Republicans drew congressional districts intended to expand their House majority. Now, five of those gerrymandered seats are rated as toss ups, and the GOP has spent $12.3 million more than Democrats on advertising across the races, according to an MS NOW review of AdImpact data available through Saturday.

Texas’s 35th congressional district offers a particularly sharp example of the plan going sideways. Kamala Harris carried the former district, which stretched from central San Antonio to the Austin suburbs, by more than 33 points in 2024.

Texas Republicans redrew the district the following year, removing Austin and much of San Antonio while adding more rural counties. Under those new boundaries, Donald Trump would have won the district by 10 points, supposedly giving Republicans substantially friendlier political terrain.

Instead, the south central Texas seat is a toss up days before the midterms. Republicans have spent $13.9 million on advertisements supporting Air Force veteran Carlos De La Cruz, while Democrats have spent $12.3 million trying to elect Johnny Garcia, a deputy sheriff in nearby Bexar County.

The seat is open because Democratic Rep. Greg Casar is running in the redrawn 37th district surrounding Austin. The contest reflects a broader problem for Republicans after Trump demanded that states controlled by his party redraw congressional maps to create more opportunities for the GOP.

Of the 18 House races rated as toss ups by the Cook Political Report as of Friday, five are recent Republican gerrymanders. Trump carried two of those districts in 2024, while the other three were redrawn in ways that would have given him a 10 point advantage over Harris.

Republicans expected those districts to offer friendly territory. Instead, the party is pouring money into defending its own handiwork while contending with Trump’s historically low approval rating, persistent inflation and the continuing war in Iran.

Mike Madrid, a longtime Republican strategist and cofounder of the Lincoln Project, said the redistricting campaign revealed “a basic misunderstanding — especially in South Texas and Florida — of what was moving these voters in 2024.” He said the GOP mistook opposition to the previous administration for enduring support.

The party “believed that it was aspirational and supportive of them. It was not,” Madrid told MS NOW. “It was a rebuke of the Biden-Harris administration, the same way this is going to be a rebuke of Donald Trump.”

De La Cruz has taken steps suggesting awareness that close identification with Trump could become a liability. He removed a website description calling him a “Trump conservative” this summer and criticized the president’s tariffs as “way too broad,” although he called suggestions that he was distancing himself from Trump “hogwash.”

De La Cruz also appeared with Trump and Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton at a San Antonio rally last month. Garcia has campaigned against Trump’s tariffs, promised to reverse Medicaid cuts backed by congressional Republicans and portrayed De La Cruz as Trump’s “wingman” and “another rubber stamp” for his agenda.

Democrats are using similar arguments in other toss ups created by Republican redistricting. In Florida’s open 22nd district, Democrat Pia Dandiya has opposed Trump’s tariffs and criticized Republican Casey Askar for removing references to Trump from his website, though Askar later restored some.

In North Carolina’s 1st District, which Trump carried in 2024, Democratic Rep. Don Davis has campaigned on ending the war in Iran and attacked the president’s tariffs. His Republican opponent, Laurie Buckhout, has defended those tariffs.

Republican mapmakers also spread GOP voters across more districts, reducing their margin for error. An April memo from the nonpartisan Civic Data and Research Institute warned that creating additional Republican seats in Florida would require “diluting existing Republican vote margins across a larger geographic footprint.”

Republicans could now lose both Florida toss ups, including the open 22nd District and the 14th District, where former Republican state legislator Mike Beltran is challenging Democratic Rep. Kathy Castor. Republicans have spent $14.7 million more than Democrats on advertising across those two contests as of Saturday.

Viet Shelton, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said Republicans “underestimated how much the public hates the idea of politicians picking their voters.” He said the redistricting campaign “has backfired spectacularly and has had the net effect of forcing Republicans to defend in more places.”

“Instead of creating safe red seats,” Shelton said, “they created new opportunities for Democrats to compete in.” National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Mike Marinella countered that redistricting “created offense for Republicans and forced Democrats to spend precious resources in districts they never expected to defend.”

Republican strategists nevertheless cautioned that Democratic victories this cycle would not guarantee future success under the same maps. Madrid placed the immediate blame squarely on Republicans, saying, “This has everything to do with Republicans and nothing to do with Democrats. The Democrats’ problems start Wednesday morning.”