Why Republicans Love Gerrymandering

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)

We are nearly at the end of the redistricting cycle, which thanks to the Trump administration's inability to accurately conduct a census, is one of the longest in history.  Just a few states (Florida, Louisiana, New Hampshire, & Missouri) are still waiting on their maps, and only a couple more (specifically Ohio  & Kansas) seem likely to be upended in the coming months.  Redistricting has been a bit of a surprise for some who haven't been paying attention.  Despite having a "trifecta" in a number of states, Republicans in a few states didn't press their luck particularly hard.  If you're looking at gerrymandering as a zero-sum game (which you shouldn't-I want to be clear off-the-bat that gerrymandering is wrong, and is arguably the most dictatorial aspect of our government, and should be outlawed...saying that now so I don't forget to later as I discuss it more as a strategy than a morally bankrupt practice), there are definitely states that Republicans could've gone harder in.  It seems likely that Louisville, for example, will still have a Democrat representing it in Congress, as will (most likely) both sides of Kansas City when Republicans easily could've ended that practice.  This isn't to say that there won't be a number of deeply-gerrymandered seats (Texas & Georgia, for example, are gerrymandered to the hilt to protect Republican incumbents, and blue cities like Little Rock, Salt Lake City, & Nashville will be parceled off like strips of bacon to ensure they don't get the representatives they want), but 2020 was not as advantageous for Republicans as 2010 was.

It's worth noting that Democrats, though, were able to gerrymander more aggressively in 2020.  States like Oregon, New York & Illinois stand out as places where, even in a rough 2022 midterm, the Democrats are probably going to net seats this fall, and given the statewide margins of those states, the Democrats are going to disproportionately have a share of the seats.  Combine in judicial decisions in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and (most likely) Ohio that give Democrats a more even playing field in 2020, and you might be asking yourselves, "why don't Republicans try to ban gerrymandering?"

It's a good question, especially given the nature of the Republicans' conversations about gerrymandering in the past few months.  If you turn on Fox News, they'll act like Illinois & New York are basically the worst thing to ever happen to democracy, despite the fact that Republicans have consistently and effectively gerrymandered states for decades.  But no federal Republican has actually taken steps to end gerrymandering, despite multiple bills before the current Congress that would do so, and a pretty much open invitation from Pelosi/Schumer to join those bills.  Gerrymandering continues to be something only opposed (at least in terms of actual, tangible situations) by one party, the Democrats.

So the question is-why won't Republicans ban gerrymandering, particularly after seeing the problems it has caused for them this cycle?  The answer is pretty simple, even if deeply cynical: the current system is better than the alternative for the GOP.  And to understand that you have to realize two things: how a world where gerrymandering doesn't exist would look, and that gerrymandering can only do so much.

The first is simple-think of how gerrymandering works, and what would happen in a world where it didn't exist.  Let's take the 2020 presidential race for example.  Joe Biden won the popular vote in 2020 by 4.5-points.  That means, if you're redistricting, you should not try to reach parity between the two parties (since more people want the Democrats, there should be more seats that the Democrats won)-you should try to find a situation where the median (i.e. seat #218) seat in Congress is a seat that Biden won by 4.5 points.  In a truly even system, this is what would be achieved.

It is entirely possible that this is where this ultimately lands in 2022.  It is difficult to find a lot of data on this front both because not all maps are drawn & because most of the maps are very new, but based on some of the voices on Twitter I trust, it seems like +4.5 Biden for Seat #218 will roughly be where this lands.  Using Biden's margin is not perfect (House Democrats in 2020 actually significantly underperformed Biden, leading to at least a half dozen losses in places California, New York, Florida, & Texas that Democrats should've been able to pull off), but it gives you an indication of what parity might look like.

Hitting 4.5 points would be a big deal for House Democrats, and this gets to one of the reasons why Republicans don't support gerrymandering reform-because Democrats hitting 4.5 points is actually less about gerrymandering in their favor and more about reaching parity.  In 2020, the median seat in the House based on Biden/Trump numbers was IL-14, which was indeed won by a Democrat (Lauren Underwood).  However, the seat was only won by Joe Biden by 2.4 points, meaning that as a whole, the House seats were 2.1 points more favorable to Republicans than the national environment.

This is not unique to 2020.  In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by +1.9 points, indicating that seat #218 should've been a seat that Clinton won by roughly +1.9 points to be even, but instead the median seat was FL-25, which Clinton lost by 1.8 points, meaning that in 2016 the House was almost four points more conservative than the presidential election.  In 2012, Barack Obama won the popular vote by +3.9 points, but the median House seat was IL-13, a seat that Mitt Romney won by 0.3 points, meaning once again that the House was four points more conservative than the national average.

Under the current system, Republicans have a chance to best the system with gerrymandering, and even if they don't (which appears to be the case with 2020), the best Democrats seem to be able to reach is "running even" (a House map that was actually gerrymandered for the Democrats would have Seat #218 being a Biden +7 or 8, not +4.5 like the national average).  There is no political reason that Republicans shouldn't get behind a system where they aren't regularly favored (no Republican has won the national popular vote since 1988, and it's doubtful that they will be able to pull it off in the near future unless they can find a candidate that can appeal to both the Trump and Romney wings of the party), even though in 2020 it appears they couldn't game the system (and it's worth noting that maps in North Carolina & Ohio are temporary at best given state laws).  

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2012, when in a fair
system she likely would've reclaimed the majority

The other reason that they won't ban gerrymandering is that Republicans haven't really been truly hurt by it yet.  Similar to the electoral college in 2000 & 2016, only the Democrats have really felt the brunt of this problem (i.e. no Republican has lost the electoral college while taking the popular vote).  If you look at the national House vote, you'll find that gerrymandering can only do so much.  Most of the time, the national House vote is reflexive of who wins the majority (similar, to be fair, to the electoral college/popular vote), even if the margins may vary.  From 1992-2020 (the years the Democrats have won the popular vote consistently on a presidential level), gerrymandering couldn't withstand a wave.  Democrats still won the House in cycles like 2006 & 2018 despite a stacked House against them, and Republicans still took the House in 1994 even though most of their maps had been drawn by Democratic legislatures.  Only twice, in fact, did the national House popular vote not match the victors in the House, in 1996 & 2012...and in both cases it was the Democrats who came out on the short-end of the stick.

In 1996, thanks to the Clinton landslide, the Democrats took a plurality of the House vote, beating the Republicans by a marginal 0.3 points.  It's hard to say with a margin that small if it was gerrymandering, exactly, that caused it (it was maybe more geography, a conversation for a different day but a big one in this conversation given first-past-the-post winning is just as much a contributor to this system as gerrymandering).  2012, it's easier to say it.  Barack Obama won the presidency by almost 4-points, the House margin was +0.57 in their favor...logistically, Nancy Pelosi should've gotten to be Speaker and Obama would've gotten a second trifecta.  But Republican gerrymanders in places like Ohio, Florida, & North Carolina made that virtually impossible to achieve, and indeed the Democrats wouldn't be able to break that barrier until 2018 when they took the House margin by over 8-points.  Similar to how the electoral college cost the Democrats the White House in 2000 & 2016, in 1996 & 2012, it's probable that gerrymandering (to a degree) cost the Democrats two more congressional sessions with the Speaker's gavel.

All of this is to say, the Republicans are getting their hypocrisy fed to them this year-it is probable that seats in New York, Illinois, & Oregon that would've gone red in a "non-gerrymandered" map will go blue in November thanks to surgical precision by the state legislatures.  But Republicans are never going to back gerrymandering reform because they haven't truly faced the brunt of the cost of it yet.  Republicans are still heavily favored to win the House in 2022 (they'll likely win the national House vote as well), and it's unlikely we're going to see a repeat of 1996 or 2012 in the near future that hurts the Republicans more than the Democrats.  If we want to get rid of gerrymandering on a national level, despite how much they complain, the GOP is not going to be a part of that equation because they have too much to lose.