DECEMBER 8, 2025

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Kuttner on TAP

Democratic wave or Republican swamp

Can Trump revulsion and voter mobilization overcome voter suppression?

In the aftermath of recent gains, Democrats are feeling hopeful about taking back at least one house of Congress next November. The gubernatorial blowouts in New Jersey and Virginia, and the 2025 special House elections, suggest a national wave next year.

The most recent case was a 13-point swing in favor of the Democrat in Tennessee’s Seventh Congressional District last Tuesday, where Republican Matt Van Epps beat Democrat Aftyn Behn by nine points, compared to Trump carrying the district by 22 points over Kamala Harris. This performance, in an unusually high-turnout special election where Republican funders went all in, comes on top of a 23-point pro-Democrat swing in the special election in FL-01, 17 points in AZ-07, 16 points in FL-06, and 16 points in VA-11.

Gerrymandering may not prove to be so fearsome. In some states, such as Indiana, Kansas, Nebraska, and New Hampshire, local Republicans are resisting Trump’s redistricting demands. The GOP’s crudely partisan and racially tainted Texas gerrymander map has been upheld by the Supreme Court, but that will be offset by California’s redistricting.

And by spreading out Republican voters in the hope of flipping a maximum number of Texas seats, Republicans may be cutting their margins too close, leaving an opening for Democratic pickups. All five of the gerrymandered seats are heavily Hispanic, a demographic group that has been deserting Trump.

The Senate, which is elected statewide, is not amenable to gerrymandering (unless you count the original constitutional gerrymander of giving small states the same two Senate seats as large ones.) In a wave election, Democrats have an outside chance of taking back the Senate, with possible pickups in Maine, Ohio, North Carolina, Texas, and a longer shot in Iowa, plus an independent challenging a Republican incumbent in Nebraska.

Trump’s popularity keeps dropping, and there is nothing on the near horizon to suggest that it will recover. He is particularly vulnerable for his handling of the economy. According to the latest Fox News poll, by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, voters say Trump is more responsible for the current economy than Biden (62 percent vs. 32 percent).

In this year’s by-elections, three of them in red states that might have been vulnerable to electoral shenanigans, voter suppression was the dog that didn’t bark. There were no reports of voting irregularities. Nor was suppression much of a factor in 2018, despite Trump’s control of the Justice Department. Of the 41 Democratic pickups, 21 of them were in states with Republican governors.

But it’s way too soon to break out the champagne. This time, Trump is likely to be far more desperate and far more reckless.

His Justice Department is more shamelessly partisan and weaponized than in 2018. His attempt to steal the 2020 election was foiled by Republicans who refused to do his bidding. This time, such Republicans are few and far between.

In the same way that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has been turned into its opposite, crushing opportunities for Black Americans in the name of reversing DEI, we can expect the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department to be weaponized for the purpose of suppressing voting rights rather than defending them.

There is also the risk that the Supreme Court, seeing the chance to gut what remains of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, will virtually invite Southern states to use racial gerrymandering to all but eliminate majority-Black Democratic seats held by African Americans. If all red states take up the offer, that could cost Democrats 15 to 20 seats.

One offset is that a large number of potential Democratic pickups in the House are in states where election administration is honest. Of the 23 most contestable House seats, which Republicans won in 2024 by margins of eight points or less, 19 are in blue or purple states.

Also, the lower courts have blocked crude attempts at voter suppression. When Trump tried to seize control of state election administration last March, including an order requiring documentary proof of citizenship and a ban on mail-in voting, he was enjoined by district judges, and the Supreme Court did not intervene. The Constitution gives Congress power to set “the Times, Places, and Manner” of elections, and the president has no role.

In short, Democrats need to be ready to litigate all of these coming assaults. And the wave of revulsion against Trump needs to be so mighty that even suppression of voting rights will not be sufficient.

–ROBERT KUTTNER