Partisan Gerrymandering Is Carving Up US Democracy

One of the most consequen­tial outcomes of this redis­trict­ing cycle has been the continu­ing decrease in the number of compet­it­ive congres­sional districts. Under new maps, there are just 30 districts that Joe Biden won by less than eight percent­age points in 2020 and, like­wise, just 30 districts that Donald Trump won by less than eight points.

All told, there are now fewer compet­it­ive districts than at any point in the last 52 years. If the good news is that both parties emerged with reas­on­able oppor­tun­it­ies in coming years to win control of a closely divided House, the bad news is that they will fight that battle on the narrow­est of terrains under maps arti­fi­cially engin­eered to reduce compet­i­tion.

This redis­trict­ing cycle, we saw the percent­age of compet­it­ive congres­sional districts fall even further to just 14 percent.

Though the number of compet­it­ive congres­sional districts in the current House was already small, this redis­trict­ing cycle, we saw the percent­age of compet­it­ive congres­sional districts fall even further to just 14 percent. This is signi­fic­ant because as a district leans further toward one party or the other, the general elec­tion becomes increas­ingly insig­ni­fic­ant while the favored party's primary becomes the real contest. As a result, primary voters can effect­ively decide which candid­ate will repres­ent the district in Congress, even though they make up a small frac­tion of the elect­or­ate and are often far more partisan than the aver­age general elec­tion voters. Candid­ates elec­ted in these districts then have little incent­ive to woo moder­ate voters in campaign­ing or legis­lat­ing, further increas­ing the House's partisan polar­iz­a­tion.

Unsur­pris­ingly, partisan map draw­ers drove the decrease in compet­it­ive districts. In Repub­lican single-party controlled states, the percent­age of compet­it­ive seats fell from 16 percent of districts before redis­trict­ing to just 12 percent after. The decline in compet­it­ive seats in Demo­cratic single-party controlled states was even more precip­it­ous, fall­ing from 12 percent to just 6 percent.

Yet these percent­age point decreases only tell part of the story: Repub­lic­ans control the map draw­ing of far more seats than Demo­crats do, and although the states controlled by Demo­cratic mapmakers saw a sharper percent­age point decrease in compet­it­ive seats, the actual number of compet­it­ive seats lost in Repub­lican-controlled states is almost triple that of Demo­cratic-controlled ones.

By contrast, states where commis­sions or courts drew maps either saw the percent­age of compet­it­ive districts fall only margin­ally or even increase. Indeed, after the steep decline in compet­i­tion in single-party controlled states, maps drawn by commis­sions or courts now account for almost 60 percent of the nation's shrink­ing number of compet­it­ive districts. To be clear, inde­pend­ent commis­sions like those in Michigan and Color­ado differ in import­ant ways from the politi­cian-appoin­ted, bipar­tisan bodies in states like New Jersey and Montana, but they all require parti­cip­a­tion from both major polit­ical parties. When the commis­sion states are considered together, there is only about a 15 percent decrease in the share of compet­it­ive seats, far less than the drop in compet­i­tion that occurred in states where one party drew the map.

But while both parties were aggress­ive in redu­cing the number of compet­it­ive districts in the states that they controlled, their strategies diverged.

For Demo­crats, a major handi­cap head­ing into redis­trict­ing was the lopsided map-draw­ing advant­age that Repub­lic­ans held. With a virtual lock on control of redis­trict­ing in the seat-rich South, Repub­lic­ans star­ted out the cycle with expec­ted control of the redraw­ing of 187 congres­sional districts, while Demo­crats would control only 75. And worse for Demo­crats, many of their states were places like Massachu­setts or Mary­land where they already controlled all or nearly all of the seats, mean­ing that there were few if any pick-up oppor­tun­it­ies.

The small number of oppor­tun­it­ies avail­able to them created major compet­ing pres­sures for Demo­crats. On the one hand, they faced pres­sure to create new Demo­cratic districts in the states they controlled to offset massive gerry­man­der­ing expec­ted in Repub­lican states. At the same time, they faced the usual pres­sure to shore up vulner­able incum­bents and hold on to the seats they already had.

Partisan map draw­ers drove the decrease in compet­it­ive districts.

In the end, Demo­crats split the differ­ence. Rather than increas­ing the number of super-safe districts that Biden won by more than 15 percent­age points in 2020, they instead increased the number of districts that he won by 8 to 15 percent­age points—creat­ing solid Demo­cratic districts but ones not conceiv­ably out of reach for Repub­lic­ans in the right elec­tion cycle.

Repub­lic­ans did the oppos­ite. Faced with the twin chal­lenges of demo­graphic change and the unanti­cip­ated shift of college-educated white voters toward Demo­crats, Repub­lic­ans prior­it­ized ultra-safe districts.

Texas is a case in point. For each of the prior two redis­trict­ing cycles, Texas Repub­lic­ans' strategy had been to maxim­ize GOP-held seats wherever possible. But that aggress­ive, seat-maxim­iz­ing strategy almost back­fired last decade. An infam­ous gerry­mander that divided liberal Austin among six districts had come close to being a "dummy­mander" by the end of the decade as Austin's popu­la­tion boomed and made districts that included any part of it increas­ingly more Demo­cratic. Like­wise, districts in the rapidly diver­si­fy­ing and polit­ic­ally volat­ile suburbs of Dallas and Hous­ton had unex­pec­tedly evolved into some of the most compet­it­ive in the coun­try. Indeed, by 2018 and 2020, Texas had become an unex­pec­ted ground zero in the battle for control of the House.

With this round of redis­trict­ing, Texas Repub­lic­ans' strategy would shift from maxim­iz­ing seats to creat­ing iron­clad safe districts even it if meant leav­ing some vulner­able Demo­cratic incum­bents in place. Whereas before redis­trict­ing, 12 of the state's then 36 districts had been compet­it­ive, under new maps, only 3 of 38 districts are—and two of them just barely. Moreover, virtu­ally all Repub­lican districts in Texas are not only safe, but ultra-safe. In all, a remark­able 88 percent of Repub­lican districts in Texas are now ones that Donald Trump won by 15 or more percent­age points—signi­fic­ant insur­ance against the demo­graphic change and suburban polit­ical shifts that bedeviled Repub­lic­ans last decade in Texas.

But as dire as the story on compet­i­tion is, it could have been worse if maps origin­ally passed by New York's legis­lature had not been struck down by courts and redrawn by a court-appoin­ted special master. Under New York's court-drawn map, almost one in five seats are compet­it­ive, the highest percent­age in the coun­try for a large state. Had the map passed by the Demo­cratic-controlled legis­lature remained in place, no districts would have been compet­it­ive.

In the end, a closely divided House remains up for grabs, with reas­on­able oppor­tun­it­ies for both parties to win control in coming years. However, barring unfore­seen polit­ical shifts, most voters will watch that fight from the side­lines due to maps that arti­fi­cially reduce compet­i­tion. If Amer­ic­ans hope to reverse the long-term decline of compet­it­ive districts, reforms to create fairer, more inde­pend­ent map-draw­ing processes will be essen­tial.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Michael Li, Chris Leaverton.