Great, Now the House is Going to be Biased Too
The structural biases of American politics just got a little worse
I’ve written previously about the structural disadvantages Democrats are facing in the Senate. But I haven’t talked about the House of Representatives.
That’s because until recently, I didn’t think the House would be particularly biased towards Republicans. It even looked like redistricting might favor Democrats – that there might be more than 218 Democrats running in seats where Biden’s 2020 margin was greater than his margin in the national popular vote (4.5%).
This projection of how redistricting might shake out (explained at the Data for Progress blog by Joel Wertheimer) pointed to a different reality than the one Democrats were living in last decade. After the cataclysmic 2010 midterms gave Republicans wide latitude to draw maps for the 2010s, Democrats faced serious structural disadvantage in the chamber.1 So in an election cycle that’s looking gloomy for Democrats, redistricting was looking like the lone bright spot.
Until now, that is.
New York and New Jersey Democrats – Do Better, Please
A few months ago, the New York State legislature ratified a new congressional map for the state. The map was designed to take out as many Republican incumbents as possible, while maintaining the security of Democratic incumbents, and it looked like it was going to do a great job. Independent analysts projected a 4 or 5 seat Democratic pick up.
Meanwhile, Democrats in New Jersey were busy gerrymandering as well. Their map looked like it would result in ~2 additional Democratic seats in 2022 in comparison to the current map.
Then, this week, two unfortunate things happened. The first was that, in a 4-3 decision, the New York State Court of Appeals (the state’s highest court) struck down the legislature’s map, and ordered that a non-partisan “special master” redraw the lines in preparation for 2022.
The second was that news broke that Sam Wang, the Princeton professor and data scientist – you may remember him from the bet he lost on his election forecast in 2016, as part of which he had to eat a bug on live television – has been accused by members of his staff of manipulating data to produce better maps for the Democratic party. Wang was involved in advising the tie-breaking vote on the New Jersey redistricting committee, so this is a pretty big deal if the allegations turn out to be true). New Jersey Republicans are currently calling for maps to be redrawn, and it seems likely that they will file a lawsuit.
In addition, map drawing in Florida and Ohio especially has turned out worse than some had hoped.
The outcome in New Jersey is not clear, but the development in New York will probably cost Democrats 4-5 seats in the House going forward. With the massive decline in the number of competitive seats over the last decade, this is a big deal.
I was feeling pretty uncertain about what the overall effects of redistricting will look like after these new developments, so I talked to G. Elliott Morris, a data journalist for The Economist. He told me he estimates that in the aftermath of the New York ruling, “Democrats will need to win the House popular vote by about 2.5 to 3 percentage points to control a majority of seats this decade.”
This is very bad
In the scenario I presented in Slow Boring – Democrats get 47% of the vote in 2022, and 51% in 2024 – Republicans end up with a huge Senate majority. But crucially, before some of the bad news came in about redistricting, it looked the House would be extremely competitive in this scenario. And if redistricting had gone really well, Democrats would maybe have been favored to retake control.2
That would’ve (obviously) given Democrats veto power over legislation Republicans want to pass, in the event they control the Senate and Presidency. This would be especially critical in the event that Republicans have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, but even if Republicans only have around 56 seats, it would ensure they don’t pass another multi-trillion dollar tax cut for the super rich.
Second, a Democratic House would mean Democrats would retain subpoena power, and the ability to call hearings. Even if Democrats used this power pretty ineffectively from 2019 to2021, it’s still much better to have it than to lose it.
The final reason is that, absent reform of the Electoral Count Act, the House that gets elected in 2024 will vote on whether to accept or reject the 2024 presidential electors. Will a Republican majority vote to certify, if Trump or Desantis or whoever alleges widespread fraud occurred?3 I don’t know, but I really don’t want to find out – and New York’s Congressional maps getting thrown out just made it substantially more likely that we learn the answer.
The conclusion is the same – but now it’s a little more important
The New York and New Jersey developments don’t really have any effect on optimal Democratic strategy. The changes the party needs to make to return to being competitive for the Senate would likely also help in the fight for the House. But the downside risk of not making those changes just got higher. I hope party leaders take note.
In 2012, for example, Democrats got 50.5% of the two-party vote in the House, but only won 46.2% of the seats.
Incumbency advantage – which, though it has decreased substantially, still exists – means that even under perfectly fair maps, we wouldn’t expect a Democratic vote share of 50.1% in 2024 to result in a majority of the seats.
As seems almost certain to happen if Biden is re-elected.
Simon -- why have NY and NJ not just appealed these state court decisions to federal courts up to the Supreme Court to get the automatic extension that Alabama and now multiple Republican states have gotten to its illegal maps for at least the 2022 cycle? That would at least keep some balance for this years elections and next year's House? Republicans just refuse to follow judicial rulings, stall, run roughshod over process, and eventually run out the clock. Democrats should be doing the same.