Lawmakers in nine states have scrambled to redraw congressional district lines since 2024, seeking to give their parties an edge in the race for the House. But the redistricting wars are not as fierce as they could be. Both parties are far from drawing the most ruthless gerrymanders they can. What would the House map look like if the cartographical arms race continued unchecked?
It’s possible to imagine nearly three dozen states redrawing their congressional lines by 2030. That would reshape the battleground for House control, though not in the way some Democrats fear. It’s unlikely that Republicans would be able to construct for themselves a large, permanent structural advantage in House elections.
If both parties maxed out all the gerrymandering opportunities before them, the number of Democrats and Republicans sent to Congress might not change much. The number of competitive districts, however, would shrink to a mere handful. That would change American politics radically — and for the worse.
This maximalist gerrymandering scenario probably will not occur exactly as I have laid it out. But thinking it through shows that each party is capable of countering the other’s moves; neither is likely to guarantee itself a majority through redistricting alone.
The exercise also shows what’s really at stake. The more gerrymandering that occurs, the fewer swing districts will be left. That would be bad for American democracy.
The number of competitive House seats has been declining for a while. In 1992, the presidential vote margin in about 125 House districts was within six points. In 2008, that was true of around 75 districts. A national House map with only 17 swing seats would be an extreme low point. Some 13 million residents of those 17 districts would decide which party controls the House for all 340 million Americans, giving those voters far more of a say than the rest of us. In presidential elections, candidates scramble to promise ethanol subsidies in Iowa and heating oil aid in New Hampshire. In the race for the House, too, the parochial concerns of a narrow group of voters would take on exaggerated importance in national politics.
The House would also become less responsive to changes in public opinion. Even huge swings in voter sentiment would translate into few members of Congress losing their jobs. When President Trump was unpopular in 2018, Republicans lost 40 seats in the House; when Barack Obama was unpopular in 2010, Democrats lost 63. With hyper-gerrymandered maps, those kinds of swings would be nearly impossible, making it much harder for voters to send messages to the party in power.
Even if congressional leaders wanted to respond to voter concerns, they would have a hard time mustering the votes, because House majorities would become permanently narrow. The House’s makeup would fluctuate, but it would always include roughly 213 to 230 Republicans and 205 to 222 Democrats.
The country has seen narrow House majorities in action since 2023, and they have been chaotic. Republican renegades ousted one speaker and shut down the chamber for weeks as they negotiated the selection of another. Speaker Mike Johnson has struggled to push through federal budget funding bills and other critical measures over the opposition of his party’s right flank.
Fewer swing seats would probably also lead to the election of more dogmatic politicians. The rise in the number of seats that are safe for one party would result in more House races that are effectively decided at the primary stage, rather than in the general election.
Primaries have lower turnout and draw a more ideologically extreme electorate than general elections. In recent primaries, MAGA Republicans aligned with Mr. Trump have tended to beat old-school G.O.P. pragmatists. To a lesser extent, Democrats have also started to nominate candidates who are more confrontational, more progressive or both. In a world of maximum redistricting, moderate members of Congress — already an endangered species — would go nearly extinct.
So all but eliminating competitive House elections would be undemocratic and would worsen congressional gridlock. These effects would, in turn, threaten the legitimacy of America’s democratic system. Polls show that more than half of Americans already believe democracy is not working; an unrestrained gerrymandering scramble would deepen this crisis of faith.
When he started this year’s redistricting fight, Mr. Trump might not have understood or cared about how it might harm the nation’s politics. He just sought to tilt House maps to his party’s advantage. But pursuing this goal ultimately won’t yield either party much more than it already has. It will just make American politics more dysfunctional.
Nathaniel Rakich is the managing editor of Votebeat, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news site that covers election administration and democracy.
Graphics by Jeremy Ashkenas and Gus Wezerek.
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