No Gerrymander Can Save Republicans Now
Even the election doomers can see something is happening here
The coalition that formed in 2020, stayed stable in 2022, and inexplicably came apart at the seams in 2024 at the urging of our plutocrats' insidious algorithms seems to be back with a vengeance.
After spending much of the past week watching ludicrous action movies with my teenage son, America's democracy-preserving coalition is back like John Wick.
The anti-Trump coalition – or Biden coalition, whatever you want to call it – has returned in elections throughout the past year and a half to wallop Republicans even in safely red areas of the country. On Tuesday that coalition – supercharged by a tyrant who hasn't made shit any cheaper – showed its strength in the Texas primaries.
For the first time in a long (long, long) time, more Democrats cast a ballot than Republicans in the Texas primary elections. The state's overtly racist mid-decade gerrymander might not be enough to fend off the wave election that, by every indication, is coming this fall.
Here are 4 districts the TX GOP gerrymandered to gain seats in November, with the Dem and GOP primary vote. Dems outvoted GOPs in every one of them.
— Tom Bonier (@tbonier.bsky.social) 2026-03-04T12:02:24.034Z
Not every vote is in (the outlined counties don't have >95% counted, and Maverick hasn't reported at all), but this shows the swing between Harris' margin in '24 and the Dem margin in yesterday's primary turnout. You can see in south Texas the shifts were >100%.
— Tom Bonier (@tbonier.bsky.social) 2026-03-04T12:16:24.473Z
Weird!
Texas Republicans spent more than double what the Democrats spent in this month's primaries, for what that's worth.
I wrote back in August about the so-called dummymander as a manifestation of electoral and legal bad faith (to prove my point, the Supreme Court's anti-constitutionalists this week killed New York Democrats' gerrymander plans). Folks who know more than I do about Texas districts and voting trends say the newest Texas gerrymander is not, in fact, a dummymander, which happens when a party draws districts in such a convoluted way that it actually hurts their candidates. As a humble blogger I don't have much pushback to the claim that Texas Republicans did not dummymander themselves in 2025.
Denny Carter
Even so, the Texas primary turnout – along with the turnout numbers we've seen throughout this second Trump term – makes it clear that no amount of cheating is going to save Republicans from a wipeout in November. That cheating – green lighted by bad-faith SCOTUS justices – could turn an overwhelming Democratic House advantage into a more modest one, however.
Even the election doomers among us can maybe peak out from their doom bunkers for a moment and see that Something Is Happening right now. What we're seeing, I think, is a "critical alternate consciousness" that emerges when power structures become stale, when political and cultural norms are perceived by a critical mass of people as overbearing. Maybe you know this as a vibe shift. Whatever it is, I have an exceedingly hard time believing the anti-democracy Republican Party can cheat their way to victory this time.
Follow Denny Carter on BlueSky at @dennycarter.bsky.social.
Comments ()