July 12, 2022

How Redistricting Gives Republicans New Political Power GOP will start the decade with a higher base of safe House seats than Democrats

 WALL ST JOURNAL


By Stephanie Stamm and Chad Day

Republicans are favored to take control of the House in this year’s midterm elections, and redistricting has given them a built-in advantage that could span the next 10 years.

The GOP is expected to net a handful of seats based solely on new district lines drawn to reflect population changes captured by the 2020 census. Perhaps more important, the party will start with a larger base of safe seats than Democrats. Such an advantage, which could stretch over the next five election cycles if the new maps survive court challenges and the country’s political polarization remains largely unchanged, will allow the Republican Party to direct more resources at fewer seats in seeking a majority. It will also make the party less vulnerable to suffering a large loss of seats in a single election.

Based on each district’s partisan voter index, or PVI, 143 seats now heavily favor Republicans, up from 128 under the previous maps, while 127 seats heavily favor Democrats, up from 123. The PVI is a measurement developed by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report that reflects the partisan lean of a congressional district based on how it voted in the past two presidential elections compared with the nation as a whole.

MORE DEMOCRATIC THAN NATION

MORE REPUBLICAN THAN NATION

By >10 pts.

5–10

1–4

1–4

5–10

By >10 pts.

OLD DISTRICT

LINES

123

40

40

30

68

128

6

+4

+15

NEW DISTRICT

LINES

127

32

51

28

50

143

4

Majority

Factoring in an electorate largely dissatisfied with President Biden, high inflation and the direction of the country, several nonpartisan election forecasts indicate that the GOP could gain upward of 20 seats in November. Many of those forecasts were before the Supreme Court’s decision to do away with the constitutional right to abortion. It can’t yet be determined whether that move will energize Democratic voters and provide a counterbalance to GOP tailwinds.


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Democrats will be defending more districts that are either now tilted toward Republicans or considered highly competitive this fall. Thirty-seven districts held by Democrats are rated by Cook to be either a tossup or favoring Republicans, compared with only 10 GOP-held seats rated as tossups or favoring the opposing party. Two of those Democratic seats are rated in Cook’s solid-Republican category, while no GOP seats are rated as solid-Democrat.

Competitive races

13

LIKELY DEMOCRAT

12

LEAN DEMOCRAT

33

TOSSUP

11

LEAN REPUBLICAN

12

LIKELY REPUBLICAN

As the U.S. has become more polarized and redistricting has cut down on the number of competitive districts, the number of split districts, where the winning House candidate’s party was different from that of the presidential candidate who carried the district, has also dwindled in recent years. The 16 split districts under the old maps in 2020 were the fewest since at least 1992.

While the number of split districts increased in redistricting, that number is only temporary. Ten of the seats are rated as tossups by Cook. Republicans are favored in all of the other Democratic-held split seats. Only one Republican-held split seat is rated as favoring Democrats.

Split districts by party

Republican

Democrat

103

112

total

25 split after

redistricting

2000

2022

2014

1992

1994

1996

1998

2002

2004

2006

2008

2010

2012

2016

2018

2020

Sources: Cook Political Report (House seat ratings and PVI); U.S. House Office of the Clerk; Polidata

Methodology: To track the change in political composition of House seats owing to redistricting, The Wall Street Journal relied on several data sources. Incumbent vote share values are from the Associated Press. Partisan voter index values and House seat ratings as of June 29 are from the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. Data from Polidata and the U.S. House Office of the Clerk was also used to chart split districts back to 1992. Presidential vote by congressional district was calculated by The Wall Street Journal using precinct election results from the Voting and Election Science Team via Harvard Dataverse; old district boundaries from the Census Bureau except for North Carolina, which came from the state legislature: and new boundaries from state legislatures and redistricting commissions. The shift for each district was calculated after connecting each new district to an old district based on the incumbent. In cases in which two incumbents are running in the same district, the incumbent with a historical tie to the district took precedence. In open seats, districts were connected based on geography. Eleven districts aren’t shown on the scatter plots because they are either newly created or don’t have a clear prior district.