In most US states, this process is controlled by the majority party in the state legislature. Partisan gerrymandering occurs when this map-drawing process is intentionally used to benefit a particular political party — to help that party win more seats, or more easily protect the ones it has. The goal is to create many districts that will elect members of one party, and only a few that will elect members of the opposite party.
Not a single seat flipped. Gerrymandering can affect any legislative body that has to have districts drawn — which includes both the US House of Representatives, and every state legislature. Both parties have tended to do it when the opportunities arise.
And since political power is at stake, fights over redistricting are often quite intense. The term gerrymandering is also sometimes used to describe somewhat different redistricting scenarios. Racial gerrymandering can mean the dilution of the voting power of certain racial or demographic groups, which is usually entangled with seeking partisan advantage.
And a bipartisan gerrymander is a redistricting meant to protect incumbents of both parties. The story of how gerrymandering got its name is actually pretty interesting. House of Representatives during the , , and elections. That means that every other November, 59 politicians that would not have been elected based on statewide voter support for their party won anyway because the lines were drawn in their favor—often by their allies in the Republican or Democratic Party. To help put this number in perspective, a shift of 59 seats is slightly more than the total number of seats apportioned to the 22 smallest states by population.
Of the 59 seats that were shifted per election due to partisan gerrymandering, 20 shifted in favor of Democrats while 39 shifted in favor of Republicans. This means that from to , the net two-party impact amounted to an average gain of 19 Republican seats per election, which is still more than the number of seats in a dozen U.
One can also look at the effects of gerrymandering in terms of population. The average congressional district has a population of slightly more than , , which means that a total shift of 59 seats is equivalent to representation for approximately 42 million Americans. Moreover, the 19 net seats Republicans gained are equivalent to representation for about The inescapable conclusion is that gerrymandering is effectively disenfranchising millions of Americans.
This should be considered a critical situation. If the voters of even one of the states above were excluded from the count, there would be a national outcry; with a net impact equivalent to the exclusion of 12 states, the urgent need to address gerrymandering should be clear.
But the number of competitive House districts would shrink from 21 to 18 under the Democratic plan and 21 to 15 under the GOP plan. VPAP defined a competitive district as one with no more than a point advantage for either party, again using the presidential election as a baseline.
The commission is required under state law to submit a single set of maps to the General Assembly by Oct. All 50 states are engaged in redistricting after the release of census data earlier this year, but Virginia is one of several doing so under newly created commissions.
Other states with new redistricting commissions are also struggling to purge partisan politics from the process. Sections U. Science Technology Business U. Bipartisan redistricting panel starts off with partisan maps.
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