Prop 50 passes to give Democrats advantage

Voters in California approved a measure to redraw political lines in favor of Democrats, launching a counteroffensive against similar efforts by conservative-led states in the nationwide fight for control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

CBS predicts the redistricting measure called Prop 50 passes.

The plan aims to restructure the state’s voting districts to give Democrats a better chance of taking five seats from Republicans in the House of Representatives in next year’s midterm elections.

It remains unclear whether the measure will change the balance of power in Washington; as Republican-led states are also redrawing voting lines under pressure from President Donald Trump.

Republicans currently hold a slim five-seat majority in the 435-member House of Representatives, the lower house of Congress.

If Democrats win a majority in the chamber in the 2026 elections, they will be able to disrupt Donald Trump’s legislative agenda for at least the next two years while also leading congressional oversight of his administration; This can range from investigations complete with subpoenas to removal from office.

A national look shows that the effort alone in Democrat-dominated California won’t be enough to undo gains by Republicans who reshuffled voting maps. Four Republican-led states have redrawn their lines so far this year, giving the party a possible advantage in nine new voting districts.

Still, experts told the BBC that these changes in districts may not be enough for Republicans to retain control of the House of Representatives next November.

Midterm elections, in which voters vote for congressional candidates as well as state candidates, are called midterm elections because they occur in the middle of the president’s four-year term. Historically, a president usually loses power from at least one house of Congress in midterm elections.

The Brookings Institution found that the president’s party has lost House seats in 20 of the last 22 midterm elections since 1938.

“Politically there are still a lot of unknowns before the midterms and a lot of things could happen, but historically speaking it’s an uphill battle for Republicans,” said Galen Sheely, research director for the State Voting Laws Summary project, a collaboration between the Brennan Center for Justice and the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.

Redistricting usually occurs every 10 years to reflect population changes recorded by the U.S. Census.

Dr Sheely added that redrawing voting boundaries to plan for electoral gains in the middle of the decade was “a new strategy that pushes boundaries that have not been pushed before”.

The tit-for-tat redistricting war began as Trump pressured conservative-led states to redraw congressional districts to help Republicans maintain control of the House of Representatives. More than a dozen U.S. states are now openly considering plans to redraw voting boundaries, known as political gerrymandering.

“This is not good for our republic in the long run, whether Democrat or Republican,” said Erik Nisbet, a professor at Northwestern University. “The question now is: Where will this stop? This is a political sabotage of our democracy.”

From his perspective, this war risks eroding trust in government, diminishing people’s votes and representation in Washington, and erasing battleground districts where members of both parties have an equal chance of winning the seat.

Representatives from those districts are often crucial to negotiating deals and finding middle ground, he said, a task made even more difficult in Congress amid a sharp political divide.

“It’s hard not to mention the ongoing government shutdown on this issue,” he added. “This will further worsen the polarization and deadlock in Congress. The ripple effect will mean that this president and future presidents will be emboldened to act unilaterally without Congress.”

Trump, who started his redistricting drive with Texas, argued that he and the Republicans had the right to get more seats in Congress because they won these states in the 2024 presidential race.

Texas responded to Trump’s call by rearranging its maps to give Republicans an advantage in five new seats. And in response, California Democrats introduced Prop 50, short for “Proposition.”

Democrat California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Trump foe with presidential ambitions, supported Proposition 50. He is now pushing Democrats to follow his lead and fight fire with fire; He argues that the party has not been willing to do this in the past.

“These people don’t play by the rules,” he said of Republicans. “If they can’t win by playing the game with the current rules, they’re going to change the rules. That’s what Donald Trump is doing.”

High-profile Democrats, including former President Barack Obama, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Kamala Harris, helped fundraise and build support for the measure across the country.

Campaigns supporting and opposing the measure received a combined $200 million, but Democrats far outnumbered Republicans after Newsom said last week they could stop sending money to donors.

But if other states do not join, the proposal and its momentum may not lead to significant change in the House.

While that could help Democrats gain five seats, more and more Republican-led states are also changing their maps.

North Carolina, Missouri and Ohio adopted new maps that would give Republicans a new advantage. Utah also passed a new map that would give Democrats an advantage in one district, but that map is under legal review.

Each state decides voting districts differently, and many Republican-led states have had an easier time changing their maps due to state laws, election deadlines, existing districts or political leadership.

Texas, for example, created its new districts through the state legislature.

But California needed voter support to change its political maps.

Under a state law aimed at stopping political gerrymandering, an independent commission usually determines California’s voting districts every ten years. To deviate from that, the state had to call a special election in which 50 was the only proposition on the ballot, at a cost of more than $200 million to taxpayers. The new Prop 50 maps will be in use until 2030, when the commission will redraw districts.

As leaders in both liberal- and conservative-leaning states examine the issue of redistricting, another factor looms on the horizon that threatens to impact the 2026 midterm elections: The Supreme Court is currently reviewing a case that could significantly reshape how districts are drawn, depending on the decision.