All the political scientists are sort of coming to the same conclusion: this doesnt look happenstance. In . Support our mission and help keep Vox free for all by making a financial contribution to Vox today. 19, 2022, at 3:50 PM What Redistricting Looks Like In Every State An updating tracker of proposed congressional. Democrats are quick to point out that their position isnt as bad as it was after 2010. Countering these actions, however, Democrats made their own gains in court. The replacement map elected seven Republicans and seven Democrats. National Conference of State Legislatures, Digital Boundary Definitions of United States Congressional Districts, 1789-2012. Had Democrats had the power to draw their own maps, or played dirty the way Ohio and Florida did, the House majority would be far more within reach. Date November 3, 2022 New waves of statisticians, including a team at Harvard, have developed tools they think can help police the longstanding problem of gerrymandering of congressional and legislative districts in states by parties seeking to tip the scales for their candidates. (modern), As Biden won the presidency, Republicans cemented their grip on power for the next decade. The most gerrymandered states in the U.S. include: The Most Gerrymandered States Ranked by Efficiency Gap. But the lean-Democratic districts tip the balance when theres a close national contest. Overall, then, the 2022 redistricting wars turned out to come down to a battle of the gerrymanders and Democrats ended up being more impactful. Democrat Akilah Bacy, a lawyer and community activist, was running to flip a House district in the north-west Houston area. Republicans three closest wins were decided by an average margin of less than two points. If the urban sprawl were divided up into separate districts as fair representation laws suggest they should be, Louisianas map would look pretty darn different. In recent years, North Carolinas Republican legislative majority has been on the cutting edge of anti-democratic activity going further than other legislatures and even pioneering new tactics for cementing their hold on power that have been picked up by Republicans elsewhere. But thats not the most important question. This years nearly symmetrical treatment of the two parties is a remarkable accomplishment. With Democrats clinging to a slim margin in the House of Representatives, control of the chamber in 2022 could be decided through congressional redistricting alone: Republican-leaning states. Now it just needs to be enforced. Democrat JD Wooten, who was running to represent a state senate seat in a district west of states famed research triangle, told the Guardian his campaign had plenty of volunteers and funding. Google Pay. The Republican-led legislature still tried to gerrymander maps by packing Democratic voters into a handful of districts. During a visit to HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher,". What puts a state at risk of gerrymandering? The maps produced some bizarre shapes, such as the seventh district. Republicans gerrymandered anyway. Despite a constitutional amendment intended to limit gerrymandering in Ohio, the state Supreme Court has ruled that Ohio is not allowed to replace the offending maps. The Economists G. Elliott Morris argues it can be most predictive to look at the presidential election prior to the most recent one. The answer to all this is not an easy one. But the party thought it would be foolish to take the high ground by forswearing those practices. By Jane . "What that means is, there is a gap between the vote share in statewide elections versus the ratio of seats that they have now." On net, its likely to shift two or three House seats into the GOPs column in 2022 a nice advantage, especially given how closely divided Congress is at present, but not an insurmountable one. This is the case particularly in Illinois, Nevada, and New Mexico. This metric lets us look at the partisan lean for the median House district (the one necessary to give a party a majority), and also measure how many districts lean toward Democrats or Republicans overall. Sure enough, the final results were 20/8 in favor of the Republicans in a state that is only generally slightly red statewide. The 12th district, for example, groups black voters in Greensboro to the north and Charlotte in the south, even though they arent geographically close to each other. There are few places in America where gerrymandering has been more consequential than in Wisconsin. Our policy experts examined the redistricting laws on the books as of 2021, using five key threat criteria: Maryland: Uses broken districts to give an advantage to Democrats. Daily Kos Louisiana Congressional Maps Daily Kos Louisiana Congressional Maps. A federal court blocked the state from using those maps in 2012 because they discriminated against people of color, and the court drew new interim maps to be used that year. Voters in Colorado, Utah, and Virginia have also all passed recent measures to limit partisan influence. A strategy of continuing to cram growing urban populations into existing district boundaries has resulted in much of the lopsided representation. It was devastating to the project of building long-term power, said Amanda Litman, the co-founder and executive director of Run for Something, a group focused on local races. Democrats lost big in state elections which could cost them when new political maps are drawn. Support our mission by making a gift today. North Carolinas strategy has been to cram minority voters into Districts 1 and 12, using a fine scalpel to cut out unfriendly urban areas block by block in Durham and Charlotte. One answer I take a close look at today might make you a bit angry, so take a deep breath as we dive into some ugly history and even uglier realities. There isnt a single explanation for why Democrats performed so poorly in down-ballot races. That was real progress for Democrats on reducing the bias of the House, but it was accompanied by disappointment. In 2019, the US supreme court said that federal courts could not strike down districts on the grounds that they were too partisan, giving lawmakers a green light to virtually guarantee their own re-election. Democrats in fact won all five, in a surprisingly strong showing. Every state in the union now has a new congressional map in place for the 2022 election. An upcoming Wisconsin Supreme Court race in April has the potential to open new paths to change there. Theres a prisoners dilemma aspect to gerrymandering, in which agreeing not to get your hands dirty may well just mean agreeing to lose. Thats a significant break from 2011, when Republicans had complete control over state government. The GOP did indeed try to expand their advantage in key states, but their overall impact was hampered by a few factors. Measured from the standpoint of power, the advantages in each state can cancel one another out. You can also contribute via, How Democrats learned to stop worrying and love the gerrymander. And in districts where politicians perceive that nearly 80% of their constituents favor a certain political party, there is little incentive to compromise, driving an increasingly stagnant and dysfunctional Congress. "The Democrats were able to win the House in 2018 despite the fact that there were some very gerrymandered states," said Jonathan Cervas, a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University . An independent commission will draw districts in Michigan for the first time, thanks to a 2018 referendum grassroots by activists. The original maps did exactly what Republicans wanted: They won just 54% of votes but nearly two-third of the congressional seats. In 2018, Democrats won every statewide race, but Republicans held control of 63 of 99 seats in the state assembly. The term "gerrymandering" was coined after a review of Massachusetts 's redistricting maps of 1812 set . Currently, it looks like there will be close to an equal number of districts leaning left and right of the national average, with a slight edge to Republicans in the median district. In the 2019 case Rucho v. Common Cause, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal judiciary does not have the power to block unfair partisan gerrymanders. Advertisement Why Wisconsin Is the Most Fascinating State in American Politics What happens there in November will offer a preview of the political brawls to come. By submitting your email, you agree to our, North Carolinas extreme new gerrymander, explained, How some people get away with doing nothing at work, The deadly train collision in India, explained, Hollywood is staring down the barrel of a triple strike. One contributor to the Republican majority was the Supreme Court. As state legislatures, judges, and commissions have approved new maps, creating more safe or swing districts in various states, the underlying partisanship of the median House district has been pulled in one direction, and then the other. In Florida, an already outrageously gerrymandered map, drawn up by the GOP-dominated legislature, was not enough for Ron DeSantis. While the world focused on the election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden in November, some of the most consequential contests were in state legislative races between candidates many have never heard of. Third, efforts to pass a nationwide gerrymandering ban through the Democrat-controlled Congress under Biden were stymied by the Senate filibuster. Ten years ago, North Carolinas legislature drew an extremely gerrymandered congressional map. Democrats needed to flip nine seats in the state legislature to take control of the House, a move that seemed well within grasp after the party flipped 12 seats just two years ago. The issue is that, across the country and over the last few years, Republicans have been systematically more willing and able to redraw lines in their favor than Democrats. (Prior to the redistricting, the old map had five competitive House swing districts, and in the new map it only has two.). The GOPs ruthless redistricting is part of an even bigger pattern of state-level sabotage of democracy. The. In June of 2022, a Louisiana federal judge ordered new maps drawn holding that the proposed maps violated the VRA and that the proper remedy is a remedial congressional redistricting plan that adds another majority-Black congressional district., But SCOTUS, in another of its infamous, unsigned shadow docket opinions, let the racially gerrymandered Alabama map stand during this election while the matter is being resolved in the courts. At a national level, the congressional seats to be gained in North Carolina could nearly double the GOP's majority in the US House. Also, despite conventional wisdom to the contrary, the number of competitive congressional districts has increased since 2012. Democrats across the nation have spent years railing against partisan gerrymandering, particularly in Republican states most recently trying to pass federal voting rights . This is not confined to lawsuits. We analyze the news, shed light on injustices, and tell the stories that matter to you. And even if Democrats wanted to totally change that in 2021, they couldnt: The party just doesnt have enough power in enough states. The map remained heavily weighted toward the Republicans, granting Democrats an outside chance to win only five of the states 15 congressional seats. Every 10 years, the census comes out and we go through a painful and time-consuming process called redistrictingmeaning new Congressional and state district maps for each of the 50 states that has more than one House member. Congress enjoys one of the worst approval ratings in America, hovering between 1015% in any given year. The old map would have all but guaranteed that result, every year. In the near term, reformers must continue to target state courts. After that election, the Republicans permanently adopted these maps with only minor changes and argued they should be allowed because the courts themselves had drawn them. That's why we keep our work free. Gerrymandering is one tool the GOP uses, together with voter suppression bills and institutional power grabs, to tilt the electoral playing field toward their side. Legislative bodies used gerrymandering to ensure that the political power of these voters was diminished. Despite huge, sprawling urban areas that are typically Democrat country, the Texas GOP maintains a stranglehold on a majority of the state. California has the countrys strongest animal welfare law. In North Carolina, a partisan gerrymander that would have given Republicans as many as 11 out of 14 seats was overturned. Contrast this with 2012, when only 33 districts met this criterion. Select a map from the dropdown above to view its report card, or select a state to view report cards for maps as they become available. The GOP still had an advantage in the House map, and now it seemed they could entrench and expand it. Last year, a federal court struck down the states congressional map, where Republicans consistently held a 12-4 advantage, saying: This partisan gerrymander was intentional and effective and that no legitimate justification accounts for its extremity. The US supreme court later reversed the ruling, leaving the map in place. Jay Kuo Nov. 14, 2022 Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post via Getty Images They're still counting ballots out in Arizona and California, and the path to 218 seats seems both tantalizingly close and ever-so-far, with two races in Arizona and three in California that we'd need to win looking like they're going rather south on us. Please enter a valid email and try again. Rantt Media is an independently owned news company that launched in October 2016. In response to the 2021 redistricting cycle, the Gerrymandering Project developed this report card as a tool to help the public identify gerrymandered maps. We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and We needed a perfect storm going into 2020 to do what we were hopeful we could do.. State lawmakers have the authority to redraw electoral districts in most US states every 10 years. (The New York Timess Nate Cohn used this metric in his own recent analysis.). (Many legal observers say this was because SCOTUS plans to strike down all of the Voting Rights Act Section 2 protections as unconstitutional.). Using a map drawn in accordance with court rulings against the gerrymandered map used in 2018, Republicans still won eight of 13 House seats despite Democratic candidates receiving slightly more votes overall. Democrats failed to flip any of the legislative chambers they targeted and Republicans came out of election night in nearly the best possible position for drawing districts, according to an analysis by FiveThirtyEight, and will have the opportunity to draw 188 congressional seats, 43% of the House of Representatives. The asymmetry in gerrymandering speaks to a deeper difference between the parties. In 2019, the US Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote, ruled that claims of unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering should be left to the states. They point out that Democrats only began to complain about gerrymandering so loudly once Republicans got the chance to do so much of it in 2010, and that Democratic state parties have often been eager to gerrymander when theyve had the power to do so. 2021 will also be the first time that places with a history of voting discrimination will also be able to draw districts without first submitting them to the justice department for approval because of a 2013 supreme court decision, Shelby County v Holder, that struck down a pre-clearance provision at the heart of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. (Disclosure: The court-appointed redistricting master, Jonathan Cervas, is an affiliate of the Gerrymandering Project at Princeton and my academic collaborator.) In Georgia, Republicans control the governors mansion and both chambers of the legislature, giving them complete control over the drawing of the states 14 congressional districts as well as state house districts. Calculating the 2022 election results, the average district margin so far is a Republican win by 1.7 points. Similarly, Republicans in Congress, in thrall to Trump, have become more willing to engage in anti-democratic practices culminating with the events of January 6. The Princeton Gerrymandering Project, an academic group that grades political maps based on a set of mathematical metrics of fairness, gave the North Carolina map an F for extreme partisan bias marking it as one of the very worst proposals anywhere in the country. Other state court rulings could shift things further, particularly in New York, where Democrats gerrymander is under scrutiny. A Project Redmap target, Scott Walker, a conservative Republican, was elected governor and Republicans took control of the state legislature in 2010. The orange blocks show the frequency of different House outcomes under various hypothetical maps, with the peaks representing the most common vote outcomes. So as 2021 began, Republicans had the power of line-drawing in several swing states, as well as red states where they hadnt yet maxed out their advantage. Whats a gerrymandering map without Texas? He waited a whole 40 days to sign new maps into law, putting the squeeze on voting rights groups by leaving them with little time to sue. Heres what it means for our weather. But in the absence of national reforms banning the practice, refusing to gerrymander would have meant effective unilateral disarmament, ceding the GOP a significant advantage in the battle for control over the House. Still, when were this close, its worth asking why we couldnt quite get to the finish line. In a state split nearly evenly between Republicans and Democrats Trump won it in 2020 with 49.9 percent of the vote the new map of districts for House elections would likely give the GOP at. Thats not perfectly balanced, but its pretty balanced meaning the map itself will likely only swing outcomes in the very closest of elections. A recent decision by a federal court in the case of Whitford vs. Gill, ruled that gerrymandered districts in Wisconsin unfairly suppressed the vote. This is a lot to ask for and strive to achieve. In 2018, the US supreme courts conservative majority ruled that the new districts were not racially discriminatory, except for one state house district in Fort Worth. There were also states in which redistricting was handled by commissions (rather than state legislatures), or where power was divided. Rucho is one in a series of recent Supreme Court cases gutting voting rights protections, which have made it much easier for state legislatures to get away with extreme gerrymanders. What Redistricting Looks Like In Every State | FiveThirtyEight UPDATED Jul. In 2010, Florida voters passed two constitutional amendments to ban racial and partisan gerrymandering. This year, New York actually tried to override that map using its supermajority in the legislature and lock in big partisan gains, but it got shut down by the New York state courts, contributing in part to the delegations poor showing, especially in key House races in the Hudson Valley and Long Island. Sign up for the Democrats will have a chance to draw at most just 73 seats. But Democrats failed to flip either the state senate or the state house of representatives, meaning a Republican-controlled legislature will draw the new districts and keep their majorities in the state legislature. This suggests that the New York replacement map is more competitive, a key measure of fairness. There are varying ways to estimate the underlying partisanship of a district or an overall map, but for now, Ill focus mainly on a simple one: how the district voted in the most recent presidential race, compared to the national popular vote. But an aggressive gerrymander in GOP-controlled Florida could soon shift things right again, if approved. It looks planned, says Adam Podowitz-Thomas, a senior legal strategist on the Princeton team. Democrats, however, believed they could flip control of the state House of Representatives, giving them a seat at the table. This redrawn map, then, brought Republicans a net gain of three seats. In 2018 the state supreme court struck down the congressional map, saying it was so egregiously gerrymandered that it violated the state constitution. Roy Cooper to veto the maps, which means they will be used in 2022 unless courts intervene. You have power grabs, as seen in states like North Carolina in 2016 and Wisconsin in 2018, where Republican legislatures strip newly elected Democratic governors of their authority. Weve listed each state along with an analysis of the districts and reps who may be in danger when battle lines areredrawn. The Associated Press. The new map reflects the twin hallmarks of any gerrymander, called packing and cracking. Gerrymanders work by concentrating a large number of the opposing partys voters in a handful of districts (packing), while spreading out the rest of their supporters across districts where theyre consistently outnumbered (cracking). In a state split nearly evenly between Republicans and Democrats Trump won it in 2020 with 49.9 percent of the vote the new map of districts for House elections would likely give the GOP at least 10 House seats out of 14 (71 percent). They were able to control 60 of the states 99 assembly seats, even while winning around half of the statewide vote. The decisionallowed Texas to get away with serious discrimination without real consequences. And yet a new hope looms on the horizon. A similar dynamic has arisen with other good-government reform issues, like campaign finance. Duke mathematician Jonathan Mattingly ran an analysis of the new maps testing their responsiveness, looking at how many seats each party would get using statewide popular vote totals from previous elections (e.g., the Democrats US Senate win in 2008, the GOPs gubernatorial victory in 2012). Going into the November elections, Republicans controlled both chambers of the state legislature. Democrats dont control either chamber of the Wisconsin legislature, but the states Democratic governor, Tony Evers, can veto any electoral maps. But state court rulings striking down North Carolina and Ohio maps effectively wiped out most of that net gain. Republicans were just as brutal at the congressional level. Meanwhile, courts struck down Republican gerrymanders in states like Florida, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. While some Democratic-controlled legislatures like Illinois are abusing this power, Republicans are both better equipped and have proven more willing to draw undemocratic lines that favor themselves. Recently, Census Director John Thompson, unexpectedly resigned from his post, leaving proponents of fair districting efforts worried about the upcoming 2020 US Census. First, the number of swing seats will continue to decline; the new maps have six fewer highly competitive districts than the old ones. Republicans have also shored up their existing position by converting light-red districts into safer seats in states like Texas. And second, people of color will remain underrepresented in Congress. An earlier version misstated the number of congressional seats in Florida and Texas. But Republicans have two additional advantages this year. The state supreme court eventually struck down the congressional maps for being a partisan gerrymander and drew a new map for use in 2018. Though some states havent finalized their maps yet and these numbers can change, its currently looking like around 218 districts will have voted more for Trump than the national average in 2020, and 217 districts will have voted more for Biden (per the Cook Political Reports numbers). States have the power to make redistricting transparent and fair, but right now 70% of states lack sufficient gerrymandering restrictions. If he won by more than that in a given district, Im calling that a Democratic-leaning district. The question we should be asking is not Did my party lose seats? but Was the redistricting fair?. Although apparently they fail to execute it as well or as often. (Some current totals put the margin higher, but those estimates do not include late-reporting votes.). Right now, Wisconsin is as much of a 50-50 state as there is anywhere in the nation. Republicans control the legislature and governors mansion and have all the power in drawing the new districts. The supreme court eventually ruled that those two districts were a racial gerrymander because it packed black voters into fewer districts to dilute their voting power. As states across the country draw new lines in the wake of the census, governments controlled by a single party have a once-in-a-decade opportunity to give themselves a massive leg up. Ten years ago, Republicans gerrymandered their way to clear majorities. Republicans believe Democrats appeals to ethics were always situational. zipsearch.init({"jobs_per_page":3,"container":"zipsearch_container"}); Kaz Weida is a freelance journalist, editor, and photographer. Did this single action cost Democrats control of the House of Representatives? These maps, though, were still based on the partisan maps and had a lot of the same problems. Support our mission and help keep Vox free for all by making a financial contribution to Vox today. Republicans kept their clear advantage in the redrawn map, producing precisely drawn gerrymandered districts. A new map has already been recommended as a result of the Supreme Courts decision and dramatically adjusts district boundaries. By David Leonhardt. Our algorithm generates around one million potential districting plans for each state, providing us with a baseline of whats possible to draw in a state given its political landscape and redistricting rules. Several of those maps are being challenged in court as illegal gerrymanders, but none seems like a serious possibility to be overturned before the midterms. And just this week, DeSantis appeared to win: The legislature said it would approve whatever maps he wanted. That sizable advantage helped Republicans hold the House in 2012 despite Obamas national win. Better to focus on whether the New York map is fairand, in the larger view, to ask whether maps nationwide yielded a representative result overall. Reader support helps keep our explainers free for all. Rumors indicate funding issues may prevent the department from carrying out the census properly, effecting the legitimacy of the numbers gathered that are then used to draw future districtlines. Alabama is not entitled to keep violating Black Alabamians voting rights just because the courts order came down in the first month of an election year, she wrote. Under the remedial map that was put in place, Republicans won 11 seats, an increase of three seats over their performance in 2020, even after the census count reduced the overall delegation by one seat. Over the last decade, North Carolina Republicans have displayed some of the most brazen attempts at political gerrymandering. The map might still favor Republicans somewhat, but not 13 to five. Meanwhile, Democratic gerrymanders in states like New York and Illinois pulled the median district nearly 3 points leftward, so it was actually close to neutral. He claimed (wrongly, it should be noted, under current law) that the maps unconstitutionally used race to draw district lines. You might be able to quiet the people for a moment, but you cannot silence a state that is growing in the way that Texas is growing.. Republicans have gained control of the House of Representatives, but their majority will be tiny. Although the total number of votes cast for each major party is consistently close in this battleground state, the party that drew the maps won 75% of the seats (12 of 16) even though they only got roughly 5060% of the votes.- Fair Districts Ohio, Ohios Gerrymandering Problem. Given the key role states play in setting the rules for national elections, this represents an existential threat to our political system. In a 2021 working paper, the University of Washingtons Jake Grumbach attempted to quantitatively measure the health of democracy in all 50 states and to figure out what correlated with its declines in certain places. Currently, 8 out of the 10 of the most gerrymandered districts in the United States favor Republicans. Four of our last six presidential elections were decided by less than 1% (the other two being Barack Obama's victories). In the hypothetical maps, Democrats generally do better as they start winning bigger and bigger majorities depicted by the orange peaks shifting to the right. Governor Ron DeSantis' gerrymandered map dismantles the state's largely Black fifth congressional district into four new ones. It worked as designed: A federal judge in Georgia, following SCOTUSs lead, decided not to order a new congressional map for that state three months before primary elections, even though he agreed that the map, like Alabamas, probably violated the Voting Rights Act. Ideas Did Republicans Gerrymander Their Way to Victory? But for the 2022 maps yellow dots, thats not the case: Republicans continue to maintain a 10-4 advantage even when Democrats win solid statewide majorities. And eventually, by 2020, they arguably ended up mastering them more expertly than Republicans. Democrats still control a narrow majority in the North Carolina supreme court, offering state courts as one possible avenue for voting advocates to check Republican gerrymandering in the state. The Supreme Court gutted those protections in the 2013 Shelby County case, which found the system that identified which jurisdictions were covered by pre-clearance to be unconstitutional. Under state law, North Carolinas governor, currently Democrat Roy Cooper, does not have a veto over redistricting maps, so Republicans have complete control of the process. But Democrats control the governors mansion, which will allow the party to have a significant check on any maps that severely benefit the GOP. There is a consensus that Republicans could use the redistricting process to draw maps that will allow them to retake the House of Representatives in 2022. Later, it took the same action with respect to Louisianas maps, hitting pause on drawing up new maps to fix the racially discriminatory ones. If he won by less than that, or lost the district, Im calling it a Republican-leaning district. However, a court-ordered replacement map undid this gerrymander, shifting the outcome in multiple seats. We have also enlisted a collection of 75 advanced mappers with intricate knowledge of specific states and communities to incorporate local geographic expertise in our final grades. This article was amended on 16 December 2020. Scandoval is bad for personal lives, really good for business. The congressional maps packed Democrats more tightly into their districts, but the makeup of the delegation stayed the same over the last 10 years. Under the new Republican-drawn map, Democrats average just four. There are Democrats in the governors mansion in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania who can veto excessively gerrymandered maps. They used that power to draw lines that gave them a big advantage in the House. MADISON, Wis. -- Wisconsin Republicans still reeling from an April election that saw conservatives lose majority control of the state Supreme Court for the first time in 15 . Because Democrats are concentrated in and around cities like Charlotte and Greensboro, while Republicans are more spread out across the state, even more neutral maps can yield some degree of GOP advantage. Something went wrong. Sept. 30, 2022. The Supreme Court has promised to hear the case on appeal, inciting speculation that a slew of gerrymandered districts suffering under one-party rule may see relief in the near future. Read: How redistricting became a technological arms race. Nearly 35% of the vote statewide goes to Democrats, but only five out of six representatives are Republican. House elections in Alaska and Maine, as well as the reelection of Senator Lisa Murkowski, will be settled by an instant-runoff process in which some voters may cross partisan lines to determine the winner. North Carolina Daily Kos, North Carolina District Map" Daily Kos, North Carolina District Map North Carolina's strategy has been to cram minority voters into Districts 1 and 12, using a fine scalpel to cut out unfriendly urban areas block by block in Durham and Charlotte. Redistricting has proceeded like a tug of war. As a comparison, in 2012, Republicans had 241 above-average districts, an advantage of 23 seats. Results suggest a minimal role for all factors except Republican control of state government, which dramatically reduces states democratic performance, he writes. This years redistricting produced a considerably more majoritarian result than that dismal year. Story editing by Sarah Frostenson. Whether we wind up at 221/214 or 223/212, I should first make clear it is already a significant achievement to lose so few seats. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled that their maps were unconstitutional under a new Ohio anti-gerrymandering amendment, but the Commission dragged its feet and risked contempt charges to keep the maps from being used, waiting seven weeks to produce a second map. But in North Carolina, party and race are so closely . The size of this GOP advantage in the new map, the consistency of its wins with different vote totals, and the lines of the districts themselves are all very strong evidence of an extreme partisan gerrymander. Partisanship aside, there are two other important takeaways from the 2021-22 redistricting cycle. In large part, thats what happened in this years redistricting. Historically speaking, in terms of House seats lost in a midterm, its looking like the best performance by a Democratic president since Bill Clintons second term in 1998 and the best by a new Democratic president since John Kennedy in 1962. Every decade, the forces of partisan self-dealing and occasional good government converge in a frenzy of redistricting. This meant Democrats had wide margins in two congressional districts the first and 12th but lost competitive races nearly everywhere else. But at least we know the magnitude and the challenge of the task ahead. But that is not the whole story. Eventually the Florida supreme court approved a new map drawn by voting rights groups. Yet the plain reality is that, if they had decided not to do any of it, Republicans would not only have retained their existing advantage in the House map, they would have expanded it. But, she added that Democrats needed to more carefully calibrate their messaging. Data on the makeup of state legislatures after the 2020 election is from 270toWin. Critics filed a lawsuit saying the maps still discriminated against people of color. Take Action To Protect Voting Rights With The ACLU, Demand Equal COVID-19 Economic Support And Healthcare For African Americans, Support The Switch To 100% Renewable Energy, And yet a new hope looms on the horizon. The power of that trifecta also has to be big enough to threaten to expand or otherwise reform the Supreme Court so that it discontinues its partisan shenanigans. 1 Texas Texas offered Democrats one of their best chances to prevent Republican gerrymandering. These proposals include hiring commissions for redistricting or putting alternative voting systems into place. Think of it as a closely contested game of tug-of-war, in which the outcome depends on every participant. At the end of the day, the old thinking that the more voters, the more likely it is that Democrats will win, that didnt hold, he said. This broad-spectrum Republican turn against democracy does not mean that the American political system is doomed. But using its efficiency gap formula and the 2022 vote totals, Wisconsin Watch estimated that the latest Assembly election results had an efficiency gap of about 16.6% favoring Republicans . Republicans will once again have total control to draw all of Texas 36 congressional districts the state is projected to gain two to three seats in Congress because of population growth as well as nearly 200 districts that make up the state legislature. Despite a ruling in July 2022 from the Ohio Supreme Court striking down the latest map, the state was officially out of time, and the highly skewed map was used in the November general election. Still, all this does get at the difficulty of making reforms stick without a national solution. This is the way that we sustain an informed citizenry. North Carolina law does not allow Democratic Gov. Design and development by Ryan Best and Aaron Bycoffe. That's why we keep our work free. Republicans came away from the 2020 election controlling both chambers of the Pennsylvania legislature, giving them the authority to draw congressional districts. Utahs approach to keeping the state red draws and quarters the heavily progressive, liberal area of Salt Lake City and divides those votes up into surrounding rural districts. At Vox, we believe that everyone deserves access to information that helps them understand and shape the world they live in. Underneath it all is the Republican Partys delegitimization of democratic rule and embrace of Trumps lies about election fraud. Even in moderate places like Ohio, gerrymandering has let unchecked Republicans pass extremist laws that could never make it through Congress. Citizens can also make a difference through ballot initiatives. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court, stuck down three districts in southwestern Texas, citing an unfair impact on minorities. January 10, 2022 at 7:00 a.m. EST. The following districts are the most severely gerrymandered according to compactness score and could become competitive areas for Democrats if districts were drawnfairly. . It was so gerrymandered that they were ordered to redraw it. The 2012 election showed that Republican partisan gerrymandering had worked. (AP/Richard W. Rodriguez) By Louis Jacobson August 16, 2018 Is Texas one of the nation's most gerrymandered states, as Beto O'Rourke said? Most Gerrymandered Districts according to compactness score(2014) Washington Post, Most Gerrymandered Districts according to compactness score(2014). In the 2020 elections, Republicans swept key statehouse races in states where legislatures control redistricting North Carolina, obviously, but also Florida, Texas, and Georgia. You have a number of laws aimed at suppressing turnout in Democratic-leaning communities, ranging from strict voter ID requirements to voter roll purges to restrictions on mail-in ballots. After the 2010 census, Texas had gained about 4 million residents mostly Black and Hispanic people which gave them four more congressional seats. States marked as in litigation face pending lawsuits related to approved maps, as tracked by All About Redistricting. The following reps would be endangered by allowing districts in heavily populated urban areas to be drawn morefairly. Amanda Northrop/Vox This cycle's Republican gerrymanders pulled the median district (which already leaned 2 percentage points to the right) another point further right. Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post via Getty Images. according to an analysis by FiveThirtyEight. You have post-2020 efforts to replace election administration officials who blocked Trumps efforts to steal the election, like Georgias Brad Raffensperger or Michigans Aaron Van Langevelde. Support our mission and help keep Vox free for all by making a financial contribution to Vox today. Theyre also all fairly competitive, which means that there are more Democrats to pack-and-crack into political oblivion than there are in a deep-red state like Alabama. Thats a huge win for Republicans in North Carolina, which is projected to gain an additional congressional seat because of population growth. That power will probably allow Republican lawmakers to draw districts that diminish an electorate in Georgia that is increasingly diverse and Democratic-leaning after Joe Biden was the first Democrat in nearly 30 years to carry the state. Source: Wisconsin State Legislature "Wisconsin is one of the most gerrymandered states in the country," Dolan said. One shape that was allowed to stay was the 35th congressional district, which encompasses parts of San Antonio in the south and Austin in the north a district that packs various clusters of Hispanic voters into the same district. Republicans had above-average performance in 214 districts, a disadvantage of three seats. State Legislatures Are Torching Democracy. Those districts will probably cement Republican control in a state where Democrats have made political gains in recent years. Reader support helps keep our explainers free for all. All rights reserved. The Republican-controlled legislature drew new maps so that three of the four new districts would skew Republican. And thanks to the 2019 Supreme Court ruling that greenlighted partisan gerrymandering, Republicans in states like Texas, Georgia, Florida and Ohio were able to take advantage of that and draw maps . The following congressional reps may have a much tougher time getting reelected as aresult. After accounting for incumbency, however, Republicans are actually the ones who have gained ground from redistricting: The GOP is positioned for a net gain of three to four seats in 2022 just thanks to the new lines alone. Some of the large states Democrats control, like California and Virginia, have delegated redistricting to independent commissions. The gerrymandering clock is ticking. By 2012, when that last redistricting was finished, the median House district leaned nearly 6 percentage points further toward Republicans presidentially than that years national popular vote. They can be addressed by new reforms along multiple paths of attack. Along with grading maps in these categories, the tool takes a holistic look at the partisan and minority composition of proposed districting plans. Republicans have benefited from their own brazen cartography in states like Florida and courts striking down Democratic gerrymanders in Maryland and New York. The statewide senate race, however, showed a partisan split of 53/47, a far cry from the 66/34 House results that were set-up in advance through gerrymandering. The courts also ordered the legislature to redraw the state senate map in 2012 and in 2015. Nor does the concept of interstate partisan cancellation apply in individual legislatures such as those in Ohio and Wisconsin, where Republican legislators are nearly immune to changes in public opinion. Shortly thereafter, Republicans drew maps that made it nearly impossible for them to lose state control of state government. Daily Kos, North Carolina DistrictMap Daily Kos, North Carolina DistrictMap. As an alternative, Cook also uses a metric called the PVI (Partisan Voting Index), which incorporates the past two presidential elections. Every Single US 'National Emergency' Supreme Courts vs. POTUSes The Worst Qualities in Politicians The Most Gerrymandered Districts In America Eric Luis Updated September 17, 2020 52.9K views12 items You've likely heard about gerrymandering in the United States. hile the world focused on the election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden in November, some of the most consequential contests were in state legislative races between candidates many have never heard of. But unlike much of the previous decade, the underlying map may be at least somewhat less biased in Republicans favor. North Carolina A&T University the largest historically black college in America was split into two congressional districts. In this way, the newly level playing field can be a foundation for making maps that are not only fair but more responsive. It ordered Congress to come up with a new system that would pass legal muster. When voters have more choice, candidates must fight for support, sometimes across partisan lines. For this cycle, Ive used the Cook Political Report (an invaluable resource for anyone closely following elections), which calculated the presidential results in each new district. Democrats had a chance to mitigate Republican gerrymandering in North Carolina, which has recently seen some of the most egregious examples of the practice. And unless Congress finds a way to revitalize the Voting Rights Act after court attacks, fair representation for racial minorities and other minority communities is in considerable danger. Youll notice quite a few Southern states on this list, territory that the GOP has been engineering to their advantage for decades. The results were clear: Obama won nationally by about 4 points in 2012, but he lost the median district by about 2 points. They took advantage, packing Democrats into just five of the states 18 congressional districts. The Democratic legislature had drawn a map in early 2022 that was designed to give the dominant party its best possible performance, even in a bad year. They drew districts that gave Republicans a 10-3 advantage in the congressional delegation, packing Democratic voters into only a handful of districts. Copy editing by Santul Nerkar. Every 10 years, U.S. states redraw their congressional and state legislative maps to account for changes in population. Instead of winning eight seats, Republicans win about 10 a degree of advantage that cant only be explained by Democrats clustering in cities. It was the subject of the 2018 case of Gill v. Our 2021-22 redistricting tracker is no longer updating, but please, How the partisan makeup of each state has changed, Which party gained the most ground in each states new map, , along with how red or blue its old and new districts are based on partisan lean, check out our 2022 midterm election forecast, Republicans are actually the ones who have gained ground from redistricting, converting light-red districts into safer seats. Research and additional contributions by Nathaniel Rakich, Galen Druke, Kaleigh Rogers, Alex Samuels, Geoffrey Skelley, Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, Monica Potts, Mackenzie Wilkes, Jean Yi, Sydnie Cobb, Oren Oppenheim and Tina Yin. In some states, this practice is more common than in others. You have election subversion laws, like Georgias SB 202, that give state Republicans the power to seize control of the actual vote-counting procedure in counties. And these guys might be out of ajob. But now take a look at how a similarly close election would play out under the proposed 2022 map, which has one more seat thanks to North Carolinas population growth. in North Carolina just last week, citing that the state unfairly used race as a criteria to draw lines in at least two districts. If we dont have this information, we dont know how well the governments doing or how well society is doing. Dr. Robert M. Groves, former director of the CensusBureau. A lack of compactness is one standard for evaluating fairness since it usually indicates areas where the interests of a particular demographic are diluted by dividing those constituents up, or by condensing them into fewer districts so a party wins less seats overall. Second, the party had hoped the Supreme Court would declare partisan gerrymandering unconstitutional, banning it nationwide, but Trumps appointees moved to the court to the right and the conservative majority ruled otherwise. When Republicans were forced to redraw the congressional map, they made it openly clear they wanted to maximize their partisan advantage. Republicans will probably also be able to draw districts that will make it more difficult for Democrats to hold their majority in the US House in 2022. In 2010, Republicans undertook an unprecedented effort called Project Redmap to win control of state legislatures across the country and drew congressional and state legislative districts that gave them a significant advantage for the next decade. Republicans currently hold 222 of the chamber's 435 votes . Most Gerrymandered Districts according to compactness score(2014), GOP has been engineering to their advantage, Michael Li, Senior Counsel for the Brennan Centers Democracy Program, a third of West Virginias population cast a ballot for a Democrat, suffer unequal representation as a result of gerrymandering, stuck down three districts in southwestern Texas, Fair Districts Ohio, Ohios Gerrymandering Problem, The 2020 Election Wasn't Stolen: All The Key Facts Debunking The Big Lie, Alito Opinion Lays Groundwork To Repeal More Than Just Abortion Rights, Why We Need More Extremism Experts In Courtrooms And Media, Hawley's QAnon Questioning Of KBJ Is Part Of Broader GOP Radicalization, The US Far-Right Is Helping Putin Falsely Justify His War On Ukraine, No Matter What Happens Next In Ukraine, Putin Has Already Lost. Little Rock, home of Bill Clinton, is the seat of Southern democrats, yet the state retains a lockstep Republican majority in Congress. To get there, we need to make some important structural changes to things like the filibuster rule, but we must do so when have control of both chambers of Congress and the White House and enough votes in the Senate to kill or weaken the filibuster. Last year, a state court struck down North Carolinas legislative map, saying it was so egregiously gerrymandered that it violated the state constitution. You'll find her on Twitter @kazweida, getting into "good" trouble. And many won with enormous margins that captured 6070% of the vote in seemingly lopsided campaign races. Several districts would switch hands if the map fairly redistributed areas in a non-partisan way, including the following. In West Virginia, less becomes more as the GOP has whittled down what used to be six different districts into three in the past few decades. Now, its entirely possible, perhaps likely, that Democrats will still lose badly in House elections this fall the party has a small majority, President Biden is unpopular, and the historical pattern is for the incumbents party to struggle in the midterms. New Hampshire was also colored incorrectly in the first map. Data for redistricting laws for each states is from the National Conference of State Legislatures and the Brennan Center for Justice. Florida is projected to gain at least one more congressional seat in addition to the 27 it already has. Contrast this to a scenario where Democrats agreed to unilaterally disarm and do no gerrymandering or where the blue states tied their own hands by adopting serious anti-gerrymandering reforms. Its a modest change with huge consequences. But citizens there have the power to amend the constitution yet againas they do in several dozen other states. Some Democratic state legislatures appear willing to play the same game in 2021. Weve taken a look at the states with the highest rates of gerrymandering, analyzing districts that score above the 80% mark for lack of compactness. But what happened in North Carolina last week should remind us that we are in the midst of a rolling political crisis the authoritarian radicalization of one of our two major parties. He therefore submitted his own maps which gave the GOP an even more lopsided likely result of 20 seats to the Democrats eight. But state court rulings. The maps they came up with that time were struck down in state courts; theres already a case pending about the new maps. Not by the Russians, but by good ole fashioned gerrymandering. Republicans, however, have been blocking those very efforts in the Senate through the filibuster, most recently by preventing a vote on the John Lewis Voting Rights Restoration Act. Two separate analyses, from a Duke University professor and the Campaign Legal Center, also found that the map was unusually tilted in the GOPs direction. Ohio, another Redmap target, has also seen some of the most severe partisan gerrymandering. (John Minchillo/AP) Article . Ultimately, we need some kind of national standardlike what was proposed in the Freedom to Vote Actthat would outlaw partisan gerrymandering even while protecting the representational interests of racial minorities. There are 10 states that are considered the most gerrymandered: North Carolina, Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Utah, Texas, Arkansas and Ohio. Wisconsin is home to some of the most extreme partisan gerrymanders in the United States. In 2020, Biden won the popular vote by a margin of 4.4 percentage points. Last week, while the political world was transfixed on Virginia, something arguably more consequential took place in the state just south of it: North Carolinas Republican-controlled statehouse passed new political maps based on the 2020 census that give the GOP a significant leg up in congressional elections. One caveat is that some analysts think Democrats may have spread themselves a bit too thin in some of these maps by creating several districts that lean Democratic, but not strongly so, such that Republicans could very plausibly win in these areas in a strong GOP year. For instance, the 35th district, specifically noted in the court case, packed both San Antonio and Austin into one area that resembled a long, slithering snake. In 2011, lawmakers drew state legislative maps that allowed them to maintain a supermajority in the state legislature, even though they only won about half of the statewide vote. Furthermore, Bidens margin of victory in the median district would be about 1 percentage point lower than his margin of victory nationally. . But there have been fewer such candidates lately in 2020, only 16 out of 435 House victors won a district where the opposite partys presidential candidate also won. The most powerful pulls came from either state legislatures that gerrymandered, or state courts that struck down certain gerrymandered maps, as this graphic shows: This cycles Republican gerrymanders pulled the median district (which already leaned 2 percentage points to the right) another point further right. And while greater than a third of West Virginias population cast a ballot for a Democrat in the last election, all of the states congressional representation remain Republican. Want us to score a map you don't see here? In 2016, only eight incumbents out of the 435 up for re-election lost their seats. Democrats ensured that veto power will hold by breaking Republicans supermajority in the state legislature in November. Lower courts found that to satisfy federal law, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana each had to draw one more majority-Black district. Democrats still hold a majority on the state supreme court, which could offer another important check on GOP efforts to gerrymander over the next decade. Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. And about 52 percent of districts (228 out of 435) had a Republican lean. The statistical information collected by the Census Bureau is really the cornerstone of the democracy. Districts were drawn to artificially favor or disfavor a party utilizing the tactics of packing and cracking. Just as in the 2022 midterms, reaction to the Supreme Court's Dobbs ruling and concern for the health of democracy drove voters and turnout. Changes in demographic voting patterns made many suburban districts less safe for Republicans. Data sources: U.S. Census Bureau, state legistlatures, OpenPrecincts, MGGG, VEST,Princeton MapCorps, and All About Redistricting. The Ohio legislatures maps were drawn up by its Redistricting Commission, which was dominated by Republicans. However, one other state may soon give them a big assist: Florida Gov. Democrats spent a decade condemning conservative big money and dark money, and trying without success to rein in their influence. Looking first at New York: The map drawn by the Democratic legislature was found to be a partisan gerrymander. newsletter. GOP Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia understood the assignment. Oops. For example, Milwaukee and a few blue-collar suburbs were packed tightly into the fourth district, allowing Republicans to hold on to three seats in the areas. But challenges to the map may face an uphill climb: a 2019 Supreme Court ruling defanged federal anti-gerrymandering protections, making it easier for North Carolina Republicans to get away with twisting the maps. [How redistricting is shaping the 2022 U.S . Despite Democrats winning only 65 percent of the congressional vote statewide, Maryland's convoluted . But in the end, Republicans were able to just turn out more voters. Without a national solution, is it worth it to try to keep reforming gerrymandering in blue-leaning states? She lost her race by just under 2,100 votes. This is due to aggressive map-drawing by Democrats in states such as Illinois as well as court decisions overturning Republican gerrymanders in states like North Carolina. The New York legislature might now regret that it did not offer a Maryland-style compromise. (Some Democrats are rueing the lost opportunities to gerrymander Colorado and Virginia, states where they had full control in 2021, because redistricting authority had been given to commissions there.).
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