Surprise - redistricting after the 2020 census helped Democrats more than Republicans

David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report analyzed the midterm results, and concluded that Democrats may have benefitted more from redistricting than Republicans. Republicans definitely benefitted from gerrymandered districts in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas. An attempt to gerrymander New York was thrown out by that state's supreme Court. Were it not for these, the Democrats would have hung on to their House majority. However, Democratic losses were reduced by gerrymanders in Illinois, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, and North Carolina, which partially canceled Republican gains and contributed to the Republicans' razor-thin House majority.

The two parties took different approaches in states they controlled. Republicans went for fewer but safer districts, creating ones where the Republican candidate couldn't lose. The Democrats in contrast created more districts where they had a slimmer majority. In a Republican wave year, Wasserman concludes that they could have lost as many as 25 seats. Instead, the Democrats won 14 seats they would have lost without redistricting, and the Republicans won 13 seats they would have lost without redistricting, a net gain of one seat. Add the three seats the Democrats gained from districts shifting from one state to another, and it's clear that the Republican majority wasn't due to gerrymandering.

The Supreme Court put their stamp of approval on partisan gerrymandering in 2019 in [i]Rucho v. Common Cause[/i]. The conventional wisdom held that this would benefit Republicans; it's ironic that it had the opposite effect.

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