House Republicans are expanding their midterm election map, adding seven Democrat-held districts to their 2026 target list.
The National Republican Congressional Committee announced Monday that districts in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, Ohio, and Tennessee will be targeted as prime pickup opportunities for the GOP in November.
“Vulnerable House Democrats are stuck defending a wildly unpopular record and a radical socialist agenda. The NRCC will take the fight into their districts, hold every one of them accountable, and expand our House majority in November,” NRCC Chairman Richard Hudson (R-NC) said in a statement.
The map expansion from the NRCC targets many states that have redrawn their maps after the Supreme Court dealt a blow to race-based redistricting, finding that Louisiana’s black-majority congressional district held by Rep. Cleo Fields (D-LA) was created in violation of the Constitution, without fully gutting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
Fields’s district is now one of the NRCC’s latest targets. Alongside the Louisiana Democrat, the Republican campaign arm is also expanding its focus to the districts held by Reps. Shomari Figures (D-AL), Kathy Castor (D-FL), Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO), and Greg Landsman (D-OH). The open House races in Florida’s 22nd District and Tennessee’s 9th District are also included.
Florida’s 22nd District is currently represented by Rep. Lois Frankel (D-FL), who is running for another term in Florida’s 23rd District after the state legislature redrew her district. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN), who has represented Memphis for 20 years, announced he would not seek reelection after Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature redrew its map, thus dismantling the district and leaving it open.
Tennessee’s 9th District is projected to flip to Republican control because of the newly drawn map.
The NRCC’s target list now includes 36 House districts for its 2026 battlefield. Republicans, who currently hold a trifecta in Washington, are hoping to hold on to their House majority, where Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) holds a razor-thin majority.
Still, Republicans are facing historical headwinds, as the party in power typically falls out of favor in the midterm elections. Johnson has framed the 2026 elections as an argument over “whether or not freedom is going to survive.”
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“This is not our father’s Democrat Party,” Johnson told reporters last week during a press conference. “This is not. We’re not arguing over marginal tax breaks anymore.”
He continued, “We’re in a philosophical war to save the greatest nation in history. We take it very seriously. So we recruited extraordinary candidates. We are raising record amounts of money that is necessary to win these elections, and we understand everything is at stake.”