WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0The nation is set to have its least competitive congressional election cycle in years by some measures, with California partly driving the shift.<\/p>\n
The redistricting carried out in California and nine other states since 2024 has left the nation with an unusually low number of truly competitive districts, narrowing the battle for U.S. House control in this year\u2019s historically consequential midterms cycle to a few dozen races at best.<\/p>\n
In California, that looks like a paradox: The state has both a shrinking number of political battlegrounds and a handful of critical races that could help decide which party controls the House. Both are a result of Proposition 50, the Democratic-led, voter-passed redistricting effort<\/a> designed to offset new maps drawn by Republicans in Texas and other states.<\/p>\n Only three California races are rated as competitive by Cook Political Report, the nonpartisan analyst, compared with 12 races in 2024 and nine in 2022, according to a Times analysis of Cook data. <\/p>\n California was also the biggest driver in the nationwide decline of competitive seats, according to a separate Cook analysis<\/a> released Wednesday. Six of the 14 U.S. House seats that dropped out of the swing-seat zone in 2026 were in the Golden State.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no question that we\u2019re seeing the consequence\u201d of the state\u2019s redistricting, \u201cof having fewer competitive districts,\u201d said Michael Latner, a professor of political science at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. <\/p>\n That doesn\u2019t dilute the key role California is expected to play in Democrats\u2019 effort to win the House majority, however. The new map made some blue seats safer and gave the party the chance to flip up to five red seats<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cThe path to the House majority still runs through California,\u201d said Anna Elsasser, spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, who said the party is investing heavily to flip those seats.<\/p>\n \u2018Not backing off\u2019<\/p>\n The fight for the majority at the halfway point of President Trump\u2019s second term is fierce. Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress, face headwinds<\/a> fueled by voters\u2019 feelings<\/a> on the economy<\/a> and the war in Iran<\/a>. Democrats have built their campaigns around Americans\u2019 economic frustration in an attempt to win the House majority and regain some power in Trump\u2019s Washington.<\/p>\n Having more safe seats positions California to have a greater effect on the election, said Thad Kousser, a political science professor at UC San Diego, and in Congress afterward, where the state is expected to have a large blue delegation. <\/p>\n The less-competitive map is a return to the 2000s for California, when the state\u2019s two parties agreed on a congressional map that created safe districts for both, Kousser said.<\/p>\n That decade saw fewer competitive House races before new maps created more battleground areas in 2010 and 2020, the result of regular redistricting that occurs every decade after the U.S. census.<\/p>\n The shift in the state\u2019s competitive seats caused by Proposition 50\u2019s partisan redistricting was so acute because the existing 2020 map was relatively neutral, Cook senior editor David Wasserman said in the report. In Florida, Missouri and Texas, by contrast, the maps Republicans replaced were already partisan, making the shifts less extreme.<\/p>\n Three of the seats Democrats targeted with Proposition 50 are rated as solidly blue, while two present fights: the Central Valley seat held by Republican David Valadao, the state\u2019s only toss-up race per Cook, and the seat being vacated by retiring Republican Darrell Issa in the San Diego area, where the redrawn district now slightly favors Democrats.<\/p>\n Just one seat Republicans hope to flip is rated competitively by Cook, that of Democrat Adam Gray in the Central Valley. Democrats are slightly more favored there under the new map, but it presents a challenge for both parties.<\/p>\n Both parties view California\u2019s three most competitive races as key to win, and each is putting resources toward a few additional contests.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not backing off a single seat in California,\u201d said Christian Martinez, spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee. \u201cWe\u2019re on offense.\u201d<\/p>\n Shrinking battlegrounds nationwide<\/p>\n This year\u2019s push by Republicans to redo state maps ahead of the November election \u2014 and California\u2019s move to respond in kind<\/a> \u2014 was without precedent. Ten states approved new maps; before this year, only two states had voluntarily redrawn maps between censuses for partisan advantage since 1970, according to a Pew Research Center analysis<\/a>.<\/p>\n It was partly enabled by a spring Supreme Court decision<\/a> that cleared the way for states to redraw their election maps to eliminate voting districts that were drawn with race as a consideration.<\/p>\n The 10 new maps supercharged an ongoing national trend of polarization that has seen the number of competitive seats shrink over the last 30 years. The country used to see election cycles with as many as 50 seats rated as toss-ups, said Erin Covey, who leads the Cook Political Report\u2019s U.S. House coverage, something that has not happened since 2010. As of this week, just 18 of 435 House districts are rated as toss-ups by Cook.<\/p>\n California is not alone in having fewer battlegrounds; no state has a high concentration of competitive seats this cycle. Michigan had four under Cook\u2019s ratings, and Pennsylvania, Iowa, New York and Texas each had three as of this week.<\/p>\n That could be unhealthy for democracy, experts said. Voters can feel as though their votes matter less, and it may contribute to negative public opinion about how the electoral system functions, Latner said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe very premise of a free republic is that you are going to have differences in views,\u201d Latner said. \u201cThe way those differences get resolved is through electoral competition.\u201d<\/p>\n The erosion of \u201cfree and fair competition … is a threat to all voters, regardless of their partisanship,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Eyes on key races<\/p>\n In California\u2019s most competitive race, Valadao is being challenged in the redrawn 22nd District by progressive college professor Randy Villegas. Republicans are bullish about their chances to retain the seat.<\/p>\n In the neighboring 13th District, which the new map aimed to make safer for Democrats, Gray faces former Stockton mayor and Marine veteran Kevin Lincoln. Also important for both parties is the battle for the 48th District, the seat vacated by Issa. Republican Jim Desmond, a San Diego County supervisor, faces Democrat Marni von Wilpert, a San Diego City Council member.<\/p>\n Republicans have also targeted Rep. Derek Tran\u2019s Democratic seat in the 45th District, another former battleground that Proposition 50 made safer for Democrats, and three other seats that Cook rates as solidly Democratic.<\/p>\n Democrats\u2019 safer flips target Northern California\u2019s 1st and Sacramento County\u2019s 6th districts. They also expect to gain a seat in the new 41st District, which now covers parts of Los Angeles and Orange counties. The new map gave Democrats a Democratic voter registration edge there and forced Republican incumbent Ken Calvert to run in the newly drawn 40th District<\/a> against fellow Republican Rep. Young Kim.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0The nation is set to have its least competitive congressional election cycle in years by some measures, with…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":973375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[390651,1582,276,390653,390652,7033,390655,390654,2961,224,5337,230543,10669,115315,5620,290,358,9111,1628],"class_list":["post-973374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-blue-seat","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-competitive-seat","tag-cook-datum","tag-democrats","tag-few-competitive-house-race","tag-house-majority","tag-la","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-new-map","tag-party","tag-proposition","tag-republicans","tag-state","tag-texas","tag-voter","tag-year"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=973374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/973375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=973374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=973374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=973374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}