Redistricting, partisan balance and voter turnout
U.S. House district lines will shift again in as many as a dozen states before the next general election. The fight, writes Ron Brownstein, resembles teams “changing the dimensions of the playing field even after the game is underway.” In the last two elections, both major parties managed thin five-seat majorities (CNN):
While it’s not likely that all of these states will ultimately draw new lines, a combination of state and federal lawsuits and shifts in the balance of power in state legislatures and courts virtually ensure that an unusually large number of districts may look different in 2024 than they did in 2022, with huge implications for control of the House. “It’s just trench warfare back and forth,” says Kelly Burton, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, the leading Democratic group involved in congressional redistricting.
The possibility that so many states could still reconfigure their House districts reflects the uncertainty looming over the political system as the Supreme Court considers momentous cases that will shape the future of voting rights challenges to congressional maps and the authority of state supreme courts to police partisan gerrymandering. “We are kind of all in a holding pattern until we determine what the Supreme Court does in those two cases,” said Nick Seabrook, a University of North Florida political scientist and author of two books on the history of gerrymandering.
Equally important, though, may be the growing determination of each party to scratch out every potential edge in the achingly tight battle for control of the House – an attitude that has encouraged both sides to fight in ways that neither even contemplated not too long ago. “What’s happened is politics has gotten more competitive and closer, and the stakes are higher for all these constituents, all the old norms have just eroded,” said former Republican Rep. Tom Davis, who served as chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee. “There are no rules anymore … and might makes right.”
One of those “momentous cases” the U.S. Supreme Court will decide is from North Carolina: Moore v. Harper. The “independent state legislature theory,” Republicans posit, argues that courts may not review the legislature’s redistricting and election law decisions regarding federal elections even if the state’s constitution demands fair districts and equal voting access.
As I’ve noted before, Democrats and Republicans in North Carolina spent the teens litigating and relitigating the maps Republicans drew after the 2010 census. I voted in NC-10 in the 2016 primary and in NC-11 in November that year. In between, the district line flipped over my house from the ridgeline to the west to the ridgeline to my east. Voter confusion ensued locally and elsewhere.
Courts forced Republicans into accepting a balanced map drawn by a Special Master that allowed Democrats in 2022 to win seven of North Carolina’s 14 congressional seats. But for 2022 only (map at top). Democrats last November lost their majority in the state Supreme Court. The new GOP majority inevitably will rule on redrawn district lines the GOP-led general assembly could design to tip the balance 10-4 for Republicans in the state that went 50-49 for Trump in 2020.
Brownstein describes what that could look like:
[L]ocal observers expect the GOP legislature (which has already petitioned the new court to overturn its earlier rulings) to impose a map that puts the GOP in position to win at least 10, and maybe 11, seats. “The Republicans will go as extreme as they can,” said Michael Bitzer, chair of the politics department at Catawba College who writes a blog on North Carolina politics. “That would result in a swing of 4 seats to the Republicans in just this state.”
Then there is Ohio. A similar ideological shift in the state Supreme Court there could allow Republicans to expand their current 10-5 congressional split.
Kyle Kondik, managing editor for the Sabato’s Crystal Ball, projects Republicans could gain as many as six seats just from these two states.
Against those nearly certain gains for the GOP in the re-redistricting process, the largest group of Democratic opportunities revolves around lawsuits under the Voting Rights Act challenging Republican gerrymanders. If Democrats and civil rights groups win those cases, Louisiana, Georgia and Alabama would be required to create one more district each favoring a Black candidate, and Texas could be required to create three districts or more favoring minority candidates.
Lower courts have already ruled for the Democrats in the first three states. But the Georgia court did not order a new map, and in Alabama and Louisiana, the US Supreme Court blocked the lower court rulings and allowed the states to vote in 2022 under the disputed lines on the grounds that it was too close to the election to change them. Those rulings likely netted Republicans three seats in the 2022 election.
“Too close to the election” decisions have worked for Republicans before. Watch for them once again to butt state and federal mapping fights up against 2024 filing deadlines. For those wondering why North Carolina Democrats including Cheri Beasley fared more poorly than Democrats in other states last November, districting uncertainty (combined with Democrats’ fecklessness in recruiting) meant Democrats in 2022 left 14 of 50 state Senate seats and 30 of 120 state House seats uncontested. Democrats in those districts had no state legislative Democrats to turn out for.
Brownstein has a lot more to say.