And what Congress would look like with fairer maps
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How Redistricting Shaped the Midterms
The results of the 2022 midterm elections show both the positive and negative impacts of the most recent redistricting cycle.
In one of the biggest stories of this election, Democrats in Michigan won control of the state legislature for the first time in nearly 40 years. The historic outcome comes after the state’s new independent redistricting commission replaced one of last decade’s most aggressive gerrymanders with fairer, more responsive maps that the Brennan Center’s Michael Li called
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“jump ball maps for a jump ball state.”
Nevertheless, even though maps on balance are fairer than last decade, the impact of the 2019 Supreme Court decision in Rucho v. Common Cause
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greenlighting partisan gerrymandering had a profound effect
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at both the legislative and congressional levels. In the fiercely contested fight for control of Congress, Republicans eked out a razor-thin majority. However, gerrymandered and racially discriminatory congressional maps drawn by Republican legislators “almost certainly” gave the GOP enough additional seats on net to secure a likely House majority, according to Li (vote counting is still going on in a handful of districts). Had the Court ruled differently in Rucho, “It would have been night and day
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,” with a level playing field and fairer districts across the country.
The Road Not Taken on Gerrymandering
With Congress’s failure to pass federal redistricting reforms, this decade’s congressional maps remain significantly skewed, on balance benefitting Republicans. In a new piece
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, Michael Li, Peter Miller, and Chris Leaverton look at how different maps could have been had Congress passed the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act
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, which includes sweeping redistricting reforms
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. “All told, congressional maps originally passed in nine states — five drawn by Republicans, three by Democrats, and one by a political appointee commission
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— would have required significant changes to bring them into compliance with the John Lewis Act . . . Congressional maps in another 13 other states, including New York’s redrawn map, had lower rates of partisan bias but also would have triggered judicial review under the John Lewis Act as possible partisan gerrymanders,” they write.
Focusing on four states whose maps heavily favor Republicans — Florida, Georgia, Ohio, and Texas — they found that Joe Biden won 30 congressional districts in the 2020 election under the new congressional maps, but under alternative maps that comply with the John Lewis Act, Biden likely would have carried 41–43 seats.
Map & Litigation Trackers
The Brennan Center has two trackers you can use to keep up with the redistricting cycle: our Redistricting Map Tracker
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contains links to all of the newly passed maps, while our Redistricting Litigation Roundup
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outlines the pending legal cases over new plans.
All told, 72 cases around the country have challenged newly passed congressional or legislative maps as racially discriminatory or partisan gerrymanders — or both — as of November 18. Of these cases, 47 remain pending at the trial or appellate level.
Redistricting in the News
A new analysis
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from the Washington Post’s Philip Bump and Lenny Bronner found that, similar to in 2018 and 2020 under old congressional maps, victory in the 2022 midterms was dependent on suburban districts. By categorizing each district based on population density, they found that Republicans netted six additional seats in suburban districts — “the difference in holding a majority by itself,” Bump notes.
In North Carolina and Ohio, court rulings struck down legislatively drawn maps as partisan gerrymanders, but new congressional maps in North Carolina and both legislative and congressional maps in Ohio put in place for 2022 will have to be redrawn before 2024. With the election of new justices
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, both states’ supreme courts have become more conservative and could be less willing to police gerrymandering abuses. In North Carolina, Republicans flipped two seats
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, eliminating the court’s Democratic majority. Ohio saw similar results: the state supreme court will soon have a solid conservative majority thanks to Republicans winning three seats
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, which could allow the conservative majority to uphold legislative and congressional maps that favor the GOP.
However, the battle for the majority on Wisconsin’s highest court is just beginning. Though state supreme court races are officially nonpartisan, conservative justices have held a 4–3 majority since 2020 when a liberal defeated
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the conservative incumbent justice at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. If voters choose a liberal justice in the April 2023 election
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, they will cement a 4–3 liberal majority that could potentially take up challenges to the state’s new congressional and legislative maps.
Meanwhile, in New York, Republicans flipped four congressional seats. While some Democrats have blamed the result on the state’s chaotic redistricting, the Brennan Center’s Michael Li said
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the losses seemed to have more to do with Democratic underperformance in New York State, pointing out that the districts Democrats lost were strongly Democratic districts similar to ones that the party easily held or flipped elsewhere in the country. “You wouldn’t think Democrats would lose districts like New York’s 4th or New York’s 17th, except in a red tsunami year, and this was not a red tsunami year. I think it’s just a reminder that at the end of the day, all politics are local.”
Plaintiffs challenging Florida’s new congressional map in the Leon County Circuit Court will subpoena
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documents from individuals involved in drawing the state’s new congressional map first proposed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), which dismantled a North Florida House district where Black voters previously had the opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice.
A state court judge in Kentucky ruled
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that the new state house and congressional maps did not run afoul of the state constitution. The judge found that Democrats were indeed “packed” and “cracked” into legislative districts in gerrymandered maps that favored Republicans but that the maps still complied with Kentucky’s constitution. The Democratic plaintiffs have yet to announce if they will appeal the decision.
You can find earlier editions of our Redistricting Roundup here
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.
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