Some good news (to a degree) about how redistricting of Congressional House seats is unfolding: While the results of the 2020 elections portended a redistricting bonanza for Republicans, with the GOP succeeding in reducing Democrats’ margins in the House of Representatives and Democrats failing to secure control of any more state legislatures, as the process has actually played out the net numbers don’t appear to be favoring Republicans. Rather, most observers are calling it a “wash” or actually forecasting a net gain in Democratic-controlled House seats.
As Paul Waldman, writing for the Washington Post, explains:
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.
This trend has only become apparent in the last few weeks. Waldman distills the reason into four key points: First, the GOP had already gerrymandered the map after 2010 so completely that there was little room left to maneuver for them; second, Democrats have taken advantage of the “relatively few states” in which they have an opportunity to redistrict in their favor; third, in some states (such as Texas) the GOP has chosen to consolidate its existing districts rather than seek additional seats; and finally, independent commissions that have produced new maps ins states such as California have not hurt the Democrats to the extent they might have expected.
Waldman quotes well-respected elections expert Dave Wasserman, editor of the Cook Political Report, who this week Tweeted the following:
Data For Progress’ Joel Wertheimer, also cited by Waldman, is also (cautiously) sanguine about Democrats’ prospects:
Conventional wisdom suggests that, because Republicans control more of the redistricting process than Democrats, they will inexorably benefit from this redistricting cycle. But an analysis of each of the fifty states’ specific or expected outcomes leads to the opposite conclusion: 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, and there is an outside chance that the median seat will be to the left of the nation as a whole.
Wertheimer also acknowledges that Democrats’ embrace of non-partisan commissions to recommend redistricting maps has likely hurt Democrats’ chances in the face of GOP’s hyper-partisan and aggressive approach.
Democrats' use of non-political commissions as a reform probably has hurt them in the redistricting fight. California could easily be made a 50-2 state with partisan redistricting and Colorado could have been made 6-2. And Democrats have likely made themselves more vulnerable to losing a substantial number of seats in even a mild red wave: those three Nevada seats discussed above could all be lost. In New Mexico, Democrats could lose a seat that is currently safe. These maps have also made a blue wave less likely to turn into large majorities, with Republicans building their walls higher in states like Texas, locking in a number of seats with harsh conditions.
But Democrats have rightly made the calculation that the goal is to get to 218 seats and to control a majority. Their redistricting decisions make that goal more plausible in a 50-50 election year. Perhaps they lose the House in 2022 as in-power parties typically do in midterms. In 2024, however, Democrats may be able to avoid the fate that Democrats faced in 2012, when they won a majority of the national popular vote but still lost the House.
2022 considerations aside, much will obviously depend on who is on the presidential ballot for Republicans in 2024. And while Democrats thus far can’t seem to get their head around the futility of bringing a knife to a gunfight, as recent history shows, many unexpected and unforeseen changes can still occur over the next three years.
And yes, for the record, Waldman acknowledges that the redistricting process is an anti-democratic travesty, cementing Republican control in states where they do not enjoy anything close to a proportional majority of voters, and stripping representation away from millions of Americans in the process. That’s in large part a consequence of having an ideologically corrupt Supreme Court which has blithely washed its hands of the issue, knowing full well the outcome in most states would favor conservatives.
As Waldman states:
[F]or 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.
But we knew that already.