GOP Could Retake US House In 2022, Just By Gerrymandering 4 Southern States

[appalachiablue]

- A new study finds that Republicans could gain up to 13 seats in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas. - By Ari Berman, Mother Jones, July 29, 2021. - Ed.

Before Georgia voted for Joe Biden, the biggest upset in recent state politics came when Democrat Lucy McBath became the first Black person to represent Newt Gingrich’s former congressional district. Georgia’s 6th District, home to the affluent northern suburbs of Atlanta, was long a bastion of deep-red Republicanism, represented by Gingrich for 20 years. But that changed in 2018, when college-educated white voters shifted their allegiance to the Democrats and joined with an influx of Black, Latino, and Asian Americans who’d moved to the suburbs.

They teamed up to elect McBath, a political novice who had turned to activism after her 17-year-old son, Jordan Davis, was murdered by a white man in Florida in 2012, and decided to run for Congress after the Parkland high school shooting in early 2018. “The work was calling me,” she told Mother Jones that year. McBath’s victory, which helped Democrats retake the House of Representatives, exemplified Democratic inroads in formerly red states like Georgia and the new power being exercised by communities of color in fast-diversifying Southern states.

But those gains could quickly be wiped away—and districts like McBath’s eliminated—by GOP dominance of the next redistricting cycle, which will begin when the Census Bureau releases nationwide demographic data by August 16. Republicans could pick up anywhere from 6 to 13 seats in the House of Representatives—enough to retake the House in 2022—through its control of the redistricting process in Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, and Texas alone, according to a new analysis by the Democratic data firm TargetSmart that was shared exclusively with Mother Jones. Republicans need to gain just 5 seats to regain control of the House.

The Republican redistricting advantage goes far beyond those 4 states: They’ll be able to draw 187 congressional districts, compared to 75 for Democrats. (The rest will be drawn by independent commissions or divided state governments.) But those states are at the highest risk of extreme gerrymandering, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, and they have 94 seats, roughly a 5th of the House. Republicans could draw as many as 5 new GOP congressional districts in Florida alone, giving them control of the House by redrawing maps in just one state...

Read More,
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/07/gop-could-retake-the-house-in-2022-just-by-gerrymandering-four-southern-states/

[msongs]

1. too bad prominent dems approve of repubs use of the filibuster eh nt

[PortTack]

2. The article fails to mention that IL, NY, CA and I believe one other state that lost a seat will

Lose a gop seat.

It was posted here a few weeks ago....can’t bookmark every article

[appalachiablue]

3. Thanks for the info.

[moose65]

4. West Virginia

All of their reps are Republicans, so that’s a guaranteed loss. How sad 🙄

[moose65]

5. Why oh why oh why

I have posted about this before, and no one seems to be able to figure out WHY we don’t push to add more seats to the House. The size hasn’t changed in over 100 years. The House had 435 seats in 1912, and still has that number today. Ridiculous.

The population has tripled since then. Women could not vote in every state at that point, and most African-Americans and Native Americans were disenfranchised. New Mexico, Arizona, Alaska, and Hawaii weren’t states yet. The average size of a House district is now well over 700,000 people.

At a time when Republicans have a built-in advantage in the Senate and at the Presidential level, we need to take back the one house that is based on population. The gerrymandering has gotten so out of hand and needs to be stopped.

At the very least, there needs to be a law that states don’t lose representation unless they’ve actually lost population. California and New York are still under-represented, and both states are losing seats because their populations didn’t grow as fast as other states.

[lees1975]

6. It would be a very difficult job now

to draw districts in those four states that would have enough of a Republican margin to gain that many seats. All four of them have seen their GOP margins take a nosedive, and the way the population is distributed, especially in Texas, Georgia and Florida, will make it next to impossible to draw districts that will pass court muster. The cities are still Democratic strongholds but in those three states, the suburbs are as well. Counties in Georgia that used to be lily white and bright red, in Atlanta metro, are the places where the vote totals pushed Biden, Ossoff and Warnock over the top.

In Texas, the surge in population has been around Austin, San Antonio and in the Rio Grande Valley which will almost certainly lead to at least one more Democratic majority district, especially if Democrats play it smart and get their voter turnout there back up to where it was in 2016. The inmigration population in all four states is more Democrat than Republican.

But I'd suggest that if courts are reluctant to step into some of these places, the Democrats can get another two dozen seats by drawing all the Republican seats out of California, Washington, New York and New England.

[FBaggins]

7. California and New York have independent redistricting commissions

There's no way that we pick up dozens of seats by redrawing those lines.

It's likely that the seats lost by both states will be republicans... but a substantial change beyond that is unlikey.