7 Republicans and 2 Democrats to the House of Representatives. One Democratic district encompasses most of Indianapolis, the state capital; the other, the northwestern corner of the state, including Gary. The remaining 7 districts cover a variety of communities in what has become a strongly right-leaning state. In this way, Indiana has bipartisan representation in Washington, D.C.

Left: the current Indiana Congressional plan, which gets an “A” from the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. The Indiana House’s draft map at right gets an “F.” Maps: Dave’s Redistricting App.

Politics as self-interest, rightfully conceived

In a deep sense, a split delegation like the existing map is good for democracy. Politics is the art of self-interest, rightfully conceived. Redistricting isn’t just about raw national power. It’s also about making sure communities and groups are represented. In the American system, single-member districts have to do three jobs: (a) in individual districts, represent local geographic communities, (b) at a statewide level, represent the state as a whole, and (c) at a national level, represent the political parties, racial groups, and other forms of issue diversity. As of today, Indiana’s map contributes to all three forms of representation.

But the gerrymandering wars have put national partisanship above everything else. Mathematically, we can imagine this extreme state of affairs as a situation in which politicians see citizens only as partisans. If politics is a complex landscape, it is like citizens are forced to choose between just two mountains on that landscape. I spoke about this here:

A healthy democracy is higher-dimensional: our political processes would reflect a variety of competing interests. But that’s not what the Indiana House has in mind.

Their new map builds on the reliability of voters who are stuck choosing between the two mountains, and whose choices are therefore easy to predict. The resulting map is designed to produce an all-Republican, 9-0 delegation. It would carve up Indianapolis into four parts, eliminating any hope of getting the city representation in Congress; and similarly split northwestern Indiana. Overall, this map would move 36% of the people of Indiana - more than 1 out of 3 - into a new Congressional district - m.

After Texas, this is the only multi-seat gain for Republicans to come from mid-decade redistricting. (Missouri and North Carolina gain them one seat each.) The Princeton Gerrymandering Project has scored the new proposed map as an “F” (in contrast to the current map, which gets an “A”).

You might think this is a win for Republicans; certainly Donald Trump has hailed it as one. But by enacting such a lopsided map, Hoosiers are about to deal themselves out of national power.

The reason is that in the House of Representatives, the singular operating rule is: the majority makes the rules. If control of the House changes hands in the 2026 election, somebody in the state’s delegation can speak up for Indiana’s interests. And with no Democrats from Indiana, such a change of control is potentially disastrous for the state.

Special elections in 2025 favor Democrats by double digits

Another piece of news this week brings that scenario into sharp relief: the special election in Tennessee’s 7th District. That election reveals voter sentiment in a way that reveals mid-decade redistricting as a desperate attempt to bail out a leaky boat, in the face of an incoming tidal wave.

Reporters and the politically interested have focused on last week’s special election in Tennessee’s 7th District as a predictor. TN-7 was drawn to be safely Republican back in 2022, by splitting greater Nashville (Davidson County) across three districts. In 2024, two winning Republican candidates, President Trump and Senator Marsha Blackburn, won this district by 22 points. Normally, pundits would call that a safe Republican seat. But this week, Republican candidate Matt Van Epps came out only 9 points ahead of Democrat Aftyn Behn - a 13-point underperformance.

Tennessee’s 7th District. Note the splitting of Nashville. Does that trick look familiar? Republicans did it to Salt Lake City and now Indianapolis. Democrats have done it in Las Vegas. Map: Dave’s Redistricting App.

Special elections like this one can be used to detect shifts in opinion and partisan enthusiasm for voting. Over the last 8 years, special elections (state, Congressional, etc.) come within a few points of predicting the partisan vote in the next Congressional election. As tracked by The Downballot, the Tennessee election is at the average of 60 special elections in 2025: a median 13-point overperformance for Democrats compared with the 2024 Harris-vs.-Trump margin.

A swing of even 2 points will give the House to the Democrats

Depending on how much overperformance occurs, Democrats can expect more seats compared with the 2024 result. This can be calculated by applying an equal amount of overperformance (”swing”) to all Congressional districts. It is also possible to apply this swing to include the new maps, which now include TX/CA/MO/NC/OH/UT/LA/IN. The actual swing will vary across districts, but this is a good approximation to what will happen next year.

The hypothetical results look like this:

What would happen in 2026, based on swings compared with the 2024 election. Any realistic scenario gives the House to the Democrats.

In this table, the zero-swing entry of 215 seats is just the actual number of seats won by Democrats in 2024.

Let me walk you through this table. First, let’s ask what all the mid-decade redistricting amounts to.

Under these assumptions it would have taken a 1.2-point swing under the old maps for Democrats to get 218 seats, the number needed for a majority. That was a really close election. Now, after all the redistricting, the net effect is to raise the necessary amount of swing from 1.2 points to 2.0 points. For perspective, the Great Gerrymander of 2012 would have required nearly a 5-point swing. 2012 remains the high-water mark for extreme gerrymandering in modern times, and all the shenanigans we’ve seen don’t come close to it. That’s because of independent citizen commissions (minus the temporary suspension of the California commission) and actions in state court. In short, the gains from mid-decade redistricting are fairly paltry.

Second, any realistic swing at all in voter opinion will hand the House of Representatives to the Democrats. I would personally guess 10 points, which would be a 22-seat gain under the old maps.

The new maps will reduce that 22-seat gain...to 21 seats. After all the gerrymandering actions, the gain is only one seat. All that fuss, for a little bit of power.

Dummymandering for dummies

Finally, this is interesting: If the swing gets up to 12 points or more, the partisan advantage actually reverses. Democrats start winning more seats under the new maps than under the old maps. This effect, which arises from cutting things too close with a gerrymander, is called a dummymander. Given current trends, prime candidates for dummymanders in 2026 include Texas and North Carolina.

Note that things could be even worse for Republicans. This calculation doesn’t even take into account that Hispanic voters appear to have swung much more than other voters. Because of that, in Texas they might not gain even one seat compared with 2024, which was a more cautious gerrymander that gave them 26 out of 38 seats in 2022 and 2024.

Based on all of this, the odds are very strong that changes in voter sentiment are enough to hand the House of Representatives to Democrats. In such a scenario, the Indiana Senate might serve their state better by declining to enact the state House’s handiwork.

Conclusion

If Indiana Senate wants to look out for their own state’s fortunes in Washington next year, they might consider declining to join this year’s national festival of gerrymandering.