Daily Kos Elections is taking a state-by-state look at the impact of Republican gerrymanders on the 2016 congressional elections. Read why in our introductory post, and click here for entries covering other states.
Georgia supported Donald Trump just 50-45 in 2016 and Mitt Romney 53-45 four years earlier, but following the 2010 census, Republicans efficiently gerrymandered the Peach State to consistently deliver a 10-to-4 GOP majority in the state’s congressional delegation. And even though the Atlanta metro area has seen explosive population growth among African-Americans, Latinos, and Asian-Americans, Republicans also failed to create a new, majority nonwhite district after the 2010 census.
Put another way, Republicans hold 71 percent of the state’s House seats while winning just half the vote at the top of the ticket. And all 10 of those Republican districts are very secure. As the hotly contested special election in the 6th District earlier this week showed, even under the most favorable of circumstances for Democrats, the GOP’s lines all but put victory out of reach.
It doesn’t have to be this way. At the top right, you’ll see a hypothetical map drafted with strictly nonpartisan aims in mind, which you can read more about here. These lines would instead likely lead to a nine-to-five or eight-to-six delegation in favor of the GOP—considerably closer to Georgia’s statewide political makeup. And it’s important to note that this map was not designed to increase Democratic performance—it’s simply a natural outgrowth of what happens when you ignore the purely partisan concerns that motivated GOP mapmakers to draw the lines that they did.
Our proposal (see here for a larger version) would create a geographically cohesive 7th District in Atlanta’s northeastern suburbs that would have voted 60-36 for Hillary Clinton and 53-46 Barack Obama. This very diverse seat would be 25 percent black, 20 percent Hispanic, and 11 percent Asian-American, meaning a person of color would be highly likely to win the Democratic nomination and thus the general election.
Of course, making the 7th bluer means another district has to become redder. Consequently, these lines shift the current 6th District, which is just north of Atlanta, from just a 48-47 Trump win to a 53-42 Trump victory, so under this map, the recent special election likely would never have become competitive. For Democrats, though, that would be a small price to pay in exchange for a solidly blue 7th.
In the more rural Black Belt region to the south, the Augusta-based 12th District would shift northwest, increasing its black population from 32 percent to 37 percent, making it more Democratic. The redrawn seat still would have favored Trump 53-45, but it would have given Romney only a 51-48 win. That, however, is substantially bluer than the existing gerrymandered version, which backed Trump 57-41 and Romney 55-44.
Indeed, Republicans specifically targeted former Rep. John Barrow, a Blue Dog Democrat, when they redrew these lines after 2010 (something they’d in fact already tried once before with a mid-decade gerrymander ahead of the 2006 elections). Though Barrow survived against an unexpectedly weak opponent in 2012, he was ultimately beaten by 10 points in 2014. Under this proposed map, though, it’s plausible that Barrow could have survived that year’s GOP wave and gone on to win again in 2016.
So in addition to the one to two additional seats Democrats would have won without Republican gerrymanders, nonwhite representation would have increased from four to five out of the total 14 members in the delegation. That’s a more equitable result, but it’s still a considerably smaller proportion than the nonwhite population statewide, which has now reached 47 percent. (At the time of the 2010 census, it was 44 percent.)
And because there are, of course, a variety of possible ways you can draw nonpartisan maps, alternatives could increase African-American representation even further. The proposal shown below would draw two additional cohesive districts, each with a substantial black population.
Click to enlarge
This second map turns the 7th into a safely blue seat where 42 percent of the population is black, all but guaranteeing that it would elect a black Democratic representative. The 12th District, meanwhile, would gain the city of Macon to become just a 49-46 plurality white. That would make it substantially bluer (Clinton would have won it 55-43), and would also make it very likely to elect a black Democrat. Meanwhile, the 2nd District in Columbus and Valdosta would remain plurality black and would still have favored Clinton 53-46, which would be enough to ensure the continued re-election of moderate black Democratic Rep. Sanford Bishop.
Although current judicial interpretations of the Voting Rights Act and Fourteenth Amendment might not require lines such as these, Democrats should change existing laws to promote the creation of such districts to correct the structural over-representation of whites in Congress nationally. But even in the absence of new laws, nonpartisan maps like the pair shown in the post highlight just how aggressively Republicans have gerrymandered Georgia, and why the need for reform is so great.
