New Hampshire ain’t Texas.
The Lone Star State sparked a panic among Democrats when it announced plans to redraw its congressional maps for 2026, rather than waiting for the next Census in 2030. Texas Republicans are advancing a map that would create five more competitive congressional seats for their party, potentially shifting the state from a 25 GOP-13 Democratic delegation to a 30 GOP-8 Democratic breakdown.
To their credit, nobody is hiding the motive. President Donald Trump and his allies are looking for ways to help Republicans hold the U.S. House in the midterms—a cycle where the party in power tends to struggle. With Republicans holding a narrow 219–212–4 (vacancies) advantage in Congress, five more Republican seats could double their 2026 margin before a single vote is cast.
Now, New Hampshire state Sen. Dan Innis (R-Bradford) has announced he’s going to introduce a midterm redistricting proposal as well, creating a GOP-leaning seat in the Granite State.
“If Texas can take bold action to strengthen conservative representation, New Hampshire can do it in our own Granite State way—principled, constitutional, and rooted in our values. President Trump needs fighters in Congress,” Innis said.
All of which is why a new map is extremely unlikely to happen by next year’s election.
The proposal makes sense for Innis, who is trying to win a Republican primary for U.S. Senate against former ambassador and Sen. Scott Brown. Talking about “maximizing the benefits of Donald Trump’s America First agenda,” as Innis put it, is smart primary election politics.
But voters would have their say about those maps in a general election. And what do the polls show clearly and consistently?
New Hampshire voters who aren’t Republicans really hate Donald Trump.
He’s one reason Republicans have lost every federal election in New Hampshire since he came down the golden escalator nearly a decade ago. Sending Granite State voters the message that their local state legislators are trying to do Donald a solid by gerrymandering the congressional maps—just as the midterm elections are approaching—is taking a grave political risk. (That’s a nice way of saying “sheer political idiocy.”)
Gov. Kelly Ayotte is no idiot. She understands that to be an actual Republican in New England (as opposed to a Sen. Susan Collins or Gov. Phil Scott) means you’re always fighting uphill. It’s important not to get labeled as “one of those Republicans” by independents and swing Democratic voters. Vetoing the bathroom bill but signing the ban on sex changes for kids is one way to signal you’re not a partisan ideologue.
Signing a gerrymandered map to help Trump hold on to power in Washington, D.C., is the opposite of that—particularly when polls show about a third of the electorate has yet to make up its mind about Ayotte.
A midterm redistricting as a favor to Donald Trump would help many of those swing voters make up their minds—fast.
Ironically, there is a strong case to be made for a new map. And Democratic complaints about “partisan gerrymandering” are beyond hypocritical. Consider again the case of Texas.
Texas Democrats are so outraged by the majority’s plan to pass new maps that a group of them fled the state to prevent the legislature from convening a quorum. (Preventing the lawful operation of the democratic process is the sort of thing Democrats usually denounce as “an assault on our democracy,” but desperate times…)
Alas, some of the rogue lawmakers fled to Illinois and the hospitality of Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a state where Trump got 43 percent of the vote but Republicans hold just three of the state’s 17 congressional seats. That’s 17 percent.
Assuming Texas’ new maps deliver five GOP seats, that outcome would still be less partisan than Illinois. Democrats would control eight of the state’s 38 congressional seats, or 22 percent.
Democrats like Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) warn that if Texas and Florida (and New Hampshire?) pass new maps, Democratic states will redo their own and make them even more Democrat-friendly. Here’s the problem: California has already stripped Republicans down to 17 percent of the seats. Maryland has reduced its eight-seat delegation to just one Republican.
Or you can look closer to home. Every four years, about 40 percent of New Englanders vote Republican, but there are no GOP members of the U.S. House from the region. How can you gerrymander “zero” Republicans even more?
The right time for New Hampshire Republicans to draw a new election map is when people aren’t paying attention. Thanks to Texas, people are paying a lot of attention.
That’s why it’s not going to happen.
