Nationwide, Redistricting Is Looking Like A Wash

Update to Arizona Independent (sic) Redistricting Commission Brazenly Hijacked By Partisan Republicans (excerpt):

Eric Levitz writes at New York magazine, Democrats Are Doing Weirdly Well in Redistricting:

The Democratic House majority was supposed to die in redistricting. For months now, pundits and political forecasters have predicted that Republicans could win back the House next year without flipping a single voter. After all, the GOP controls far more state governments than the Democrats, and this is a post-Census year, when states redraw their congressional maps. Republicans boast sole authority over the boundaries of 193 congressional districts, while Democrats command just 94. Given the slimness of Nancy Pelosi’s majority, several analyses projected that GOP cartographers would generate enough new, safe “red” seats to retake the House through gerrymandering alone.

This has been a foundational premise of much of my own commentary. And it’s an assumption that’s animated the progressive movement’s push for a package of democracy reforms that would, among other things, forbid partisan redistricting.

But it’s starting to look wrong.

The new House map is more than half finished. And in many states where maps haven’t been finalized, the broad outlines are already visible. Taken together, the emerging picture is far more favorable for Democrats than most anticipated. As of this writing, it looks like the new House map will be much less biased in the GOP’s favor than the old one. And according to at least one analyst, there is actually an outside chance that the final map will be tilted, ever so slightly, in the Democrats’ favor.

Following up on this today, Axios reports Wasserman: Redistricting turns into a happy surprise for Dems:

David Wasserman has seen enough. The litigation-strewn process for drawing new House lines for November’s midterms will go on for months.

• • • But Wasserman — the senior editor at The Cook Political Report with Amy Walterwho’s so steeped in the intrigue his Twitter handle is analysis posted this morning, “Still a GOP Advantage, but Redistricting Looks Like a Wash.”

The surprising good news for Democrats: on the current trajectory, there will be a few more Biden-won districts after redistricting than there are now — producing a congressional map slightly less biased in the GOP’s favor than the last decade’s. The bad news for Democrats: if President Biden’s approval ratings are still mired in the low-to-mid 40s in November, that won’t be enough to save their razor-thin House majority (currently 221 to 212 seats).

— Cook Political Report’s David Wasserman

Between the lines: Wasserman writes that “the partisan distribution of seats before/after redistricting is only one way to gauge the process.”

• • • “Because Democrats currently possess the lion’s share of marginal seats, estimating the practical effect of new lines in 2022 still points towards a wash or a slight GOP gain.”

Go deeper: Read the analysis.

Greg Sargent of the Washington Post adds Surprise: Democrats dodged a gerrymandering fiasco. A top analyst explains why. (subscriber content).

So you’re saying there’s a chance?

Wasserman concludes:

The far more dramatic effect of 2022 redistricting: a rise in the number of hyper-partisan seats at the expense of competitive ones. So far in completed states, the number of single-digit Biden and Trump seats has declined from 62 to 46 (a 26 percent drop). That means a House even less responsive to shifts in public opinion, with more ideological “cul-de-sac” districts where candidates’ only electoral incentive is to play to a primary base.

This is the offense the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission committed by minimizing the constitutional requirement for competitive districts.

Reminder: Let’s not forget that 147 Republican members of Congress gave “aid and comfort to” the seditious insurrectionists on January 6 by voting not to certify the Electoral College vote results even after they stormed the Capitol and threatened the lives of members of Congress, a felony under 18 U.S. Code § 2383 for which they should be “imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.” They could also be disqualified from serving in public office under section 3 of the 14th Amendment. A proper plaintiff – presumably Congress or the DOJ, needs to file the lawsuit to disqualify the Sedition Caucus members. This would open up a lot of seats.