As we’ve discussed, the redistricting season officially kicked off with the release of detailed population data from the Census Bureau last Thursday.
The data are used to redraw voting districts nationwide, which will help determine control of the House in the 2022 elections and potentially provide an electoral edge for the next decade, says The Associated Press.
The census data show which counties, cities, and neighborhoods gained or lost the most people in the 2020 census. That serves as the foundation for redrawing House districts as well as 7,383 state legislative districts across the country. The official goal is to ensure that each district has roughly the same number of people.
Republicans need to gain just five seats to take control of the House in the 2022 elections, "a margin that could potentially be covered through artful redistricting,” says AP.
“Redistricting really is the ballgame this cycle in the House,” says David Wasserman, an analyst for congressional races at The Cook Political Report. “Even tiny changes to district lines could have huge implications that tip the balance of power in the House.”
This “artful” map redrawing — known as gerrymandering —is aimed to "maximize one party’s seat share given their vote share," says Devin Caughey, a political scientist at MIT and the lead author of “Partisan Gerrymandering and the Political Process.” "The means to this end is drawing districts that waste as many votes for the opposing party as possible, while wasting as few votes as possible for one’s own party.”
Lawmakers in large swaths of rural America and some Rust Belt cities where the population has declined are potential targets for map makers — and possibly vulnerable to job loss — as their districts are redrawn in the coming months, says a separate AP article.
The website FiveThirtyEight is providing an updating tracker of proposed congressional maps — and whether they might benefit Democrats or Republicans in the 2022 midterms and beyond.
Here is more on redistricting, from Ballotpedia.
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