‘Taking the Voters Out of the Equation’: How the Parties Are Killing Competition – The New York Times

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“The parties are contributing to more and more single-party districts and taking the voters out of the equation,” said former Representative Tom Davis, who led the House Republicans’ campaign arm during the 2001 redistricting cycle. “November becomes a constitutional formality.”

In the 29 states where maps have been completed and not thrown out by courts, there are just 22 districts that either Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump won by five percentage points or less, according to data from the Brennan Center for Justice, a research institute.

By this point in the 2012 redistricting cycle, there were 44 districts defined as competitive based on the previous presidential election results. In the 1992 election, the margin between Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush was within five points in 108 congressional districts.

The phenomenon of parties using redistricting to gain an edge is as old as the republic itself, but it has escalated in recent decades with more sophisticated technology and more detailed data about voter behavior. Americans with similar political views have clustered in distinct areas — Republicans in rural and exurban areas, Democrats in cities and inner suburbs. It’s a pattern that can make it difficult to draw cohesive, competitive districts.

No state has quashed competition ahead of the midterm elections like Texas. In the 2020 election, there were 12 competitive districts in the state. After redistricting, there is only one.

Though Mr. Trump won 52 percent of the vote in Texas in 2020, Republicans are expected to win roughly 65 percent — 24 of the state’s 38 congressional seats. (Texas gained two seats in the reapportionment after the 2020 census.)

The Texas state legislators who control redistricting shored up Republican incumbents including Representatives Dan Crenshaw, Beth Van Duyne and Michael McCaul, but in doing so also drew safer districts for Democrats such as Representatives Colin Allred and Lizzie Fletcher.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/06/us/politics/redistricting-competition-midterms.html

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