Surprisingly, there has been a redistricting turnaround

Surprisingly, there has been a redistricting turnaround

Disability advocates Ellen Pinnes and Jim Jackson look at proposed redistricting maps posted on a wall inside the state Capitol in Santa Fe, N.M. (Cedar Attanasio/AP)

By Paul Waldman

Columnist

Today at 4:33 p.m. EST

In the 2020 elections, Democrats failed to win control of any new state legislatures and saw their margin in the House of Representatives shrink by more than a dozen seats, an outcome that portended bad things for the party. It seemed to mean that Republicans’ grip on the redistricting process — and their ruthlessness in drawing district lines — would enable them to easily gerrymander their way to a House majority.

As one analyst after another noted, Republicans control more state legislatures and more redistricting processes, while in many states controlled by Democrats, redistricting is done by independent commissions. As a result, Republicans might be able to win the House through redistricting alone, even without increasing their vote share in the 2022 midterm elections.

At least that’s what everyone thought. Until now.

Just in the past few days, the conventional wisdom on redistricting has undergone a dramatic shift. The most informed redistricting experts now say it appears that this process will look more like a wash, or even that Democrats might gain a few seats.

How did this happen? Here are the key factors:

Republicans had already gerrymandered so aggressively in the post-2010 redistricting that they had limited room to add to their advantage.

In the relatively small number of states where they had the opportunity, Democrats are gerrymandering with equal vigor.

In some places, Republicans opted to consolidate their current position rather than take a riskier path that might expand their seats.

Independent redistricting commissions wound up not hurting Democrats in the way some feared they would.

Look at the two largest states. If all you knew was that the GOP legislature controls redistricting in red Texas while in blue California the process is run by an independent commission, you might expect a huge net gain for Republicans. But that’s not how it worked out.

In Texas, Republicans chose to lock in their current advantage rather than expand it, a decision driven by the way the state is trending in a more Democratic direction. Currently there are 23 Republicans and 13 Democrats in Texas’s U.S. House delegation. Above all, the legislature made sure there would be almost no competitive districts in the future. So the new map will have 24 safe Republican seats, 13 safe Democratic ones and one competitive district (which Republicans might win).

Which means Republicans will gain only one or two seats in Texas — the smart move in the long run but not something that ensures victory in 2022 or 2024.

In California, on the other hand, a bipartisan commission draws the lines. Under existing maps, there are 42 Democrats and 11 Republicans. The new map could produce almost the same result, but it also leaves a few Republicans with more closely contested districts.

So in the two most important states, we essentially see a maintenance of the status quo. Similar outcomes occurred elsewhere; in New Jersey, where Democrats currently have an eight-seat advantage (10 Democrats, two Republicans), the bipartisan commission approved a map likely to produce a 9-to-3 Democratic advantage — but there too, potentially vulnerable Democrats saw their districts made safer.

On the other hand, Democrats took advantage of some of their opportunities, adding up to three seats in Illinois (where they could wind up with 14 of 17 seats). More could come when New York completes its process.

There are also court challenges pending in Ohio and North Carolina, where Democrats allege that Republican gerrymanders are so extreme that they violate state law. If either or both challenges are successful, Democrats could claw back a few seats.

It’s still too early to say how all this will turn out, and the 2022 elections are also an uncertainty. But the big picture, as Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report says, is that “redistricting is shaping up to be close to a wash.”

And as Joel Wertheimer predicted at Data for Progress, “when redistricting is finished, more districts in 2022 will be to the left of Joe Biden’s 4.5-point national margin against Trump than in 2020.” This is about as good an outcome as Democrats could have hoped for.

But there’s still a way that this round of redistricting should be considered a serious problem, no matter which party you belong to: The number of competitive seats has been drastically reduced, from 34 down to 19 among states that have completed their processes, per Wasserman’s calculations.

Which means that chances are your representative has been chosen for you before Election Day comes. You might be fine with that — perhaps you’re happy to live in a place dominated by your party and are comfortable choosing only which member of that party should win the primary.

But for millions, it means their neighborhood will be shoehorned into a district the other party controls, and they’ll feel as though they have no real representation and no chance to ever win it. If you care about democracy, that’s not a good place to be.