Politics

The post-2030 redistricting fight could spell big trouble for Democrats

Published

5 months ago

January 28, 2026

Democrats could face a gloomy Electoral College atmosphere next decade, according to new population estimates released Tuesday that show red-leaning states like Texas and Florida making major gains and California as a big loser.

By combining the census bureau’s new state population estimates for 2025 with previous years’ data, experts quickly projected the number of House seats — and Electoral College votes — states will gain or lose after the 2030 Census in the process known as reapportionment. And while those projections differ slightly, they all had bad news for Democrats: GOP-leaning states will gain electoral power and Democratic-leaning states will lose it if the trends continue.

While Joe Biden would still have won in 2020 under the estimates, two projected maps show Democrats would no longer be able to win the Electoral College by relying solely on the Rust Belt battleground states.

One of the estimates from Jonathan Cervas, a redistricting and apportionment expert at Carnegie Mellon University, shows seat changes across the map, with Florida and Texas gaining four seats each, while California, New York and Illinois collectively lose eight.

Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Utah and Idaho would all pick up one more seat, while Oregon, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island lose one seat.

Another map from the GOP-aligned American Redistricting Project shows less seats shifting overall, with Texas gaining four seats, Florida gaining two, and Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Utah and Idaho gaining one. Under that estimate, California loses four seats, and New York, Illinois, Oregon, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island all lose one seat.

In both models, the shifts — which are significant in both projections given the already razor-thin margins in the House — stand to alter the battlefield for the 2032 presidential campaign and the fight for the House down-ballot.

While the changes are “not going to lock in” GOP wins, the map is certainly shifting in their favor, said Adam Kincaid, president of the National Republican Redistricting Trust.

“The Rust Belt states and Sun Belt states will continue to be the battleground,” he said. “The difference is that Republicans will be able to win the White House without a single Rust Belt state, whereas Democrats would have to sweep the Rust Belt and win in the Sun Belt.”

The new maps are mostly in line with earlier estimates from Democrats, who at the time presented changes to Florida and Texas specifically as the “result of population growth specifically in diverse, metropolitan, Democratic-leaning urban centers.”

That is leaving the party with some tempered optimism about their fate in the Electoral College and the battle for House control.

“As these folks are moving, they’re bringing their politics with them,” said Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. “And so I think it’s not necessarily safe to assume that those population shifts don’t or aren’t able to impact statewide results.”

But not everyone in the party saw good news between the lines. Plus, Democrats have long hoped population shifts in red states like Texas and Florida would lead to gains for the party, but so far that wish has not materialized.

David Hogg, the former DNC vice chair who has embarked on a mission to primary members of his party that he believes are not doing enough to stand up to President Donald Trump, said the estimates prove that the party must invest further in the South.

“If we don’t start building infrastructure in the South … we can kiss goodbye any chance of winning the white house in the 2030s,” Hogg said on X.

The shifts also amplify fears from Democrats that Republicans will try and gerrymander urban areas and lessen those voters’ impact in House races, something Jenkins said is designed to “dilute the voices of these communities.”

“We’re going to find in states like Texas is that as those communities grow, it’s going to become harder and harder for [Republicans] to gerrymander their way out of the fact that those people live there, and they’re real people,” she said.

Jenkins said it’s important to understand the projections “in the context of this effort to gerrymander the country into oblivion,” pointing to the White House-initiated mid-cycle redistricting effort that swept the country last year.

But both parties acknowledge there’s still plenty of time for populations to shift even more before the numbers are locked in during the 2030 Census.

Ahead of the 2020 Census, reapportionment projections were dire for Democratic-controlled states. But the shifts ended up being less dramatic than anticipated — in part due to an undercount of Black, Hispanic and Native American people, the Census Bureau acknowledged, that was partially triggered by the extraordinarily difficult task of counting every American during a pandemic.

“It’s basically halftime,” Kincaid said. “We’ve got 5 years to go. A lot can change.”

Politics

Iran set to progress at World Cup

Published

55 minutes ago

June 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Iran’s adventure through a World Cup beset by geopolitical complexity and logistical complications will likely continue after the team landed a frenetic 1-1 draw against Egypt. The high-stakes encounter kicked off hours after a tenuous peace between Washington and Tehran was threatened by American strikes on Iranian military installations along the Strait of Hormuz. Read the full story from Seattle by Sasha Issenberg and Sophia Cai here.

Politics

The “Pride Match” that wasn’t

Published

3 hours ago

June 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

SEATTLE — As a lesbian who was born in Egypt, Noha Mahgoub could have chosen to dress for what local organizers branded a “Pride Match” in colors associated with either her sexual orientation or her country of origin. The 43-year-old Democratic legislative aide — one of the top staffers in Washington state government — chose the latter, arriving in a red Egyptian national team jersey, a black hat emblazoned with YALLA and red-white-and-black tricolor facepaint.

“I’ve seen Pride shirts, I’ve seen Pride face paintings,” she observed from a concourse minutes before national anthems began echoing around Lumen Field. “It’s been really great, but I’m seeing a lot more Egypt and Iran and people cheering for their countries and singing their songs.”

Indeed, despite FIFA’s announcement that rainbow flags would be permitted in the stadium, few were visible as the match began. Instead, the stands rippled with the colors of the two Middle Eastern countries on the field, including many of the pre-revolutionary lion-and-sun flags that FIFA has attempted to ban under a stadium code of conduct that prohibits political displays.

Mahgoub had seen Egypt’s national team in person only once before, as a child while the team was angling to qualify for the 1990 World Cup. Since then, Mahgoub and her family relocated to Washington state, where she said the local Egyptian-American community has become enlivened by new arrivals coming to work at Seattle-based tech companies.

“You know how it is, you start calling everybody your cousins — a lot of cousins that I wasn’t related to,” Mahgoub said. “Well, I think a lot of them are here.”

Politics

Why Belgium’s prime minister isn’t cheering on the Red Devils

Published

5 hours ago

June 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Ah, Belgium. The country of fries, chocolate, Kevin De Bruyne and, some might say, chronic political division.

Beyond Brussels, a mighty international melting pot, the country is split between Dutch-speaking Flanders, French-speaking Wallonia and a small German-speaking community. Those linguistic divisions are mirrored in its politics: Belgium has separate party systems on either side of the language border, as well as a highly devolved federal structure that gives significant powers to its regions.

Today, Belgian politics is as fragmented as ever. It took 234 days to form a federal government after the June 2024 election (yes, you read that right). The delay was driven largely by the fact that no camp came close to winning a majority, forcing months of negotiations between parties with sharply different ideological and linguistic bases.

Flemish nationalism has also become a growing force, shaped by two right-wing nationalist parties: the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), which wants to transform Belgium into a looser confederal state and ultimately give Flanders far greater autonomy, and the far-right Vlaams Belang, which openly campaigns for Flemish independence.

So, you might think the 2026 World Cup would offer Belgium’s leader a rare opportunity to rally and unify the country behind a shared national symbol, right?

Wrong.

Prime Minister Bart De Wever, who hails from the N-VA party, has expressed almost no public support for the Red Devils, Belgium’s national soccer team.

That contrasts with leaders in nearby countries that also qualified for the World Cup. The leaders of the Netherlands, Germany and France have all publicly backed their squads, whether on social media or through public appearances.

The reason may be simple: De Wever just doesn’t care for the sport.

A Belgian official told Blue Light News: “The prime minister is not a soccer fan, so he doesn’t seek to project that image publicly. To do otherwise would not be authentic.”

Flemish media have indeed reported that the prime minister has little interest in soccer. In a podcast appearance a few years ago, he said the sight of people “going totally crazy in a group in the stands” left him feeling “ice cold.”

But politics is likely part of the story too. De Wever has led the Flemish nationalist N-VA since 2004. Throughout his political career, he has argued that Flanders should have far greater autonomy and that Belgium should evolve into a confederal state. For a politician with that background, overt displays of Belgian national unity probably don’t come naturally, and in fact contradict emphasis on Flemish autonomy.

This is not the first time the N-VA’s relationship with the Red Devils has attracted attention. In 2015, after Belgium reached No. 1 in the FIFA world rankings, Francophone Socialist Party leader Laurette Onkelinx asked the Chamber of Representatives to applaud the team. All parties joined in, except the N-VA.

During Euro 2016, the N-VA had to deny it instructed ministers and MPs to avoid publicly celebrating the Red Devils so as not to appear too Belgian, after rumors circulated in Belgian media.

One of De Wever’s few comments about this year’s World Cup concerned Belgium’s official tournament song. His complaint: It did not contain a single word of Dutch.

“My staff have confirmed to me that not a single word is sung in Dutch. That is, to put it mildly, not elegant,” he said, in keeping with his ideologies of promoting Flanders, when asked about the song during a parliamentary committee hearing.

Sport is often treated as a vehicle for national unity. In New Zealand, Belgium’s opponent in today’s match, elite teams have successfully woven elements of Māori culture into their sporting traditions, most famously through the prematch haka, which has helped create a shared cultural identity that connects Māori and non-Māori New Zealanders.

In Belgium, however, this World Cup has not yet become that kind of unifying project. At least not from the very top.