Bang! The pistol has been fired and the race is afoot. Both Democrats and Republicans are frantically sprinting towards the finish line, which has become even harder to reach after the 2020 Census altered the number of representatives each state will receive. With seven states losing a seat (California, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, West Virginia, and Ohio) and six states gaining seats (Florida, Oregon, Colorado, Montana, and North Carolina gaining one and Texas gaining two), according to Politico, the paper-thin majority that Democrats hold in the House can easily vanish or double in size. However, both Democrats and Republicans will struggle to turn seats as gerrymandering begins to play an increasingly large role in congressional elections.

Most individuals are unfamiliar with the concept of gerrymandering and it’s through this lack of awareness that elections are wrested from the hands of the people. This process has held a large amount of power over our House election system for years, unbeknownst to most citizens. The New York Times defines gerrymandering as “a way that governing parties try to cement themselves in power by tilting the political map steeply in their favor. The goal is to draw boundaries of legislative districts so that as many seats as possible are likely to be won by the party’s candidates.” Each state is apportioned a certain number of seats in the House of Representatives based on its population. If states have more than one seat, they are split up into individual districts, each of which has its own representative. Citizens are able to vote for the candidates running for their district’s seat. Yet the boundaries of these districts are ever-changing. Every ten years, after the Census reveals changes in each state’s population, the map that defines the districts of each state is redrawn, a process known as redistricting. Gerrymandering is another process used by political parties to redraw the districts in certain states in a way that includes more people who typically vote for its candidates than those who vote for the opposite party’s. While dangerous and, in the opinions of some, crooked, gerrymandering can be a tool used to gain advantage in certain states in which parties hold much power.

Although both major parties have some influence in each state, redistricting is typically left up to state legislatures, which are overwhelmingly controlled by one party in many states.  For Democrats, this means that Illinois and Maryland will likely become their weapons; the same will be true with Texas and Florida for Republicans. In addition, both New York and Ohio will play an especially important role for both parties. Trifectas (in which the governor’s office, state Senate, and state House are held by the same party) are held in state legislatures by Democrats in New York and Republicans in Ohio, allowing them to create deeply gerrymandered maps. These states are where strategic redistricting could make up for the seat that they lost. For example, if the Democratic legislature in New York was to use its supermajority to replace the current 19D-8R map with the hypothetical 23D-3R map (below) that Dave Wasserman provided in a Tweet on April 27th, 2021, they could net four extra seats. A similar situation could occur in Ohio, giving parties leverage in the states they control. The question is: what are the strategies that parties can use to draw well-gerrymandered maps?

For Democrats, urban areas provide large amounts of votes whereas rural areas do the same for Republicans. Suburbs tend to go either blue or red depending on their location; most west coast and northeastern suburbs vote for Democrats while a large majority of midwestern and many southern areas vote for the GOP. This means that Democratic state legislatures will have to draw as many districts as possible that combine a populous urban area with large portions of rural areas while limiting solely rural and suburban districts. Republican legislatures must do the opposite: cracking (splitting up) urban areas into different districts and placing large numbers of rural communities in each while keeping districts that contain the whole of a large city to a minimum. 

These tactics will become crucial for Republicans to use in increasingly-Democratic Texas. The past few presidential elections have shown the margin of victory by Republican candidates in the Lone Star State decreasing as more people of color and college graduates migrate to its metropolitan cities. These individuals tend to vote Democratic, causing fear among Republicans as they lose their hold over the state with the second-largest population in the country. This will likely lead to the conservative trifecta held in the state legislature to begin breaking up these large cities in order to get as many right-wing candidates into office as possible. Texas holds a lot of power in the upcoming 2022 elections, especially after gaining not one but two extra seats. Gerrymandering in Texas alone has the power to flip the House, assuming most seat changes in other states cancel out. For example, if two currently Republican representatives in Michigan were replaced by Democrats but two Democratic seats went red in Colorado, there would be a net change in 0. If this situation, or a situation where the numbers are similar, were to occur across the country, then Texas would only need to flip about 6 seats for Republicans to gain control of the House. If Democrats want to remain in control, they will have to do their best to keep the gerrymandering in this state to a minimum while engineering strategic maps in others.

However, the GOP—and Democrats—should refrain from rejoicing just yet. In the last decade, many citizens have begun to revolt against gerrymandering, which they consider to be unfair and discriminatory. This has led multiple states, including Colorado, Ohio, Michigan, Utah, and Virginia, to adopt reforms to minimize partisan gerrymandering. Some states are handing the task of redistricting over to independent commissions and others are creating their own commissions composed of Republicans, Democrats, and independents. In 2011, both Wisconsin and Pennsylvania saw GOP trifectas, but with Democratic governors currently holding office, extreme right-wing gerrymandering may never see light. This is the same for Massachusetts, in which Democrats used to hold a trifecta but now face a Republican governor. These restrictions could simply mean that parties will look to other states to exercise their powers which may lead to gerrymandered maps only seen in redistricting experts’ nightmares.

Although a powerful tool, gerrymandering can be excessive and discriminatory. With an extremely slim majority held by Democrats in the House and seat apportionments being changed by the results of the 2020 Census, Republicans are rushing to flip as many seats as possible. This will potentially lead to both of the major political parties viciously fighting to redistrict their states as partisanly as possible, throwing the 2022 midterm elections into chaos. Until then, we will have to wait and watch as Republicans and Democrats gerrymander their way to the finish line

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