Welcome to the Gerrymandering Wars

Because Republican-led states tend to be less populous, there are few options for gerrymandering-driven gains at this point. The GOP holds a majority of seats in 30 of the states’ House delegations. Twelve of those states, including four with a single congressional district, did not elect a single Democratic representative to the House last year. Only Texas and four other states—Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Ohio—also have four or more Democratic seats in their House delegation.

Why do those five states still have Democratic seats at all? While gerrymandering can easily be used to keep one party in power, it is a lot harder to wield it to exclude the other party from power altogether. One reason that Texas Republicans were reluctant to squeeze more GOP seats out of their congressional map is that each additional seat raises the likelihood that it will backfire altogether.

Gerrymandering typically works by “packing” and “cracking” one party’s voters into different districts. Congressional districts are constitutionally required to be as equal in population as possible to one another. In a 10-district state where the electorate is 60 percent Republican and 40 percent Democratic, for example, lawmakers might try to pack as many of the Democrats into one or two districts as possible. Any Democrats that can’t fit in them would be distributed among the other districts so they can’t form a majority anywhere else. A 60–40 split in overall votes then becomes an 8–2 split in representation.