A New York Times analysis shows new maps stifled partisan competition for seats in the House of Representatives and state legislatures.
Competition is an endangered species in legislative elections.
A New York Times analysis of the nearly 6,000 congressional and state legislative elections in November shows just how few races were true races. Nearly all either were dominated by an incumbent or played out in a district drawn to favor one party overwhelmingly. The result was a blizzard of blowouts, even in a country that is narrowly divided on politics.
Just 8 percent of congressional races (36 of 435) and 7 percent of state legislative races (400 of 5,465) were decided by fewer than five percentage points, according to The Times’s analysis.
Consequences from the death of competition are readily apparent. Roughly 90 percent of races are now decided not by general-election voters in November but by the partisans who tend to vote in primaries months earlier. That favors candidates who appeal to ideological voters and lawmakers who are less likely to compromise. It exacerbates the polarization that has led to deadlock in Congress and in statehouses.
“Because of partisan and racial gerrymandering, you end up with these skewed results and legislative bodies that don’t necessarily reflect the political makeup of either the states or, writ large, the House of Representatives representing the political desires of the American people,” said Eric H. Holder Jr., the attorney general in the Obama administration who, as chair of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, has criticized the mapmaking process and at times even called out his own party’s redistricting practices.
In 2020, the last time that once-a-decade national exercise took place, both parties largely followed a similar strategy. Their maps typically made districts safer by stocking them with voters from one party, rather than breaking them up in an effort to pick up seats. Republicans, as the party in control of the process in more states, drew more of these slanted districts than Democrats.
Other factors have contributed to vanishing competition, including demographic shifts and “political sorting” — the tendency of like-minded citizens to live in the same community. But the role of redistricting is evident when zooming in on a single state.