As Democrats battle over reconciliation, the age of their party, the direction of their party, who will lead their party, President Donald Trump, former President Joe Biden, immigration, why they’re losing ground with men, why they’re losing ground with Hispanics, how they can win in 2026, how they can win in 2028 and why they lost in 2024, they’re also starting to think about another issue: 2030.
The 2030 Census reapportionment is shaping up to be one of the most significant political shifts of the century. And Democrats fear it’s not going to be kind to them.
The South is projected to gain nine congressional seats — the largest single-decade gain for the region in history.
The left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice and the right-leaning American Redistricting Project also both estimate that Democrats will lose between 11 and 12 electoral votes.
Suddenly, the Blue Wall — the centerpiece of Democrats’ recent electoral strategy — will not be mathematically enough for the party to win the presidency.
Democrats in the South have seen it coming.
“Our party’s been really shortsighted,” Anderson Clayton, chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, told NOTUS.
“Democrats nationally, overall, have not been looking at what is the future of our party and where does it exist right now, and they’re being forced to, I think, when you’re looking at 2026 and 2028 and reapportionment after 2030,” Clayton said.
“There’s nowhere else to go but us,” she said. “You’ve got to start now, and we needed to start two years ago.”
It’s certainly on Ken Martin’s mind. The DNC chairman, elected at the beginning of the year, chaired the Minnesota state party — which is projected to lose a seat, just like Wisconsin, Illinois and Pennsylvania.
In a number of DNC remarks and events, Martin has returned to five states where he says Democrats need to make gains: Florida, Georgia, Texas, North Carolina and South Carolina.
“When I say we have to focus on a 10-year strategy, which would reject Southern political disinvestment, it’s not a platitude. It’s mission critical,” Martin said at a candidate forum for southern DNC members while running for chairman.
That rollout is in its early stage. Martin announced in April that the DNC would double its monthly investment in red states, beginning this October and continuing through the end of 2028.
“We can’t be caught flat-footed as a party because we weren’t investing in states that are red now,” Martin said at the time.
His ultimate concern, if Democrats don’t step up to 2030, is a “potential permanent minority in the House.”
For now, the “Southern strategy” for Democrats seems to be centered around high-profile visits to states. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore both visited South Carolina Democratic Party’s annual convention last weekend, naturally sparking 2028 buzz and speaking to the significance of a red state that, at least for now, is slated as the first-in-the-nation primary for Democrats.
Sen. Cory Booker and Gov. Andy Beshear will also speak at Florida’s annual conference at the end of this month. And the North Carolina Democratic Party announced this week that Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker would be the state’s keynote speaker at its annual dinner next month.
“It doesn’t take much; it takes showing up,” Clayton said. “Genuinely, that is the first step every time. And then it also takes investment.”
“People want to wonder why North Carolina is the great white whale,” she said. “Give us early money and you will see us shift ourselves, I promise.”
The two states that have gained more than 1 million residents in the last five years are Texas and Florida, two states where Republicans have dominated up and down the ballot. Democrats in those states have struggled to make inroads, and even lost ground with Hispanic voters. Texas and Florida are also two of the most expensive media markets to run a campaign, meaning Democrats may find it more difficult to break in and persuade voters there.
Adding to their problems, the two states that have lost the most people in that time are New York and California — two Democratic strongholds.
“You don’t have a path to the White House anymore without us, so you better get your shit together and figure it out,” Texas Democratic Party Chair Kendall Scudder told NOTUS.
Scudder is now leading the state party after last year’s disastrous election for Texas Democrats. Republicans gained ground across the state, including the heavily Hispanic South Texas. Trump won in Starr County, a border county that no Republican has won since 1892.
Longtime state party chair Gilberto Hinojosa resigned three days after the election, acknowledging “devastating defeats up and down the ballot.”
Looking back at the results, Hinojosa told NOTUS that Republicans hammered down on “cultural issues like transgender rights” and that the national party didn’t do enough to respond.
“There’s no question that the national Democratic message was not helping us with working class voters in Texas, particularly South Texas,” he said.
Looking at the 2024 election results, and the nature of how expensive it is to run a statewide campaign in Texas, it might not seem like the natural state for Democrats to stake part of their future.
But for Scudder, his state’s growth cannot be ignored. That starts at the grassroots, and that means more year-round investment in off years, the kind of investment that likely won’t yield results in 2026 or 2028.
“In the past, they’ve always thought we could just raise enough money and buy our way into a win, but you can’t put a sack of flour in the oven and expect to make biscuits,” Scudder said.
That means using population growth to his advantage. Suburban and exurban areas outside the state’s major cities have skyrocketed since 2020, with young families and people from out of state seeking affordable housing.
But “younger” and “out of state” does not necessarily equal Democratic. Of the 10 counties that shifted furthest to the right over the last four presidential elections, seven are in Texas.
“Just because there are people moving into counties where Trump has been successful, that does not mean that that is bad news for Democrats, necessarily,” he said.
What it will take: money, and lots of it. But Scudder also said it takes a new message.
“Our party has done its best when we come to the table with big, bold ideas,” he said, citing the creation of Medicare, Social Security and the New Deal.
“We’ve got to get back to that as a party and recenter on who we are and what our purpose is,” he said.
The party is missing that vision, Scudder said, and he’s not counting on it coming soon.
“I don’t operate in a world where I think the cavalry is coming to save us. I think we’re the cavalry,” Scudder said. “If folks want to come in and help, that’s great. If not, we’re going to do it ourselves.”
—
Katherine Swartz is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.