Mid-decade redistricting war: Which party stands to gain?

For almost a year now, America’s two parties have been engaged in a mass congressional redistricting battle royale.

The fun kicked off in Texas last July, when Gov. Greg Abbott, following President Donald Trump’s urging, first pushed the Texas Legislature to redistrict the Lone Star State’s congressional maps in a pro-Republican direction. Missouri and North Carolina soon followed, prompting California Gov. Gavin Newsom to get in on the action: Golden State voters approved the use of a new map at the ballot box last November. On April 21, Virginia voters narrowly approved a new congressional map that heavily favors Democrats. This week, Florida responded with a Gov. Ron DeSantis-led redistricting that heavily favors Republicans. In the interim, some other states, such as Ohio and Utah, redistricted for nonvoluntary reasons such as litigation or statutory requirement. And other states, such as Indiana, famously defied Trump and refused to voluntarily redraw their maps.

One might be inclined to ask who started this latest bout of mass, iterative gerrymandering. It’s true that Texas, an iconic red state, drew first blood last July – although the U.S. Supreme Court didn’t finally permit Texas’ new maps to go into effect until a summary order earlier this week. What’s more, Texas’s new GOP-heavy map will likely provide Republicans less of a lopsided partisan advantage in its congressional delegation than will California’s own new map for the Golden State’s regnant Democratic Party. Republicans also claim Democrats have been the more blatant systemic gerrymanderers for decades – an assertion buttressed by even a cursory glance at bright-blue Illinois’ hilariously delineated congressional map.

The reality is that both parties have gerrymandered their respective controlled states for a very long time. That is a tedious and uninteresting observation. The more interesting and pressing question, as this rare mid-decade redistricting war nears its end, is this: Looking at the aggregate nationwide redistricting efforts, which party will come out on top in advance of the midterm elections this November?

Democrats had a projected one-seat partisan advantage according to the website Ballotpedia, as of Thursday. But there are multiple reasons why this is likely to change. It appears the big victor will be the GOP.

First, this tally does not account for Florida’s redistricted map, which just passed through a special session of the Florida Legislature on Wednesday and has not yet (as of this writing) been signed into law by DeSantis. That alone will likely net the GOP four additional seats. Second, Virginia’s controversial ballot referendum redistricting measure, which was just approved by Old Dominion voters by a much narrower margin than that by which Virginians swept Democrats back into power last November, is facing serious legal challenges. Most recently, on Wednesday, the Virginia Supreme Court left in place a lower-court order blocking the commonwealth’s certification of the referendum results. If Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s new map is tossed out, Democrats will likely be out an additional four seats.

Finally, there is the landmark redistricting case that the U.S. Supreme Court just decided this week. In Louisiana v. Callais, the court held that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibits states and localities from imposing any voting “qualification or prerequisite” that “results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen … to vote on account of race or color,” cannot be invoked to create race-conscious congressional maps – a dubious practice lawmakers had been blithely engaging in for decades. The court correctly held that such race-conscious mapmaking, including the devising of so-called majority-minority districts across many Southern states, runs afoul of the 14th Amendment’s sweeping equal protection guarantee.

Bright-red Louisiana, which was party to the Callais case, already suspended its upcoming primaries to give its legislature enough time to draw new congressional maps. In addition, many other safe Democratic “majority-minority” seats across the broader South are now extremely vulnerable. These Southern states can either redistrict of their own accord to comply with the Supreme Court’s new ruling, or they will be forced to do so through offensive litigation. Either way, the era of race-conscious mapmaking is now over. This is first and foremost a victory for the colorblind U.S. Constitution. But it will also benefit the GOP before November’s midterms – in Louisiana and likely beyond.

Our redistricting battles tend to rile up passions on all sides. But it’s a practice as old as the republic: The “gerry” in “gerrymandering” refers to Elbridge Gerry, who served in the First Congress and eventually as James Madison’s vice president. If one disapproves of how his state draws its maps, there is always the political check of the ballot box. And if that fails, he can always vote with his feet and leave. In fact, that’s already happening en masse: from blue states to red states. And for Democrats, that’s a trend not even the most aggressive gerrymandering can possibly alleviate.