Democratic wave faces GOP gerrymandering in House races

As a freshman congressman, Republican Ted Budd seems to have several strikes against him as he faces his first reelection in his North Carolina district.

He belongs to the same party as the president, a historical negative in midterm elections. President Donald Trump’s national disapproval ratings have risen since taking office. And Budd faces a female challenger in a year when women’s political involvement has been intensifying.

Yet Budd has at least one builtin advantage: He’s running in a district intentionally drawn to favor Republicans.

Unless the U.S. Supreme Court says otherwise, “it is constitutional to politically gerrymander,” Budd said while defending a practice that also has benefited Democrats in the past.

Across the nation, numerous congressional Republicans are hoping to survive forecasts of a Democratic wave due partly to a political seawall erected by Republicans who controlled the redistricting process in more states than Democrats after the 2010 census. The big question is whether enough of that seawall will hold to thwart Democrats’ attempt to retake the U.S. House.

Democrats need to gain 23 seats in the Nov. 6 elections to wrest the House away from Republicans for the first time in a decade.

Targets include about two dozen Republican seats in districts that Republicans won with less than 58 percent of the vote in the last election.

Election forecasters have rated more than 40 Republicanheld seats as tossups or leaning toward Democrats, with only several Democraticheld districts in a similar position to flip.

Yet nationally, a blue wave of strong Democratic turnout still could “crash against a wall of gerrymandered maps,” the Brennan Center for Justice said in a report earlier this year.

This election is “a true test case of voter behavior and the insurance policy that Republicans hoped to have with these districts,” said Michael Bitzer, a political scientist at Catawba College in North Carolina.

Republicans had the upper hand during the 2011 redistricting because they flipped numerous state legislative chambers and governor’s offices during the 2010 elections.