For what its worth, the Political Science Professors at Electoral-Vote.com agree with you. Here is there synopsis this morning:
"The last round of district maps was drawn in 2011, with a few exceptions (ahem, North Carolina). And two things were true in 2011: (1) The Republican Party had already awakened to the importance of winning state legislatures and had taken over a whole bunch of chambers, and (2) the software for drawing district maps, though not as good as today, was already pretty advanced. As a result, that round of maps was gerrymandered six ways to Sunday, and in a manner that favored Republicans more often than Democrats.
This has produced a surprising result in 2021. Even though the software is better, and even though partisanship is higher, there isn’t much wiggle room for more gerrymandering. And so, although Democrats were crying in their beer (or white wine), fearing that the Republicans would pick up dozens of House seats in 2022 due to aggressive gerrymandering, it appears that won’t be the case. In fact, as New York magazine’s Eric Levitz reports, the new map will almost certainly be more favorable to Democrats than the old one. It’s even possible that the map might end up skewed, very slightly, in the Democrats’ favor.
There are four main reasons for this turn of events:
-
As noted, there wasn’t much room for Republicans to maneuver in the states they control. In Florida, the GOP squeezed all the juice out of the orange in 2011. Same thing for Texas and all the blood out of the rare porterhouse steak.
-
Even in places where the Republicans had options, they generally preferred to play it safe and to shore up sitting officeholders as opposed to going for broke and maximizing their total number of seats.
-
Meanwhile, there was some low-hanging fruit in places like New York and Illinois, and the Democrats in those places have demonstrated party discipline just as fanatical as that of Republicans in Florida and Texas.
-
There are more Democratic seats under the control of independent commissions (or “independent” commissions) than Republican seats. That could have been bad news for the blue team. However, most of the independent commissions (particularly the one in California) returned pretty good results for the Democrats. And most of the “independent” commissions (particularly the one in New Jersey) returned very good results for the Democrats.
Specific case studies are instructive here. So, for example, consider Texas. Currently the House delegation is 23R, 13D. The new map will be 24R, 13D, and one swing district. So, the Texas Republicans may net two seats but it could also turn out that each of the parties gets one of the new seats. In any event, none of the current Democratic representatives was gerrymandered out of the House.
However, there is a loser in the Lone Star State: democracy. Of the state’s 38 districts, 37 are now solid for one party or the other. The general-election voters have basically no say who their representative will be in all but one district. Whoever wins the Republican primary (if any) in 24 districts will go to Congress, and whoever wins the Democratic primary in 13 districts will also go to Congress. In 97% of districts, the general election winner will be known as soon as the primaries are over. Even if there are a couple of big upsets, that’s still 90% of the races that will be uncompetitive. This is not quite what James Madison had in mind.
There are two big wild cards remaining before the 2022 map will be basically complete: Ohio and North Carolina. In both places, Republicans control the process, have produced wildly gerrymandered maps, and are now going to have to defend those maps in court. North Carolina Republicans have already lost several of these suits in the past, and while Ohio Republicans will be before a Republican-controlled state Supreme Court, two of the Republican-majority judges expressed irritation with the new maps during oral arguments. Anyhow, these two states will be the ultimate deciders between “the Democrats gained a little ground this cycle” and “the new national map actually favors the Democrats.”
What this means, in turn, is that gerrymandering alone isn’t going to take the House away from the Democrats. They are still up against Joe Biden’s poor approval ratings, and the fact that the midterms don’t generally go well for the party that holds the White House. That said, 11 months is a long time, and a party has never run a midterm campaign under circumstances quite like this—i.e., the other party is led by a much-reviled former president, and is actively plotting a coup in 2024 (see above).
In any event, the House will be won or lost on the back of a relatively small number of elections. It is expected that nationwide, roughly 30 seats will be competitive, and possibly fewer. All the rest are locked down. Whether the pro-coup or the anti-coup party wins, it’s not great for democracy when the votes of more than 90% of voters don’t really matter when it comes to their representative in Congress. (V & Z)"
