The Economist February 12th 2022 17
United StatesCongressionalredistricting
Another round of election-rigging
T
he promiseof democracy is a system
where leaders represent their voters,
and where those voters can throw them
out. But in America, the reverse can also be
true: politicians in many states can choose
which voters represent them. The consti-
tution delegated the power of drawing the
boundaries of electoral districts to state
legislators; many abuse this power and
“gerrymander” districts in their party’s fa-
vour. Citizens in some states have amend-
ed their laws to give watchdog powers to
the judiciary or require plans to be ap-
proved by an independent third party. But
most Americans still live in states where
politicians are incentivised to rig elections
by drawing biased maps.
Because Republicans have lately con-
trolled more state governments than
Democrats, they have tended to do better
in congressional redistricting. After re-
drawing maps in 2010, the Republicans lost
the popular vote for the House of Repre-
sentatives but still won a majority of its
seats. In the national popular vote in 2012,
Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate,
lost to Barack Obama by 3.9 percentage
points. But in the median House district—
ranked by that year’s presidential results—
it was Mr Romney who edged out Mr Oba-
ma by 0.3 points. In an equal system, those
numbers should roughly match. In fact the
House was biased against Democrats by
four points in 2012, and again in 2016. In
2020 the median district was biased
against Joe Biden by two points.
But in 2022, after states redraw their
congressional lines according to new pop-ulation estimates from the 2020 census,
this bias is almost certain to be much clos-
er to zero. Democrats have made surprising
gains in the redistricting process. Three
main reasons explain their success.
One is gerrymandering of their own. Al-
though Republicans have been notorious
for abusing the process over the past de-
cade, Democrats have caught on. Consider
the new congressional map in New York,
which Democrats have just signed into law.
According to analysis by The Economistof
election-results data collected by Five-
ThirtyEight, a data-journalism website, the
state’s previous plan contained 18 districts
where the average vote-share for Demo-
cratic presidential candidates over the past
two contests was higher than the Republi-
cans’. The new plan has 22.
The story is similar in New Mexico.
Democrats control the state government
there, too. Whereas the state’s previous
congressional districts comprised one
heavily Republican seat and two Demo-
cratic strongholds, lawmakers have re-
jigged the boundaries so that all now lean
towards the Democrats.
That brings the Democrats’ net gains
from redistricting in New York and New
Mexico to five seats. Add to that the chang-
es in Oregon and Illinois—blue states with
minimal third-party oversight over redis-
tricting—and the party comes out with an
expected ten seats more than in 2020.
The Democrats have also benefitedWASHINGTON, DC
Democrats have fared surprisingly well in Congress’s new maps. But the
boundaries still favour Republicans
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