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House Republicans more optimistic about midterm chances after ‘seismic’ court rulings

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by Emily Brooks - 05/14/26 6:00 AM ET

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by Emily Brooks - 05/14/26 6:00 AM ET

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House Republicans have an extra pep in their step after getting “seismic” court wins in redistricting battles in the last few weeks, turning courtesy positivity into some actual optimism about the prospects of keeping control of the House.

“We’re putting ourselves in the best spot possible. We’re leading and raising money. If you put Democrats and Republicans in our corners, we have more districts for us than them,” Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.) said.

“There’s a real chance we win the House. Hey, why not? Let’s beat the trend,” Stutzman said.

Republican leaders had long publicly put a positive spin on their chances of keeping the chamber, but in private most Republicans were more skeptical. One House GOP member, granted anonymity to speak candidly, told The Hill that before now, “you had to be a real optimist” to think the GOP majority would hold in the midterms.

That all changed. The Virginia Supreme Court ruling last week blocked a new map that heavily favored Democrats. And the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling drastically altered the scope of a racial discrimination provision Voting Rights Act, which is allowing for even more efforts to draw out Democrats in the South. “Seismic developments,” as Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Wednesday.

“Right now,” the GOP member said of the party’s midterm odds after those rulings, “it’s a coin flip.”

“I’ve always been optimistic about keeping the House,” House Republican Conference Chair Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) said. “But clearly the odds changed a little bit in our favor, right?”

Shoring up more districts as solidly or likely red, while erasing Democratic districts, could help insulate Republicans from the electoral drags driven by affordability concerns and President Trump’s dipping approval rating — and the historic trend of the president’s party losing in the midterms.

The election handicapper Cook Political Report counts 210 districts as solidly or tilting Republican, 207 as solidly or tilting Democratic, and 18 as toss-ups — figures that could trend even more toward Republicans’ favor as redistricting efforts get underway in Louisiana and Alabama, where Republicans hope to draw out Democratic districts.

Democrats, at this point, don’t have the same opportunity to gain seats through redistricting for the 2026 cycle.

“If it goes from 209 to 213 [Republican-leaning seats], all of a sudden, you’re going from needing to win more than half the contested swing seats to only having to win five,” the GOP member said.

Stutzman noted that six of the seven Republican state senators in his state of Indiana who faced Trump-backed primary challengers after they rebuffed his push to redistrict in the state lost their primaries last week.

“Our voters kicked out the senators that didn’t vote for it,” Stutzman said. “I think these other states need to take redistricting seriously, and then that helps us in the midterms.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), though, argued on Wednesday that Republicans could be overconfident in their predictions.

“They’re not getting five out of Texas. They’ll be fortunate if they get three,” Jeffries said in a press conference.

“Maybe we have to flip five seats, maybe we have to flip six seats. We’ll see where it all lands once all the litigation is over. Do we think we’re going to flip more than six seats when we’ve identified 45 that are in play? The answer is unequivocally, yes, of course we are,” Jeffries said.

Still, GOP leaders took victory laps over the court rulings in a closed-door meeting with the Republican members at the Capitol Hill Club on Wednesday morning. National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) Chair Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) told members that Democrats had set $70 million on fire in their efforts to fight for more Democratic districts, a source told The Hill, and noted the NRCC’s role in supporting the case that went to the Virginia Supreme Court.

Publicly, some Republicans are casting the court and redistricting wins as a principled one rather than a bare-knuckle political one.

“The Constitution protects every American equally … Democrats spent decades trying to engineer electoral maps that divided Americans, and this decision from the Supreme Court hopefully ends that terrible practice once and for all,” Johnson said in a press conference.

“We find it amusing that Democrats are suddenly concerned about ‘fair Congressional represe