INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- As Indiana Republicans weigh whether to call a special session to redraw the state’s congressional map, a new Unite America poll shows that voters overwhelmingly oppose the idea — including a majority of GOP primary voters.
The survey, conducted October 7–9 by 3D Strategic Research, found that 44% of Hoosiers oppose mid-decade redistricting while only 31% support it. After hearing balanced arguments from both sides, opposition jumped to 69%, with just 21% still in favor.
The results were released days after Vice President JD Vance visited Indiana to rally support for the redistricting push, a sign of how deeply the Trump administration has inserted itself into state-level redistricting battles.
“Voters across Indiana — including a majority of Republicans — are sick of partisan games that put party over country,” said Nick Troiano, executive director of Unite America.
A Mid-Decade Gerrymander: Few Support, Even Among GOP Voters
Only 10% of Indiana voters say the governor and legislature should call a special session for redistricting. Even among Republican primary voters — the base legislators are targeting — enthusiasm is low:
- 28% said they would be less likely to support a candidate backing mid-decade redistricting.
- Just 17% said they’d be more likely to do so.
When presented with 14 public-policy priorities, “redrawing congressional maps” ranked dead last among GOP primary voters – behind concerns like cost of living, jobs, and public safety.
The results echo concerns voiced by some Republican lawmakers that reopening the maps could backfire politically and further erode public trust.
Unite America has found in yearly research that 90% of U.S. elections are safe for the party in power, whether it is a GOP-controlled district or a Democratic district. This creates an electoral environment where the most consequential votes are made in primary elections.
General elections are all but inconsequential. Thus, the incentive for lawmakers is to cater only to a small, partisan minority that votes in the primaries. This is why polling these voters is so important.
If lawmakers make them happy, they are guaranteed re-election. If they don’t, a primary challenger could take their seat.
Voters Also Reject Closing Primaries to Party Members
The Unite America poll also found that Indiana voters are strongly opposed to closing state primaries to registered party members -- another idea under consideration by GOP lawmakers.
Initially, 52% opposed the move. After hearing arguments from both sides, opposition soared to 77% -- including 66% of Republican primary voters.
Such a change would lock out roughly 2 million independent voters from the elections that matter most in a state where all 9 congressional seats are effectively decided in the primary.
“Every voter should have the freedom to cast a ballot in every taxpayer-funded election,” Troiano said. “I’m not surprised Indiana voters don’t want to give up that right.”
A Message to Lawmakers: Focus on Real Issues
The poll’s findings underscore a consistent message: Indiana voters, across party lines, want lawmakers to focus on cost of living, safety, and the economy – not partisan power plays.
As the Republican caucus meets this week to consider a special session, the data suggest that moving forward with redistricting could deepen voter frustration at a time when trust in government is already at historic lows.
Poll details: Conducted Oct. 7–9, 2025 by 3D Strategic Research among 500 registered voters and 450 Republican primary voters in Indiana. Full results available via Unite America.
New Poll Shows Indiana Republicans Could Lose at the Ballot over Redistricting Plan was first published on IVN and republished with permission.
Shawn Griffiths Is An Election Reform Expert And National Editor Of IVN.us.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.