Key facts
- Republicans claim redistricting has strengthened their margins in House districts.
- The NRCC memo states the House battlefield has completely flipped.
- In 2026, 23 Democrats represent districts Trump won in 2024.
- In 2026, 14 Republicans represent districts where Trump received less than 50% of the vote.
- Across 44 Republican-held seats targeted by Democrats, Trump averaged 53.2% in 2024.
Republicans are asserting that their redistricting efforts have significantly strengthened their position in the House of Representatives, creating an advantage in competitive seats and bolstering margins in districts targeted by Democrats.
The committee claims that not only does it have an advantage in nearly all of the most-competitive seats that were carried by Trump in 2024, but that redistricting has also strengthened the GOP’s margins across many of the 40-plus districts Democrats are targeting this fall.
“The composition of the House battlefield has completely flipped,” the memo reads. In 2018, Republicans controlled 23 districts that Hillary Clinton carried in 2016 and 42 districts where Trump failed to breach a 50 percent majority. In 2026, there are instead 23 Democrats representing districts Trump won in 2024, and there are just 14 Republicans representing districts where Trump received less than 50 percent of the vote.
The memo is a notable acknowledgement from the NRCC that the mid-cycle redistricting gamble was worthwhile to shore up the GOP’s House majority, even as the committee largely stayed out of the pressure campaigns in statehouses nationwide, deferring to the White House and Trump’s allies to navigate that push.
The committee takes specific aim at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s target list in its analysis. “Across the 44 Republican-held seats Democrats claim to target, Trump averaged 53.2 percent in 2024. By comparison, across the 43 seats Democrats flipped in 2018, Trump averaged just 46.6 percent in 2016 and never once won a majority,” the NRCC writes.