GOP panics as election-rigging schemes threaten backfire: 'What the hell is going on?'

GOP reversals in this year’s elections, especially in some urban and immigrant communities, are setting off alarm bells for Republicans using redistricting to try to keep control of Congress in next year’s midterms.

Redistricting plans demanded by President Donald Trump in states such as Texas and Missouri — meant to capitalize on his stronger showing among certain urban voters in the 2024 election — could backfire, as cities in Florida, New Jersey and Virginia returned to Democratic voting patterns in off-year elections this past November.

Experts see the shift as a sign of possible souring on the administration’s immigration enforcement agenda, combined with disappointment in economic conditions.

Paul Brace, an emeritus political science professor of legal studies at Rice University in Houston, said Texas Republicans are likely to gain less than they imagine from new maps designed to pick up five additional seats for the party. He said minority voters’ interest in Trump was “temporary” and that he had underperformed on the economy.

“Trump’s redistricting efforts are facing headwinds and, even in Texas, may not yield all he had hoped,” Brace said.

Redistricting efforts in Texas spawned a retaliatory plan in California aimed at getting five more Democratic seats. Other states have leapt into the fray, with Republicans claiming an overall edge of three potential seats in proposed maps.

Cuban-born Jose Arango, chair of the Hudson County Republican Party in New Jersey, said immigration enforcement has gone too far and caused a backlash at the polls.

“There are people in the administration who frankly don’t know what the hell is going on,” Arango said. “If you arrest criminals, God bless you. We don’t want criminals in our streets. But then you deport people who have been here 30 years, 20 years, and have contributed to society, have been good people for the United States. You go into any business in agriculture, the hospitality business, even the guy who cuts the grass — they’re all undocumented. Who’s going to pick our tomatoes?”

As immigration arrests increase this year, a growing share of those detained have no criminal convictions.

New Jersey’s 9th Congressional District, which includes urban Paterson, went from a surprising Trump win last year to a lopsided victory this year for Democratic Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill. Trump won the district last year by 3 percentage points and Sherrill won by 16 points. The district is majority-minority and 39% immigrant.

There was a similar turnaround in Miami, a majority-immigrant city that elected a Democratic mayor for the first time in almost 30 years. Parts of immigrant-rich Northern Virginia also shifted in the governor’s race there.

In the New Jersey district, Billy Prempeh, a Republican whose parents emigrated from Ghana, lost a surprisingly close 2024 race for U.S. House to Democrat Nellie Pou, of Puerto Rican descent, who became the first Latina from New Jersey to serve in Congress.

Prempeh this year launched another campaign for the seat, but withdrew after Sherrill won the governor’s race, telling Stateline that any Republican who runs for that seat “is going to get slaughtered.”

Prempeh doesn’t blame Trump or more aggressive immigration enforcement for the shift. He said his parents and their family waited years to get here legally, and he objects to people being allowed to stay for court dates after they crossed the border with Mexico.

“We aren’t deporting enough people. Not everybody agrees with me on that,” Prempeh said.

Parts of Virginia saw similar voting pattern changes. Prince William County, south of Washington, D.C., saw support for Democratic Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger jump to 67% compared with 57% for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris last year. The county is about 26% immigrant and 27% Hispanic.

Asian American and Hispanic voters shifted more Democratic this year in both New Jersey and Virginia, said J. Miles Coleman, an associate editor at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, expanding on a November post on the subject.

However, some of those Virginia voters might have sat out the governor’s race, Coleman said.

“I do think there is an element of Trump-curious minority voters staying home this year,” Coleman said. “There were many heavily Asian and Hispanic precincts in Northern Virginia that saw this huge percentage swing from Harris to Spanberger, but also saw relatively weak turnout.”

The pattern is “hard to extrapolate” to Texas or other states with new maps, Coleman said, “but Democrats are probably liking what they saw in this year’s elections.”

He said one of the redrawn districts in Texas is now likely to go to Democrats: the majority-Hispanic 28th Congressional District, which includes parts of San Antonio and South Texas. And the nearby 34th Congressional District is now a tossup instead of leaning Republican, according to new Center for Politics projections.

The pattern in New Jersey’s 9th Congressional District this year was consistent in Hispanic areas statewide, according to an analysis provided to Stateline by Michael Foley, elections coordinator of State Navigate, a Virginia-based nonprofit that analyzes state election data.

New Jersey Hispanic precincts “swung heavily” toward Sherrill compared with their 2024 vote for Harris, Foley said in an email. He noted that New Jersey and Florida Hispanic populations are largely from the Caribbean and may not reflect patterns elsewhere, such as Texas where the Hispanic population is heavily Mexican American.

Pou, who won the New Jersey seat, said economics played a part in this year’s electoral shift.

“The President made a promise to my constituents that he’d lower costs and instead he’s made the problem worse with his tariffs that raised costs across the board,” Pou said in a statement to Stateline.

Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University, said immigration and pocketbook issues both played a role in places like the 9th District, as did an influx of Democratic campaign money.

“The biggest reason is a sense of letdown in President Trump,” Rasmussen said. “There were many urban voters who decided they liked what Trump was saying, they liked the Hispanic outreach, they bought into his economic message. And just one year later, they’re equally disillusioned.”

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.