[Partisan gerrymandering has continued to skew maps in favor of
Republicans, but both parties still have viable paths to win control
of the House in future elections. ]
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AFTER REDISTRICTING, HERE’S HOW EACH PARTY COULD WIN THE HOUSE  
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Michael Li and Chris Leaverton
August 3, 2022
Brennan Center for Justice
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_ Partisan gerrymandering has continued to skew maps in favor of
Republicans, but both parties still have viable paths to win control
of the House in future elections. _

,

 

If victory in congres­sional redis­trict­ing is defined as
guar­an­tee­ing control of the House, the latest cycle could be
considered some­thing of a draw. Under new congres­sional maps, both
Demo­crats and Repub­lic­ans have viable paths to a House
major­ity in coming years, though this is in large meas­ure due to
fairer maps drawn by commis­sions or courts rather than line
draw­ing in states where politi­cians controlled the pen.

To be sure, Demo­crats are still likely to lose their House
major­ity in 2022 given this year’s unfor­giv­ing midterm
dynam­ics. But if they do, new maps at least give them some
reas­on­able paths to winning it back in future cycles. Like­wise,
if Repub­lic­ans do take back the House in 2022, they may well find
their new major­ity uncom­fort­ably tenu­ous.

However, an import­ant caveat: While neither party is perman­ently
locked out of being able to win a House major­ity, that does­n’t
mean the new maps are fair. On balance, partisan gerry­man­der­ing
contin­ues to skew maps in favor of Repub­lic­ans, making the path
to a major­ity harder for Demo­crats than it would be other­wise.
This gerry­man­der­ing, moreover, largely comes at the expense of
communit­ies of color, espe­cially in the South.

And line draw­ing may not yet be over for this cycle. In an age of
highly polar­ized polit­ics where having control of Congress can
feel exist­en­tial, a number of states may decide to redraw maps
mid-decade if gerry­manders need shor­ing up or changes to the
judi­ciary or law remove a key watch­dog.

THE REPUB­LICAN PATH

For Repub­lic­ans, the road to a House major­ity starts with their
contin­ued domin­ance in the seat-rich South, the coun­try’s most
popu­lous and fast­est-grow­ing region. Since the south­ern
realign­ment of the 1990s and early 2000s, the South has become a
crit­ical anchor for the GOP’s hunt for a House major­ity. Before
the south­ern realign­ment, Repub­lic­ans had been held to under
200 seats in every House elec­tion after 1956.

At the begin­ning of this cycle, Repub­lic­ans had firm control of
redis­trict­ing in all of the South except Virginia, where a new
bipar­tisan process would be used, and Louisi­ana, where
Repub­lic­ans were just shy of a veto-proof legis­lat­ive
major­ity. As in past cycles, they used that power aggress­ively to
increase their advant­ages in the region. By further skew­ing maps
in large states like Texas, Geor­gia, and Flor­ida, Repub­lic­ans
were able to create an addi­tional seven Repub­lican-lean­ing
districts and are now favored to win a whop­ping 70 percent of the
region’s 155 seats, up from an already command­ing 66 percent
before maps were redrawn. In no other region of the coun­try are
Repub­lic­ans favored to win as many — or as large a percent­age
of — seats. But it could have been even worse for Demo­crats: if
state courts in North Caro­lina hadn’t ordered a redraw of a wildly
gerry­mandered congres­sional map, Repub­lican domin­ance of the
region would have been even more complete.

All told, factor­ing in the six Demo­cratic-lean­ing swing
districts in the region, new maps in the South give Repub­lic­ans
the poten­tial to win up to 114 seats, just over half the number
needed for a major­ity. Most of these districts, moreover, are not
just Repub­lican, but solidly so because of a concer­ted
Repub­lican strategy to elim­in­ate compet­it­ive districts.
After redis­trict­ing, fewer than 1 in 10 Trump districts in the
South is compet­it­ive, a far lower percent­age than most of the
nation.

The next most import­ant region for Repub­lic­ans is the Midw­est
and Great Plains, where they controlled the map-draw­ing pen in 6 of
the region’s 12 states. Repub­lic­ans also benefited in a seventh
state — Wiscon­sin — when the state supreme court drew maps after
a legis­lat­ive dead­lock but largely left in place last decade’s
pro-Repub­lican gerry­mander, reas­on­ing that any court-drawn map
should limit changes. (Another two heav­ily Repub­lican states,
North Dakota and South Dakota, have only a single congres­sional
district and did not redis­trict.)

Alto­gether, redis­trict­ing in the Midw­est and Great Plains
resul­ted in 62 districts that Repub­lic­ans have a chance to win,
includ­ing 43 safe districts. However, new maps in the Midw­est and
Great Plains are not quite as favor­able for Repub­lic­ans as old
ones. Due to fairer redis­trict­ing in Michigan under the state’s
new inde­pend­ent redis­trict­ing commis­sion, as well as an
aggress­ive Demo­cratic gerry­mander in Illinois, the number of
Trump districts in the region fell by six, largely offset­ting GOP
gains in the South.

In the rest of the coun­try, Repub­lic­ans had little control over
redis­trict­ing, making it harder for the party to engin­eer sure
paths to a major­ity.

In the Moun­tain states, the coun­try’s least popu­lous region,
maps in all but one state were drawn either by commis­sions or under
Demo­cratic control. (The one excep­tion was Utah, where
Repub­lic­ans drew a gerry­mandered map. In addi­tion, heav­ily
Repub­lican Wyom­ing has only a single seat.) Maps in the region
give Repub­lic­ans a chance to win between 17 and 22 seats,
depend­ing on elec­tion dynam­ics. But in the end, Repub­lic­ans
saw no net increase in seats from the region — though it remains to
be seen whether a risky Demo­cratic effort to maxim­ize seats in
Nevada could back­fire to the bene­fit of Repub­lic­ans in a
future elec­tion cycle.

Like­wise, in the heav­ily popu­lated and heav­ily Demo­cratic
North­east and Pacific West, Repub­lic­ans did not control line
draw­ing in a single state. While new maps in the two regions give
Repub­lic­ans the poten­tial to win between 20 and 40 seats in
total, only 20 are safe seats that Repub­lic­ans can count on if the
elec­tion envir­on­ment were to shift to being strongly
pro-Demo­cratic.

However, Repub­lic­ans did score one signi­fic­ant victory in the
North­east when state courts in New York struck down the
gerry­mandered congres­sional map passed by Demo­crats, order­ing
it replaced with a more evenly balanced one drawn by a special master.
The effect was to make three Demo­cratic districts compet­it­ive,
whereas the original map had none. Indeed, if Repub­lic­ans have a
path to a major­ity, they can thank courts and commis­sions that
drew two-thirds of all compet­it­ive Biden districts nation­wide
and 9 of 11 of the most compet­it­ive. Without these districts, the
Repub­lican path to a major­ity would be consid­er­ably more
diffi­cult.

In the end, redis­trict­ing provided a reas­on­able but
complic­ated path to a GOP House major­ity. To win it,
Repub­lic­ans must hold all 208 districts in new maps that Donald
Trump would have won in the last pres­id­en­tial elec­tion plus at
least some of the 30 districts that Joe Biden narrowly carried that
year. That likely will not be hard in 2022 given strongly
pro-Repub­lican midterm dynam­ics, but it could prove quite a bit
more chal­len­ging in future cycles if the expec­ted swing toward
Repub­lic­ans in 2022 in Biden districts is only a cyclical blip
rather than a longer-term realign­ment.

THE DEMO­CRATIC PATH

Demo­crats have a very differ­ent path to a major­ity — one that
is in some ways easier and in some ways harder than that of
Repub­lic­ans.

On the posit­ive side from the perspect­ive of Demo­crats, they
start the hunt for a House major­ity with consid­er­ably more safe
seats than Repub­lic­ans. While new maps contain 178 districts that
Trump won in 2020 by eight or more points (a rough proxy for a safe
seat), they contain 197 districts that Biden won by that margin —
just 21 seats shy of a House major­ity.

These safe districts are concen­trated in the North­east and Pacific
West, two heav­ily Demo­cratic regions where now 116 of the 127
Demo­cratic-lean­ing districts are strongly Biden districts. But
Demo­crats also emerged from the redis­trict­ing cycle with 41
strongly Biden seats in the South as well as 40 else­where in the
coun­try. This large block of solid Biden seats gives Demo­crats a
signi­fic­ant anchor for their efforts to win the House barring a
complete elect­oral melt­down or large, unex­pec­ted voter
realign­ments. 

But Demo­crats saw efforts to build a secure path to a major­ity
stymied when state courts struck down Demo­cratic gerry­manders in
New York and Mary­land and ordered them with­drawn. Conversely,
Demo­crats also lost oppor­tun­it­ies, at least for this
elec­tion cycle, as a result of a state court decision in Ohio
allow­ing a pro-GOP gerry­mander to remain in place for the 2022
midterms. Like­wise, federal courts put a pause on Voting Rights Act
litig­a­tion in Alabama, Louisi­ana, and Geor­gia that could have
resul­ted in the creation of three addi­tional Black oppor­tun­ity
districts that likely would have seen the elec­tion of Demo­crats.

Still, maps give Demo­crats multiple roads to a House major­ity this
decade. The most straight­for­ward one lies in the 30 districts in
new maps that Biden carried by less than eight percent­age points in
2020. If Demo­crats won all or most of these districts (not out of
the ques­tion in a good Demo­cratic elec­tion cycle), they would
end up with roughly the same number of seats they hold in the current
House without need­ing to capture a single Trump district.
Altern­at­ively, Demo­crats could build a path­way to a major­ity
— or even an expan­ded major­ity — by captur­ing some share of
the 30 districts that Trump won by less than eight percent­age points
in 2020.

But if on paper Demo­crats seem to have more routes than
Repub­lic­ans to a major­ity, there are just as many chal­lenges.
Demo­crats’ biggest risk is that many of the compet­it­ive Biden
districts are not just compet­it­ive but highly compet­it­ive.
Indeed, of the 30 narrowly Biden districts, his median margin of
victory was a slim 4.7 percent­age points. With even relat­ively
modest coali­tional shifts, many of these seats could easily slip out
of Demo­crats’ reach — and not just in Repub­lican wave years.
If, for example, Latino or white suburban voters were to drift toward
Repub­lic­ans on a long-term basis, many of these districts could
become hard for Demo­crats to win. And though it is far too early to
draw defin­ite conclu­sions about long-term trends, there are
already some poten­tially worry­ing signals for Demo­crats of just
such possible coali­tional shifts, partic­u­larly among Lati­nos
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In sum, the good news for Demo­crats is that they can secure a House
major­ity simply by winning the 227 districts in new maps that Biden
carried in 2020. And even if they lose some of those districts, they
have an altern­at­ive path to a major­ity in the 30 newly
configured districts that Trump won by relat­ively narrow margins in
that elec­tion, many of which are in suburbs that have been
stead­ily trend­ing toward the party. But while Demo­crats
poten­tially have more paths to a major­ity, they have little room
for error. It would take only a small shift to put many districts that
Biden narrowly won out of reach for House Demo­crats. Conversely,
because compet­it­ive Trump districts are at the edge of being
noncom­pet­it­ive, they would need a much greater shift to put them
in play.

• • •

In the end, this decade’s maps are not nearly as fair or
compet­it­ive as they could be. But at the same time, thanks largely
to commis­sions and courts, neither party has a decis­ive long-term
advant­age in the battle for control of the House. That, at some
level, is a small if not completely satis­fact­ory victory for
demo­cracy.

_Michael Li [[link removed]] serves
as senior counsel for the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, where
his work focuses on redistricting, voting rights, and elections._

_Chris Leaverton
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Research and Program Associate in the Democracy Program, where he
focuses on redistricting. Prior to joining the Brennan Center, Chris
worked at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the
country’s largest civil rights coalition._

_The Brennan Center for Justice [[link removed]] is a
nonpartisan law and policy institute. We strive to uphold the values
of democracy. We stand for equal justice and the rule of law. We work
to craft and advance reforms that will make American democracy work,
for all._

* Elections
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* redistricting
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* Gerrymandering
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* House of Representatives
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* Democratic Party
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* Republican Party
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