Republicans' love of gerrymandering has come back to bite them

A rare own-goal for the GOP

A map.
(Image credit: Illustrated | iStock)

Entering this cycle of congressional redistricting after the country's decennial census, Democratic strategists were in a state of near-total panic. Disappointing election results in 2020, particularly at the state legislative level, once again left Republicans with more "trifectas" (control of the state legislature and the governorship) than Democrats, and thus able to draw district lines uncontested for many more seats than their counterparts, putting Democrats in the position of needing a big, blue wave just to gain a bare majority in the House. Another decade in the wilderness loomed.

But something funny happened on the way to Democratic catastrophe — many state Republicans decided to reinforce their own incumbents rather than ruthlessly boxing out their opponents in as many districts as possible, and others ran into problems in court. Meanwhile, Democrats in Illinois pursued an extremely aggressive gerrymander of their own, and New York is likely to follow suit. And in California, Democrats did an end-run around the state's non-partisan redistricting commission and may net as many as six additional seats just from the new lines. The result is that instead of being able to take the House easily with similar results to 2020, Republicans might well have put themselves in a worse position than when the process started.

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David Faris

David Faris is an associate professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. He is a frequent contributor to Informed Comment, and his work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and Indy Week.