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A salient fact that is nearly entirely absent from our current partisan redistricting discourse is the indisputable reality that the U.S. Census Bureau blew it in 2020. The agency admits that it significantly miscounted the populations of multiple states. Those errors overwhelmingly harmed red states and benefited blue ones. Experts estimate that an accurate count would have netted red states between five and 10 congressional seats over the ensuing decade, with corresponding implications for the Electoral College and the path to the presidency. According to NPR, which no one would ever mistake for a Republican-leaning media outfit, the 2020 Census contained “significant net undercount rates in six states: Arkansas (5.04%), Florida (3.48%), Illinois (1.97%), Mississippi (4.11%), Tennessee (4.78%), and Texas (1.92%). It also uncovered significant net overcount rates in eight states — Delaware (5.45%), Hawaii (6.79%), Massachusetts (2.24%), Minnesota (3.84%), New York (3.44%), Ohio (1.49%), Rhode Island (5.05%), and Utah (2.59%).”
The undercounts disproportionately affected Republican strongholds, while the overcounts disproportionately cut in favor of blue states. When Texas moved forward with its unusual and controversial 2025 mid-decade redistricting plan at the behest of President Donald Trump, its goal was to net roughly five GOP-leaning seats in the House of Representatives. This would, on the low end, rectify the Census Bureau’s costly and consequential errors that redounded to Democrats’ advantage in multiple election cycles. Democrats who squealed with outrage when Texas Republicans undertook this maneuver never mentioned the half a dozen or so “free” seats they’ve been gifted by bureaucratic incompetence or malfeasance. In light of that extraordinary failure, Texas’s moves were defensible, in the name of any number of “democracy”-related slogans recently fashionable on the Left.
Enter California. With Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D-CA) eyes set on higher political ambitions, he took it upon himself to retaliate against Texas, leading an expensive campaign to change the state’s constitution to gerrymander multiple Republicans out of their seats in the Golden State. This was framed as an act of principle, necessitated by Texas’s rogue actions. Never mind that California was already far more gerrymandered than Texas, based on proportionality, despite having an ostensibly independent commission responsible for drawing its map. The GOP generally pulls around 40% of the statewide vote in California, yet the commission’s map before Newsom’s redraw yielded just nine of 52 House seats in the red column — just 17% of the delegation. Now that California Democrats have strong-armed their way back into controlling the process, their new map will become even less representative. For “democracy.”
Cynical and hypocritical as California’s actions may be, they’re at least politically understandable and defensible, particularly by leaving out some of the nuance and context mentioned above. “Texas started it because Trump told them to, so we had to even the playing field,” is a simple, if simplistically misleading, mantra. It worked, and Democrats appear to have restored the tainted status quo nationally. Sabers have continued to rattle. With the specter of a possible all-out redistricting war looming, some other Republican states have considered additional changes. The New York Times recently admitted that such a nationwide battle would likely go poorly for Democrats, noting that “the toolbox for Democrats is relatively sparse,” in part because a number of heavily blue states are “already gerrymandered heavily in their favor,” so “squeezing more Democratic seats out of those states would be a challenge.”
On the other side of the ledger, Ohio Republicans ultimately backed off a more aggressive redistricting plan to cut a deal with Democrats, and Indiana Senate Republicans famously rebuffed intense White House pressure by decisively rejecting a partisan redraw of their own lines. This was done in the name of preserving norms, offering an off-ramp to the threatened one-upsmanship spiral. Democrats cheered, of course, and mouthed their usual “democracy” bromides. Then they moved to intensify the fight anyway. Rather than following the Hoosiers’ lead toward de-escalation, Virginia and Maryland Democrats are sprinting toward dramatic escalation. In the Old Dominion, newly empowered Democrats, who have introduced a raft of massive tax hikes and radical social policies, swiftly rammed through a scheme to shift the commonwealth’s congressional map from six Democrats and five Republicans to a lopsided 10-1 blowout. For reference, 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris won just under 52% of Virginia’s statewide vote.
In pushing this whiplash-inducing plan to a popular referendum, Democrats are asking voters to reverse their own 2020 anti-gerrymandering amendment, which passed with roughly two-thirds of the vote. Speaking of whiplash, freshly minted Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), a supposed centrist whose party appears eager to institute sweeping Californication, has blessed the power grab attempt. She’s done so by predictably blaming Republicans and wrapping herself in the banner of “democracy.” Spanberger is so passionate about democracy and norms that this is what she said about gerrymandering in 2019: “Gerrymandering is detrimental to our democracy, and it weakens the individual voices that form our electorates. Opposing gerrymandering should be a bipartisan priority.” Is that so, Abigail?
In nearby Maryland, already one of the most egregiously gerrymandered states in the nation, Democrats are attempting to push their delegation to 8-0, up from 7-1. Gov. Wes Moore (D-MD), like the other two governors mentioned previously, is said to harbor presidential aspirations. He supports the plan, which senior Democrats say is designed to “meet the moment” against alleged Republican overreach.
See how this works? The Texas GOP moved to ameliorate the Census debacle, and Democrats have since embarked upon an escalatory spree, as if they’re the victims. Indiana’s Republican Senate majority drew hackles from their own party’s president and their base by resisting agitations to push the tit-for-tat spat any further. They’ve been rewarded by many of the people who cheered them on, now rushing headlong down their own power-hungry path.
Not everyone on Team Blue is convinced this is the prudent move, but they’re being excoriated from within. Amid some apparent misgivings from people such as Virginia’s two senators, both Democrats, here’s how a senior Richmond lawmaker in their own party publicly responded: “I have the utmost respect for Senator Kaine and Senator Warner but we do not need ‘coaching’ on redistricting coming from a cuck chair in the corner. How about you all stay focused on the fascist in the White House and let us handle redistricting in Virginia.” The cuck chair. “Fascist in the White House.” She tacked on a final message of “10-1,” referencing Democrats’ full-speed-ahead approach. Cooler heads prevailed in Indiana, shutting down a possible Republican advantage. Democratic hotheads appear to be emboldened by that climbdown.
If those hotheads prevail, Republicans must take off the gloves. If Democrats make the decision that their unfair Census Bureau-furnished advantage is their birthright and that Texas justifies a chain reaction of leftist power-grabs, the GOP will have no choice but to deliver the rout that even left-leaning analysts warn is possible if red states go full throttle. The Democratic hotheads should be forewarned, too, that their designs could be crushed even further after 2030, assuming the Census Bureau gets its act together. Why? I’ll let Barack Obama’s electoral guru, David Plouffe, explain.
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“Right now, Democrats have no credible path to sustained control of the Senate and the White House,” Plouffe wrote in an op-ed. “After the adjustments to the Electoral College map that look likely to come with the next census, the Democratic presidential nominee could win all the states won by Kamala Harris plus the blue wall of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and still fall short of the 270 electoral votes needed to win. An already unforgiving map becomes more so. This is equally true of the Senate.”
Nothing is permanent in politics, and that assessment may prove overly pessimistic, but he’s right that red states will almost certainly gain seats and electoral votes, as they should have in 2020, in the next census. Governing failures have driven people away from Democrat-dominated places, so this is a looming political crisis of their party’s own making. Should they press their advantage, which currently looks like little more than an advantage of willpower and ruthlessness, Republicans may decide to go for the jugular. On that note, I’ll leave you with this legislation, filed in response to a New York Democratic congresswoman welcoming the illegal immigration crisis to her community because “I need more people in my district just for redistricting purposes.”
