Now that more than a dozen states have finished drawing new congressional maps for the next decade, the Republican advantage heading into the midterm elections, and many cycles beyond, is coming into focus.
However, the edge largely isn’t coming from GOP efforts to take back seats currently held by Democratic congressmen or to draw those blue districts out of existence.
Rather, Republicans in some states are looking to pad their margins in districts where competition for control, in previous years, was fierce.
HOW REDISTRICTING WILL UNFOLD ACROSS THE COUNTRY
“A lot of what we’re seeing happening is not so much flipping Democratic-held districts into Republican-held districts. There’s a little of that, obviously,” David Hopkins, a political science professor at Boston College, told the Washington Examiner. “What we’re seeing much more commonly is the shoring up of vulnerable Republican districts and turning them into much safer Republican districts.”
House Republicans need a net pickup of at least five seats in 2022 to reclaim the majority they lost in 2018. Now, nearly every state is grappling with the prospect of drawing the congressional lines that will shape politics for the next 10 years, except for the six states whose populations are so low that they have just one representative.
Some states are relying on bipartisan commissions to decide, primarily based on the most recent census data, where the lines will go. Others are turning to the elected officials in their legislatures to draw the maps — giving the GOP an advantage in the process, as Republicans control more state legislatures and governor’s mansions than Democrats.
That will allow Republicans in red states to configure maps that could better protect GOP incumbents in future cycles where the party’s fortunes may look far bleaker than 2022.
Such is the case with the new Texas map signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott late last month.
Although the Lone Star State gained two House seats due to its population growth over the previous decade, the map creates only one new solidly red district.
Texas’s current congressional delegation is made up of 23 Republican congressmen and 13 Democratic congressmen. Under the new map, Texas will have 24 solid or likely Republican districts, 13 solid or likely Democratic districts, and one competitive district, according to FiveThirtyEight.
But Republicans gave their House members comfortable margins in some of the most competitive districts they hold.
In Texas’s 24th District, for example, Republican Rep. Beth Van Duyne won in 2020 by less than 2 points. The district previously encompassed a large swath of suburbs between Dallas and Fort Worth.
Under the new map, Van Duyne’s district has a 22-point Republican advantage, with lines snaking around bluer parts of the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
David Daley, senior fellow at the nonpartisan election group FairVote, said the redistricting process so far has suggested elections over the next decade will feature fewer swing districts.
“Republicans have really effectively taken the districts where they were vulnerable to a blue wave in red states and made them uncompetitive moving forward,” Daley told the Washington Examiner.
Some new Republican-drawn maps could make red states even redder heading into the midterm elections thanks to the strategy of narrowing opportunities for losses in the years ahead.
Utah, for example, is currently represented by all Republican congressmen.
But the GOP won a seat near Salt Lake City, Utah’s 4th District, by less than a point last year, when Rep. Burgess Owen narrowly defeated first-term Democratic Rep. Ben McAdams.
Utah’s 4th District, under the new map, is now the most solidly red in the state, with a Republican advantage of 31 points.
Some Republican attempts to draw favorable maps are already coming under fire, however.
In North Carolina, the Republican-controlled state Legislature passed a map that would add two safely GOP seats and take away two safely Democratic seats.
North Carolina’s 2nd District, held currently by Democratic Rep. G.K. Butterfield, would become highly competitive under the new map. Butterfield is reportedly expected to announce his retirement this week.
Butterfield’s district was previously majority minority, but the Legislature redrew it to be majority white.
The NAACP of North Carolina and other groups have filed lawsuits against the drafting of the map, alleging partisan and racial gerrymandering.
Daley cited a Supreme Court case, Rucho v. Common Cause, that in 2019 made complaints about gerrymandering on the basis of partisanship much more difficult to argue in court.
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“The arguments that we’re going to see are going to be racial gerrymander arguments,” Daley said of coming challenges to GOP maps.
Lawmakers in North Carolina and other states, however, will likely try to claim that their redistricting decisions were based on concentrations of Democratic voters, not of minority voters, presenting a “fascinating question” to be answered in the course of the fight over new maps, Daley said.
