Primary voters in a small number of districts play an outsized role in deciding who wins Congress. The Trump-initiated mid-decade redistricting is driving that number of competitive seats even lower.
Fewer congressional contests are expected to be competitive this fall, compared with past election cycles, and experts say the extraordinary mid-decade redistricting efforts initiated by President Trump are largely to blame.
Fewer competitive seats means the overwhelming majority — more than 90% — of congressional races will pretty much be decided during primary elections, which see far fewer voters participate than general elections.
"Right now, we only rate 18 out of 435 races as toss ups, which means that less than 5% of Americans will truly be deciding who's in control of the House," David Wasserman, senior elections analyst for the Cook Political Report, told NPR.
This disparity in the voting power of Americans in congressional races has been a worsening problem for several election cycles.
Unite America Institute, which tracks what it refers to as the "primary problem" and advocates for election reforms, calculated that in 2024, just 7% voters elected 87% of U.S. House races.
Voters have self-sorted themselves geographically, and technology in recent years has allowed lawmakers to more effectively carve up congressional districts that give one party an advantage over another.
Nick Troiano, executive director of Unite America, said the mid-decade redistricting prompted by Trump last year has further reduced the number of competitive seats. His organization says 32 states currently don't have a single competitive congressional race.
"The primary problem is bad and getting worse," he told NPR. "We are about to enter a midterm election season that will be the least competitive of our lifetimes, which means that we will have, no matter who wins in November, the least accountable Congress of our lifetime."
Last year, Trump asked Texas lawmakers to redraw the state's congressional map to create five more seats that could favor Republicans in 2026. Democratic leaders in California responded, putting forward a successful ballot measure to circumvent the state's independent redistricting commission and create five more favorable seats for Democrats.
Lawmakers in other states, including North Carolina and Missouri, crafted new maps as well, and Florida and Virginia are among the states that may join them.
But so far, Wasserman said the redrawing of congressional boundaries ahead of this year's elections hasn't led to any "pronounced advantage" for either Republicans or Democrats.
"Instead, what it's done is it's eviscerated the competitive range of districts in which Americans have a real say over who controls Congress in November," he said.
Wasserman explained that even if one were to include races that Cook rates as "leaning" toward one party or another, that would only be 36 seats.
"That's still less than 10% of the House," he said. "By comparison, at this point in Trump's first term, we had 48 races that were competitive between the two parties."
Wasserman said new district lines in California and Texas are driving most of this.
"Whereas we used to have a robust number of Republicans from California and Democrats from Texas and Florida, today blue states' delegations are becoming bluer, red states' delegations are becoming redder," he said. "And there are fewer opportunities for bipartisan dialogue."
Primary voters tend to be more ideologically extreme than the general public
Troiano said there are some serious democratic issues raised by the fact that so few voters will have so much power to decide what party will control Congress.
For one, he says, primary voters are not representative of the broader American electorate. According to an analysis from his group, primary voters tend to be older, whiter, wealthier, more educated and more ideologically extreme than the general public.
"And so when you look at an old, white, wealthy Congress that is ideologically polarizing, can't get anything done, they reflect exactly who sent them there," Troiano said.
There have been some efforts in recent years to open up primaries to independent voters — which is the fastest-growing part of the U.S. electorate. New Mexico, for instance, now allows non-affiliated and independent voters to participate in party primaries. However, Louisiana and West Virginia recently went the other way, restricting some primaries to just registered party members. Currently, 17 states have either completely closed or partially closed primaries.
And in 2024, there were several ballot measures before voters in states like Arizona, Colorado, Nevada and Oregon that would have created nonpartisan primaries. But those statewide efforts failed across the board.
Unite America advocates for nonpartisan primaries or the inclusion of independent voters in party primaries for a slew of reasons, but one of their biggest arguments is that they allow more voters to take part in the most determinative elections.
And that's especially important, Troiano said, as more states whittle down the number of competitive seats.
"So if you think dysfunction and division is bad right now in Washington," he said, "it's going to get worse in the next congressional session because of the lack of competition in this year's elections."
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Comments
> … which means that less than 5% of Americans will truly be deciding who's in control of the House
Something about this framing seems to undersell the efforts and influence of the other 95% of voters.
If a soccer match were tied 6-6 and a last minute winner made it 6-7, the final goal scorer may be celebrated as the hero, but in truth the victory was won on the back of six other goals too.
By recursivecaveat 2026-02-232:371 reply In soccer goals are fungible. Votes are not fungible. Wasted or excess votes in safe districts don't sum to anything at all. Not even to mention the "fractions of a representative" a vote is worth implied by district sizes which can vary by almost 2X in the house or even more dramatically in the electoral college and senate of course.
By jl6 2026-02-2320:26 I don’t think there is a material difference between goals and votes. A vote in a safe district isn’t wasted; it contributes to that district being safe. The difference is the perceived drama of being the final straw alongside all the rest of the load on the camel’s back.
By hvb2 2026-02-2219:55 Yeah that really doesn't fly.
If you want to make a soccer analogy, it's like you get to pick the players on both teams. Surprise, the outcome is pretty much known in advance.
I've always liked this. In the USA, the voter doesn't pick their politician. It's the other way around, the politician picks their voters
By PhilipRoman 2026-02-2219:51 I think that's an oversimplification. Voting does not have the same dynamics as soccer goals. Maybe a better analogy would be that the team is already winning 5-1 and in the last minute someone makes it 5-2. Good job of course, but can't really be said to influence the outcome.
By rbanffy 2026-02-2220:59 I believe the point is that, since the electoral races are already decided in terms of party, the only decision is whom to nominate. This decision is made in the primaries, by a very small number of voters.
By otikik 2026-02-2219:59 Isn’t it more like the referee being for sale? He who pays more scores more goals
By sdkfjhdsjk 2026-02-2219:491 reply There's a reason why the majority of Americans don't bother voting. It has nothing to do with laziness or apathy. It's because voting does not matter, and never did.
It's like one of those kid steering wheels that lets the little tike pretend he's driving.
The "candidates" are preselected by powers unseen behind the curtain in smoke filled rooms, and the "choices" you are presented with are not actual choices at all.
By conception 2026-02-2219:561 reply This is simply untrue. Conservatives have an outsized advantage because of organizing local voting. Most competitive voting areas are decided by thousands of votes, that could easily be decided by non-voters.
Also the majority of Americans do vote.
But items like vote roll purges, not having voting day be a holiday, anti-mail in ballot efforts, general lack of civic education over the years and in the msm have had a much larger effect than simple “indifference “.
By sdkfjhdsjk 2026-02-2219:57 [dead]
The electoral system is at the root of so many problems. We need sane redistricting, elimination of electoral college, dramatic expansion of the Congress, term limit, age limits and many other changes.
By hunterpayne 2026-02-2220:122 reply You are all over the place. Let me make it simple for you. You want to end Gerrymandering. I agree with this. There are relatively simple algorithms that would do it much better. It won't make all races competitive but there will be far more.
Expanding Congress probably isn't a great idea though. To get enough power as person in Congress to do anything takes a decade or more, your idea just makes it worse. As for getting rid of the EC, think of it as districts you can't Gerrymander. It also ensures those that grow our food get a voice. And since most of the people in cities can't keep a house plant alive yet somehow want to decide how a farm works, that's a good idea not to empower the lunacy of the mob.
Term limits are good. Age limits I would support but its almost certainly unconstitutional.
By seanmcdirmid 2026-02-2220:191 reply The EC gives rural unpopulated states more say in federal decision making than more populous urban states. This has nothing to do with agriculture, California is the country’s biggest agriculture producer yet its farmers have less of a voice than those in Wyoming where agriculture is actually much rarer.
It is simply an accident of history that Wyoming, a state with less people than San Francisco (not even the Bay Area’s biggest city) has just as many senators as the entire state of California.
By bigstrat2003 2026-02-2221:232 reply > It is simply an accident of history...
That is understanding the matter far too much. Without the compromise of the bicameral legislature, the country never would have existed. That is not simply an accident of history; that is a foundational part of the social contract which forms this nation.
By xnx 2026-02-2221:46 I'm sure that compromise was important at the time, but is an albatross now.
By seanmcdirmid 2026-02-2222:54 By the time Wyoming was admitted into the union it already led to huge distortions that weren’t present with the original 13 colonies. It’s ironic that it took Trump to bring America to a real breaking point though.
By xnx 2026-02-2315:41 > Expanding Congress probably isn't a great idea though.
* Better representation - Originally 35K constituents/congressperson. Now 770K!
* More congresspeople (and therefore districts) also goes a long way to fix gerrymandering by itself.
* Counterbalances the recent shift toward supreme/imperial President.
* Would largely fix the distortions of the electoral college.
* Smaller campaigns and therefore less prone to monetary influence.
> Age limits I would support but its almost certainly unconstitutional.
We already have age limits: 18 to vote. 35 to be President.
By bigstrat2003 2026-02-2221:223 reply > elimination of electoral college
We absolutely do not need that. Reform perhaps, but not elimination. The country is full of many different people with differing needs, and a president should have an incentive to balance those needs. The country would be a much worse place if the top N cities got to impose their will on the rest of the country which is nothing like them.
By xnx 2026-02-2221:44 > The country would be a much worse place if the top N cities got to impose their will on the rest of the country which is nothing like them.
Better for the bottom N states by population to impose their will on the rest of the country which is nothing like them?
By recursivecaveat 2026-02-232:53 I don't think having the small minority of swing states repeatedly determine the elections is doing anything for balance. The notion that the electoral college exists to balance rural and urban interests is a total fiction. Urban populations were at 5% in 1790, it wasn't on anybody's mind. The present effect is totally arbitrary and inconsistent. You may as well define a college where every religion gets an equal say: why should the atheists and Christians get to impose their will on the Sikhs and Druze? Just because there are more Christians who are nothing like them?
By jjav 2026-02-2222:28 Cities and states do not have needs or feelings. Humans do. The electoral college is deeply unfair system where humans in low population states have far more say than others. Everyone should have equal say.
You've stitched together a contradictory grab bag of reforms from opposite ends of the political spectrum without a single coherent theory connecting them, which tells me you're emotionally venting about dysfunction rather than actually thinking about how power and representation work.
By no-name-here 2026-02-235:41 1. Which reforms are contradictory? 2. I’m not convinced of term/age limits, but I believe I've heard all these reforms proposed at least by the US left - which of the reforms have you not heard proposed by the left?
> His organization says 32 states currently don't have a single competitive congressional race
I agree that the system is broken, but this is not a very fair statistic. 5 states have only a single seat in the House of Representatives. A further 7 states have just two seats. In total, there are 23 states with 5 seats or fewer. These states are all small and rural, which doesn't exactly make for a diverse population and means the seats tend to be safe R. For the states with a single major city (like Omaha for Nebraska) that city typically has its own district, and will hence be safe D in a sea of safe R. It's only in the more populous, more diverse areas where you start to get a lot of people living together who disagree with each other. This is what creates competitive races.
