Are Republicans actually shooting themselves in the foot with their newfound love of gerrymandering? That question is beginning to pop up more and more frequently, although at this point nobody knows the answer to it. But the possibility does exist that what the Republicans are now engaged in might turn out to be "dummymandering" rather than gerrymandering. I have to admit, this was a new political term for me to learn, so allow me to explain it.

Dummymandering is when gerrymandering backfires on you. Instead of carving new district lines to give your own party an advantage, you unintentionally wind up handing districts over to the opposition party -- which is the exact opposite of what you were trying to do.

There are two main reasons why people are even beginning to wonder about whether Republicans are falling into this trap. The first is how stunningly well Democrats did in the 2025 elections. The second is that the Republicans might be making demographic assumptions based on 2024 voting patterns that don't hold up in the 2026 midterms (or possibly even beyond).

Let's take a look at the easiest example possible, to understand how the first one could work. The easiest example would be a state with two congressional districts. Let's say one of these districts is heavily weighted towards Republicans -- they win elections with 60 percent of the vote there. It's a very safe GOP district, in other words. But the second district only votes 45 percent Republican, meaning it is a fairly safe (or "safe-ish") Democratic district.

Because redistricting is now performed with surgical accuracy, you can move the lines to cause any outcome you want to (by knowing the voting patterns down to each city block). So to make this state completely Republican, the GOP draws a new line to separate the districts. By doing so, they move seven percent of the voters (all Republicans) from their safe district to the other one. By straight math, this would mean they have created a new 52-percent GOP district and reduced their previously-safe one to only a 53-percent GOP district. In theory, they should win both of them by small margins.

But what happens when there is a "blue wave" election? All it would take would be a small shift in voting patterns (less than 5 percent), and Democrats would wind up winning both districts. Instead of the status quo of one district going to each party, or the desired result of both districts going Republican, they wind up losing both districts instead. And it's notable that if they had done nothing -- if they hadn't tried gerrymandering in the first place -- they still would have wound up with one GOP district (although with a smaller margin of victory there, because of the blue wave).

That's one way gerrymandering can backfire. The other way is to make assumptions on voting patterns that don't prove to be true. Which may be taking place in some of the states where Republicans are redistricting. Donald Trump made huge gains among several different demographic groups, but assuming that this means a permanent shift in their long-term voting patterns is a risky bet to make. Once again, the 2025 election results show this danger for Republicans:

In New Jersey, 68% of Latino voters broke for Democrat Mikie Sherrill. So did 56% of men under the age of 30. In Virginia, 67% of Latino voters went for Democrat Abigail Spanberger. So did 57% of men under 30. Many of these voters had voted for Trump last year. The exit polls show that both Sherrill and Spanberger won 7% of Trump’s 2024 voters, with Sherrill getting a whopping 18% of Trump's Hispanic support in the state.

. . .

For months, Republicans bragged that Trump had captured 48% of the Latino vote across the country in 2024. They assumed these voters would stay with them in 2026, and that became part of the GOP's calculations in Texas to create five additional Republican congressional seats.

Trump's support among Latinos has been collapsing pretty much ever since he took office. It's down from the high 40s to the mid-20s -- which is a huge drop. Now, the standard caveat applies here, because Latinos are no more a monolithic bloc of voters as any other group. Latinos in New Jersey don't vote the same as Texas Latinos, in other words.

But if the Republicans drew their new district lines in Texas with the assumption that they'd forever get 48 percent of the Latino vote, they may be in for a very rude awakening.

We will get one more test of this before the year's over, in a special House election in Tennessee. Few people expect the Democratic candidate to win, seeing as how the district voted for Trump by a more-than-20-point margin. But as things stand in the polling, the race is a lot closer than it should be -- within 8-to-10 points. If even that polling isn't correct, the Republican could win with a very small margin (of 5 points, perhaps). If that turns out to be true, a whole lot of Republican politicians are going to start getting very worried. Because even if the Democrat loses, if they manage to gain 10 (or even 15 points) on the 2024 vote, then there could be a big blue wave building up steam for next year:

Republicans are hardly going to admit it, but they should evaluate whether Trump's push to ignite a redistricting arms race may have made it easier for a blue wave to wipe out more Republicans than if they had left their maps alone.

Perhaps this is why Republicans in the state legislatures in Kansas and Indiana have so far refused to redistrict their states to add GOP districts. They might wind up looking like the smart ones, next November.

For the next year, there will likely be a lot of speculation among political wonks about the possibility of Republican dummymandering turning around and biting them on the hindquarters. But if a big blue wave does actually appear, my guess is that everyone is going to learn this new political term, very soon afterwards.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant