Congressional Redistricting Forecast
2010 Congressional Redistricting Forecast
Overview
In the year following the decennial census, states redraw their legislative districts in order to balance their populations to ensure all people have equal representation. This mechanical-sounding adjustment is required by the federal constitution, but much more takes place. Party leaders can use redistricting as an opportunity to help their incumbents win reelection by swapping undesirable constituents with those more favorable to the party, they can attempt to expand their majorities by creating new districts that their party may win, and they can wreak havoc on their opponents by grouping their incumbents together and diminishing their reelection chances by manipulating their constituencies. These redistricting strategies have a special name, gerrymandering.
The 2010 midterm elections are important not only for who will control offices until the next election, but also because 2011 is a redistricting year. Republicans are poised to gain a substantial number of seats in the House of Representatives and control of a number of governor and state legislative chambers in the 2010 midterm elections.
It is true that winning seats and control of the redistricting process can be beneficial to a party. However, close examination of the three-dimensional chess game that is apportionment, redistricting, and the 2010 elections suggests that Republican have a limited upside to redistricting beyond the congressional seats they gained in 2010.
In winning control of the House of Representatives, they did so in large part by sweeping elections in large battleground states like Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, states that Republicans also won control of the state government and the redistricting process. Republicans will need to defend their newly elected freshman, and here is their dilemma. To protect their freshmen, they will want to add Republican voters to their districts, but the supply will be short since Republicans will have won all of the competitive congressional districts in these states. Further complicating matters is that elections have become volatile since 2004; the margin of what is considered a safe district has increased. All incumbents will pressure their party leadership to beef up their districts with more red meat supporters. The upside to creating more Republican districts through redistricting beyond those they won in 2010 is limited. The irony is that Republicans would have been better off if they won control of the House of Representatives with narrower margins in these states so that they did not have to spread too many Republicans among too many districts to protect many vulnerable freshmen during redistricting.
In states like Georgia and Texas, where Republicans will likely control the process and seemingly have a lot of power, they already hold near the maximum number of congressional seats they can expect to win, as the remainder are mostly voting rights districts. At best, Republicans may be able to craft new districts gained through apportionment to their favor.
Important Questions to be Addressed
How will the 2010 midterm elections affect the impending congressional redistricting? There are several puzzle pieces that must be fit together to answer this question:
What will be the distribution of congressional seats to the states following the next apportionment? The Census Bureau announced the number of congressional seats awarded to each state.
What is a state's redistricting process? States determine who draws the lines in their state. Eight states use commissions for congressional redistricting either in an advisory role to the legislature or as the sole redistricting authority. The number of commission states will increase to nine if California voters adopt Proposition 20 in the general election (a Sept. 22 PPP poll has Prop. 20 leading 40% to 16%). All remaining states except one uses the regular legislative process. In North Carolina, the legislature has sole authority without a role for the governor. For insights, see the descriptions provided under this website's state redistricting resources and the Brennan Center's Citizen's Guide to Redistricting .
All states are required to balance their districts' populations. If a state does not produce a redistricting plan, one will be provided by a court of law.
An important process issue that deserves special mention is the Voting Rights Act, which requires the creation under special circumstances of Democratic-tending minority majority districts (except for Republican-leaning Cuban-American majority districts in Florida). There are two provisions, Section 5 and Section 2.
States covered by Section 5 - primarily those in the South - are required to draw the same number of minority majority congressional districts as found in the current redistricting plan.
All states are covered by Section 2 and may need to draw districts if three conditions are met. This may mean, for example, if a state gains a congressional district as a consequence of increasing Latino populations, that state may be required to create a new congressional district for the Latino community. These three conditions are:
A minority community it large and compact enough to draw a district around.
Minorities vote cohesively for their candidate of choice.
Whites vote cohesively against the minority-preferred candidate.
Who will control a state's redistricting process? The map above identifies who will control the congressional redistricting process in each state based on an analysis of the redistricting process. The National Conference of State Legislatures maintains an excellent web page -- State Vote 2010 -- that reports the partisan composition of each state's legislature and the party affiliation of the governor.
Finally, an intangible factor will be party leaders' redistricting strategies. Pennsylvania Republicans and Georgia Democrats learned the hard way earlier this decade that cutting their districts' margins too thin provided opportunities for the other party to win seats. Given the volatility in recent elections, party leaders may take a risk-adverse gerrymandering approach that favors creating safer districts over creating more opportunities for their candidates to win. Republicans may particularly be faced with this dilemma in order to protect their freshmen elected in the 2010 elections.