Democrats: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid (of Redistricting)

For the second time this century, the Republican party will have significant control over drawing congressional and legislative districts for a large portion of America. According to analysis from Daily Kos Elections, the GOP will have unilateral control of redistricting in 17 of the 43 states that will draw new congressional seats next year which accounts for 38% of the total districts in the House of Representatives. Depending on negotiations and/or court rulings in other states, that number could rise to 23 states accounting for 51% of the districts in Congress. Democrats, on the other hand will have unilateral control of redistricting in only 5 states that account for only 10% of the total House districts. Depending on certain court rulings and legislative negotiations, Democrats could raise that number to only 7 states, or 14% of U.S. House seats. In sum, Republicans are in a much better position for this coming cycle of redistricting than Democrats are.

With a slim Democratic majority in the U.S. House for the upcoming 117th Congress, it is likely that the GOP could win back the majority simply from gerrymandering. Buoyed by last year’s Rucho v. Common Cause Supreme Court decision—which essentially ruled that partisan gerrymandering was not something federal courts could rule on—Republicans will be able to draw out several safe Democratic seats in exchange for solid GOP seats.

In Kentucky, where the current congressional delegation is 5-1 in favor of the GOP, the lone Democrat being Congressman John Yarmuth represents a solidly blue seat based in Louisville. However, it will be easy for the GOP to draw a map that splits Louisville in half, merging the city with surrounding rural counties that vote heavily Republican, creating two solidly red districts. In Missouri, where Democrats currently hold two of the state’s eight congressional seats—one safe blue seat in St. Louis and one safe blue seat in Kansas City—Republicans will easily be able to crack Democratic voters in Kansas City into two or three safe Republican districts, where Republican voters in rural counties will overwhelm the Democratic votes from K.C. The GOP will also likely move to create a safer district for Congresswoman Ann Wagner of Missouri’s 2nd district, who survived tough re-election battles in 2018 and 2020, by adding rural Franklin County or moving her district further south into Jefferson County, which has been rapidly moving to the right in recent elections. In Ohio, which currently has a congressional split of twelve Republicans to four Democrats, the GOP will likely be able to draw out Democratic Congressman Tim Ryan in his Youngstown-based 13th district. The working class district has been moving rightward in recent years and the GOP can easily overwhelm Democratic votes in Youngstown with solidly Republican rural counties to the south. If the Ohio GOP wants to get greedy, they could also likely draw out Democratic Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, whose district currently stretches across the shores of Lake Erie from Toledo to Cleveland. Many of the Democratic parts of her district west of Cleveland can be combined with overwhelmingly Republican counties to their south, Toledo can be split in half so its Democratic voters are fractured into irrelevance, and Democrats in Cleveland can be packed into Democratic Rep. Marcia Fudge’s district that goes from Cleveland to Akron. Ohio is likely to lose a seat because of slow population growth, but this map could lead to a congressional split of 13-2 in favor of the GOP. In Georgia, Republicans can likely gain a seat by combining the Democratic areas of Rep. Lucy McBath’s (D) sixth district and newly-elected Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux’s (D) seventh district, creating one safe Democratic seat and one safe Republican seat in suburban Atlanta, instead of the two narrowly-Democratic seats that the 117th Congress will have. In Tennessee, the GOP supermajority in the state legislature and Republican governor Bill Lee will be able to crack Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper’s Nashville-based seat in three, switching Tennessee’s congressional delegation from 7-2 GOP to 8-1 GOP.

From these states alone, the GOP will likely have enough seats to win a majority in the U.S. House, and this does not yet include states like Kansas, New Hampshire, Florida, or Texas. In Kansas, the GOP state legislature will be able to use their supermajority to override Democratic Governor Laura Kelly and draw a map that will split up Democratic voters in Congresswoman Sharice Davids’ (D) Kansas City-based seat. In New Hampshire, the GOP state legislature and governor can draw one safe red and one safe blue seat—a shift from the one safe blue and one lean blue seat that the Granite State currently has. In Florida, the GOP trifecta will work to sure up their two newly-elected Republican representatives in Miami-Dade County, while combining the now-blue 13th and 14th districts in Tampa-St. Pete into one even-bluer district (allowing for a new, Republican seat in suburban Pinellas and Hillsborough County), and packing Democratic voters in the Orlando area into one or two seats, instead of the three that Democrats currently have in Orlando.

In Texas, Republicans can really go all out. Texas will likely gain two or three seats in redistricting. It will not be hard for Texas Republicans to make those extra districts solidly red. Moreover, the Texas GOP can probably cut out some Democratic districts. Republican gains in South Texas in the 2020 election will make it so the GOP can merge the three Democratic districts in that region into two. In the Dallas area, the GOP can take Democratic Rep. Colin Allred’s suburban district and have it stretch into more Republican sections of Collin County. In blue Travis County (home to Austin, TX), the GOP can likely draw one large Democratic vote sink for Congressman Lloyd Doggett (D) and create safer seats for two of the Republican congressmen whose seats currently take up parts of Austin—Rep. Chip Roy and Rep. Michael McCaul. However, Texas Republicans will have to be careful to not be overly ambitious in their efforts. If they spread their voters too thin, then they could end up with a dummymander eight or ten years down the road if Democrats continue to make gains in Texas’ major metropolitan areas and suburbs. In particular, if the GOP relies too much on rural counties to overwhelm voters in blue cities (as Rep. Roy’s current district does with voters in Austin), then population growth in these blue cities could end up leading to the new map backfiring on the GOP down the line.

Despite these numerous GOP opportunities to gain House seats through gerrymandering, there are a few states in which Democrats could draw new seats for themselves. In Oregon, Democrats will have full control over the new maps. In a state that will be gaining a 6th congressional district, Democrats could extract enough votes from the Portland area to draw a 5-1 Democratic map. In New Mexico, Democrats could draw a map that forces newly-elected GOP Rep. Yvette Herrell to run in a significantly more Democratic district (by adding parts of Albuquerque to her southern New Mexico district). In Maryland, Democrats could easily draw an 8-0 map that eliminates the Old Line State’s only GOP congressman Andy Harris by connecting his Eastern Shore district to Annapolis and parts of Howard County and Prince George County. If Democrats win enough of the still-to-be-called State Senate elections in New York State, they would have a supermajority in both chambers of the Senate and would be able to draw a Democratic gerrymander. However, this would at best net only one seat for Democrats, since New York will likely lose two congressional districts, at least one of which will come from solidly blue New York City.

In Illinois, Democrats have full control over redistricting and Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan could draw a map that maximizes the Democratic vote in Cook County and other blue Chicago suburbs while creating a Democratic district downstate. Some have dubbed the coming Illinois map a “Madiganmander,” which could take the Illinois congressional delegation from its current 13-5 Democratic split to 14-3 (Illinois will likely lose one seat this decade) or even 15-2, depending how greedy Madigan gets. However, there are a few complications in Illinois’ map drawing. The first is that current estimates show that Mike Madigan faces enough opposition from members of the Democratic caucus in the Illinois House that he might not have enough votes to become Speaker again. This could lead to a Democratic Illinois House Speaker who is less willing to outright gerrymander the map for Democrats. The second is that Illinois has a strange law that does not require districts to be contiguous. If Madigan and other Democrats were willing to test this rule in a new congressional map, it would not be difficult for them to draw a 17-0 Democratic map. A congressional district could easily take in rural parts of southern Illinois, only to be overwhelmed by some of the most Democratic parts of Chicago. If Illinois Democrats go this route—which is unlikely—then there will almost certainly be a court challenge to the map, which, if it got to the U.S. Supreme Court, would likely be struck down, since the Supreme Court has set a clear standard ever since Reynolds v. Sims in 1964 that congressional and legislative districts must be contiguous.

That said, even if Democrats were to maximize their gerrymanders in all of the above states, it would pale in comparison to the gains the GOP will likely make. This trend is exacerbated by the fact that the GOP could make even more gains than the ones already listed (which are in states Republicans definitely have control over the new maps). In New Jersey, redistricting is done by a bipartisan commission with six Democrats, six Republicans, and one independent tiebreaker. While the idea of a bipartisan commission sounds nice, it almost always leads to a partisan map, as the tiebreaker chooses one of the maps the two parties propose. If the tiebreaker selects the GOP map, it could create a safe Republican district in northwest NJ, drawing Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski out and moving NJ’s congressional delegation from 10-2 Democratic to 9-3. In Michigan an independent commission will determine the new district lines, but the GOP stands to gain from a new congressional map. Michigan is likely to lose a congressional seat this cycle and it is probable that the lost seat will come from the Democratic-heavy city of Detroit. Currently, Detroit is split between two solid Democratic districts—Rashida Tlaib’s 13th district and Brenda Lawrence’s 14th district. Steady population decline in Detroit will make it hard to maintain two seats in Detroit and either Tlaib or Lawrence will likely see much of their district be drawn into the neighboring 11th or 12th districts. If that does happen, Michigan’s congressional split will go from 7-7 to 7-6 in favor of the GOP.

Things look bleak for Democrats on the redistricting front—and this is just the outlook for the U.S. House. Further down the ballot in state legislatures, Republicans will be able to gerrymander Democrats into irrelevance in some states—even if Democrats are getting more overall combined votes in state legislative elections. Barring federal legislation on partisan gerrymandering, the GOP looks set to make further gains on the gerrymandering project they started in 2010.

Illustration by Slate