This is an adapted excerpt from the Nov. 7 episode of “Connect with Jacob Soboroff.”

You might have seen that I got to spend Election Day in beautiful Austin, Texas. And there’s truly nowhere else I’d rather have been, except maybe the White House. That may sound crazy, but hear me out: Can you imagine being a fly on the wall, sitting in the East Room with Donald Trump, his advisers and some Cabinet members as they stomached a total rebuke from the American people?

In all actuality, no guesswork is needed. It was grim. On election night, one White House official told MS NOW, “This is pretty much worst-case scenario.”

The White House tried its hardest to guarantee big wins for Republicans on election night: filing lawsuits against states, interfering with the Postal Service and attempting to seize voter data. But of all Trump’s election engineering strategies, redistricting was supposed to be the surefire win.

You likely remember that at the president’s direction, Republicans in several states redrew dozens of congressional districts over the past two years in an attempt to maintain control. But their scheme didn’t just fail. In some states, it backfired.

Take Texas, for example. It was the first state to kick off the unprecedented redistricting war. Back in the summer of 2025, Republicans pieced together a map they thought would result in a five-seat gain for their party in the House of Representatives. At the time, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called it a “huge win” and bragged that he “added more new Republican seats than any state.”

Fast-forward to Election Day: Abbott is out, 4 of those 5 redrawn seats went blue, and Texas Republicans lost two of their own House seats.

But Texas Republicans weren’t alone in their failure. In Florida, Republicans lost three (and soon, maybe all four) of the districts they redrew. Democrats also picked up an open seat. In North Carolina, Rep. Don Davis kept his seat, and his Democratic colleagues flipped at least four more. Even in ruby-red Alabama, Democrat Rep. Shomari Figures held onto his targeted seat.

And in California, you may remember that Gov. Gavin Newsom, in what some Democrats viewed as an ethically fraught move, pushed through a redistricting effort to fight back against Trump’s efforts. The result there? Democrats picked up five additional House seats.

As it stands, across more than a dozen seats we expected Republicans to gain through gerrymandering, only two Republicans have won their races.

Ladies and gentlemen, that’s a dummymander.

Allison Detzel contributed.

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