(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . How Bad is It? [1] ['View Profile', 'A Pagan In Arizona', 'Mercy Ormont', 'News Corpse', 'Greg Dworkin'] Date: 2026-05-06 Even in the best of times, the House of Representatives — intended as the closest thing we have to representative democracy — is lacking. Using the 2024 Congressional districts, a completely neutral race (one where you basically added 1.5 points to the D-R margin compared to presidential performance) would have given the Dems 211 seats, quite a few shy of the 218 required to win the chamber*. In order to actually win Dems would have needed to win nationally (national popular vote, or NPV) by about 1.8 points Over the last few months, Republicans have been zealously racing to minimize what promises to be a devastating midterm humiliation by eliminating Dem districts. TX, FL, OH, MO and NC, while Dems have redistricted CA and VA via referendum (the latter is currently being reviewed by the VA Supreme Court) and UT via court order. After all that, little seemed change, with Dems getting 212 in a neutral environment, and again requiring a 1.8 NPV. Then came Callais. Florida smugly congratulated itself on destroying a VRA district, and others — namely: Louisiana – which brought the case in the first place and which suspended the election after 42,000 votes have already been cast is looking to eliminated 2 majority black districts which are represented by Dems. – which brought the case in the first place and which suspended the election after 42,000 votes have already been cast is looking to eliminated 2 majority black districts which are represented by Dems. Alabama – which was ordered by a federal court last year to keep their current maps until 30 wants to get rid of 2 majority black districts as well. They will argue that Callais makes the previous order moot, but so far, no court order has allowed them to redistrict for this cycle. And their primary in on May 19, less than 2 weeks from today. – which was ordered by a federal court last year to keep their current maps until 30 wants to get rid of 2 majority black districts as well. They will argue that Callais makes the previous order moot, but so far, no court order has allowed them to redistrict for this cycle. And their primary in on May 19, less than 2 weeks from today. Mississippi – which already had their primary on April 7 is looking for a do-over in order to erase their 1 democratic district. – which already had their primary on April 7 is looking for a do-over in order to erase their 1 democratic district. Tennessee – While they have a 50 year old law restricting mid-decade redistricting, and while Memphis (population 610k) unambiguously should be the bulk of a contiguous congressional district (normally about 700-800k), the governor and state house are planning on getting rid of their 1 democratic district. Both Georgia (election in less than 2 weeks) and South Carolina’s governors have declined to hold special sessions. All of these are subject to lawsuits, of course and some (MS and LA) seem particularly egregious given the timing and the fact that people have already voted(!) while AL is currently prohibited by court order. But assume for the moment that all 6 of those districts are stolen away, where does that leave us? Using only the “reasonable” districts (e.g. not MS or AL, but given the supreme court’s apparent blessing on monday, assume LA is allowed to move forward), a neutral NPV gives Dems 209, and requires +2.9 to win the House. Or consider all of the deep south — and assume maximal gerrymandering — Dems then need a NPV of 3.8 in order to win. Sort of. I’ve neglected a few details. There’s incumbency advantage — though that is somewhat reduced if you’re only the incumbent of part of your new district. There’s also random noise. I show a plot of expected outcome (similar to the analysis I did here) at the top of the page. The upshot is that including those effects means that at NPV=4.6, Dems are the favorite, with 90% win probability at 5.9. As a reminder, Dems won the popular vote by 8.6% in 2018 — and Trump is even less popular now. Finally, I want to acknowledge how bad it could be. Suppose all of those states maximally gerrymander and the Virginia Supreme Court chooses to ignore the will of the voters? Well, it turns out that very roughly for every additional seat you have to win, you need the NPV to improve by 1/4 to 1/3 of a point. Running the numbers — and remember this is in the worst case scenario — Dems need to win the NPV by about 5.8 points to be the favorites. To be clear, it’s absurd that we’re talking about how the Dems need to win by millions of votes just to break even, and that was true even before the Supreme Court gutted the VRA. We have a chance to level the field in places like New York, New Jersey, and Colorado, and we absolutely should. But we need to win 2026 first and even if the courts continue to betray us, I’m confident we’ve got this. Summary Results Condition D Seats in NPV=0 NPV Required to win in Neutral Environment NPV Required for Expected Win (noise and incumbency) NPV Required for 90% Likely Win 2024 Map 211 1.8% 2.1% 3.4% Redistricts as of 5/6/26 212 1.8% 2.2% 3.7% +LA,TN 209 2.9% 3.5% 5.0% +AL,MS 206 3.8% 4.6% 5.9% “Worst Case Scenario” (-VA) 202 6.1% 5.8% 7.0% * Data is consolidated here, and greatly informed by and including a lot of numbers from our own DownBallot. It includes, among other things, as up-to-date a version of the new 2024 margins in the redistricted districts as well as which incumbents are still in the race. Feel free to use it for your own models. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/5/6/800031986/community/how-bad-is-it/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/