Gerrymandering

Gerrymandering, or the act of drawing political boundaries to give your party a numeric advantage over an opposing party (as defined by Christopher Ingraham for the Washington Post), can be likened to a legal way of stealing an election. By analyzing the voters in a state, politicians can change the boundaries of the state’s congressional districts in order to achieve a favored outcome. For example, if there is a group of strong democrats all located in a similar geographic region, politicians can gerrymander by drawing district boundaries in such a way that splits up this democratic center and groups them with a stronger Republican area – even if the district lines make no logical sense – so that the seat ends up going to a Republican candidate.

In states with these arguably unfair districts, the share of House seats that end up with each party may very likely differ from what the results of a popular vote would predict. Gerrymandering is anti-democratic in that it diminishes voter power by creating outcomes that are not aligned with voter preferences. While redistricting itself is important to the democratic process and representing voters, when the power of redistricting is left to politicians they can essentially pick and choose their voters.

Every 10 years when Census numbers are released, the districts are redrawn. This took place in 2011, following the 2010 midterm election when President Obama led the Democratic Party in the White House. Republicans worked to redistrict the map in a way that would give them more power in the following elections. In order to assess whether their gerrymandering efforts were successful, I have analyzed both vote share margin by party and seat share by party across the country to see how the two compare. I chose to look specifically at 2010 and 2012, since the 2010 election used the old districts and the 2012 election was the first election with the new districts. In a state where gerrymandering was used, we would expect to see a party’s seat share be greater than the vote share margin; where the popular vote percentage does not translate into House seats.

Below are two maps plotting from 2010, with the first showing the GOP vote share margin and the second showing the GOP seat share.

In comparing the two maps from 2010 side by side, we can see that while the GOP vote share margin map does not look particularly red, the GOP seat share map is much darker. This shows us that despite Republicans not receiving an overwhelming number of votes in the 2010 election, they were still able to capture a large number of House seats. Looking at the data more quantitatively, we find that Republicans in 2010 won an additional 63 seats in the House, giving them a total of 242, and won the popular vote by 6.8%. These were the results before the redistricting.

Now looking at the two maps from 2012, we see essentially the same pattern: the map of vote share margin for Republicans is not overwhelmingly red, while the seat share map is heavily red, specifically in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions. In this election – the first since the new districts – Republicans actually ended up losing 7 seats, bringing them down to 233. While my initial expectations from gerrymandering would have led me to predict Republicans would win even more seats, I will also acknowledge that I am not very familiar with the political mood at the time. Were Republicans expected to lose even more seats had they not redistricted? It is also important to note that these tactics are not solely used by Republicans, but Democrats as well. While in the past decade we have seen the effects of gerrymandering mainly benefiting the Republican party, it is still used by Democrats to gain an advantage in states like Maryland (Kirschenbaum & Li, 2021).

Disproportionately, the costs of gerrymandering are “borne by communities of color” with the Supreme Court’s 2019 ruling in Rucho v. Common Cause allowing maps to discriminate against a political party (Democrats), despite the correlation of party with race (Kirschenbaum & Li, 2021). After the 2020 Census report, again politicians were brought in to fix the maps and redistrict. The results of the most recent redistricting will be revealed in this upcoming 2022 election, and will impact the outcomes of elections for the next 10 years. The people in charge of creating these districts need checks and balances in place to ensure that democracy persists and the maps are representative of the voters.

Sources:

Kirschenbaum, Julia, and Michael Li. “Gerrymandering Explained.” Brennan Center for Justice, 11 Aug. 2022, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/gerrymandering-explained.

Ingraham, Christopher. “This Is the Best Explanation of Gerrymandering You Will Ever See.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 25 Nov. 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/01/this-is-the-best-explanation-of-gerrymandering-you-will-ever-see/.

https://guides.library.harvard.edu/hks/campaigns_elections%3E