Republicans look to gain edge in newly drawn districts
WASHINGTON» With the election over and Democrats in control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, officials in both parties are bracing for a bruising new battle with a different balance of power: the redrawing of congressional maps, where Republicans hold the advantage in many state legislatures across the country, including in key battleground states.
Republicans hold total control of redistricting in 18 states — including Florida, North Carolina and Texas — which are growing in population and expected to gain seats after the 2020 census is
tabulated. Some election experts believe the GOP could retake the House in 2022 based solely on gains from newly drawn districts.
Already, Republicans are discussing redrawing two suburban Atlanta districts held by Democrats to make one of them more Republican; slicing Democratic sections out of a Houston district that Republicans lost in 2018; and carving up a northeastern Ohio district held by Democrats since 1985.
“I would say that the national vote could be the same as this year two years from now, and redistricting by itself would easily be enough to alter who controls the chamber,” said Samuel S. Wang, the director of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. He estimated that reapportionment alone could net the Republicans three seats, and gerrymandering in North Carolina, Georgia and Florida another five seats.
With Democrats holding a 222211 edge, Republicans would probably need to flip just six seats to win back the majority. But Wang and other good-government experts cautioned that other factors could determine the majority.
Democrats will try to redraw districts in their favor in states such as New York, Illinois and Maryland, they said. Some battleground states have adopted nonpartisan independent redistricting commissions. Also, President Joe Biden did not create a wave of downballot victories for Democrats in the November elections, so there are fewer surprise winners who could easily lose their seats in 2022.
While partisan warfare on Capitol Hill draws most of the national attention, the battles over redistricting are among the fiercest and most consequential in U.S. government. Reapportionment and redistricting occurs every 10 years after the census, with states with the fastest-growing populations gaining seats in Congress at the expense of those with slowergrowing or shrinking populations. The balance of power established by gerrymandering can give either party an edge that lasts through several election cycles; court challenges — even if successful — can take years to unwind those advantages.
This year, Texas (with potentially three new seats) and Florida (two) are expected to be the biggest winners, while Illinois, New York and, for the first time, California will each lose seats once the Census Bureau makes the reapportionment figures official. That could give Republicans an inherent advantage in the midterm elections in November 2022 — regardless of Biden’s popularity then.
The bureau is not expected to deliver its data until late July, several months behind schedule, giving state lawmakers and redistricting commissions far less time than usual to draw the maps and deal with inevitable court challenges before the 2022 primaries begin.
Democrats have been fighting on slanted terrain with redistricting ever since Republicans ran the table during the 2010 midterm elections and drew themselves favorable gerrymandered maps in 2011 and 2012. Although courts invalidated them in states such as Pennsylvania and North Carolina, many still remain.
Even though Democrats won control of the House in 2018, “the lingering effects of partisan gerrymandering, disproportionately by Republican controlled legislatures, make it harder for the Democrats to hold onto control or win control,” said Bernard Grofman, a professor of politics at the University of California-Irvine, “because they have to win probably closer to 52% of the national vote, or definitely more than 51%.”
A host of states have adopted independent commissions to draw maps, arguing that people without a vested interest would be more likely to draw fairer maps. Some good-government groups and political scientists have lobbied for more changes, such as the use of algorithms to determine district boundaries, although there is broad debate about what would be effective in erasing the partisan tilt of the process.
As they look to reframe the electoral maps, Republicans are debating how aggressive they should be. They can push the boundaries and try to win the most seats possible in 2022, which puts them at risk of losing more seats in future years in the growing suburbs that are attracting waves of Democrats. Or they can aim for a smaller number of Republican districts that can create a more durable majority, with the potential to last the decade.
The central redistricting battlegrounds will be in Texas and Florida. Though both states are controlled by Republicans, the population growth has come largely from people of color and suburbanites — demographics that have trended toward Democrats during the Trump era.