The question we should be asking is not “Did my party lose seats?” but “Was the redistricting fair?”
By Dr. Sam Wang
Professor of Neuroscience
Princeton Neuroscience Institute
Princeton University
Republicans have gained control of the House of Representatives, but their majority will be tiny. Such close division has triggered many what-if discussions. Some have focused on New York, where Democrats performed poorly. The Democratic legislature had drawn a map in early 2022 that was designed to give the dominant party its best possible performance, even in a bad year. However, a court-ordered replacement map undid this gerrymander, shifting the outcome in multiple seats.
Did this single action cost Democrats control of the House of Representatives? Some political operatives and journalists in New York think the answer is yes. But that’s not the most important question. Better to focus on whether the New York map is fair—and, in the larger view, to ask whether maps nationwide yielded a representative result overall.
Looking first at New York: The map drawn by the Democratic legislature was found to be a partisan gerrymander. (Disclosure: The court-appointed redistricting master, Jonathan Cervas, is an affiliate of the Gerrymandering Project at Princeton and my academic collaborator.) Under the remedial map that was put in place, Republicans won 11 seats, an increase of three seats over their performance in 2020, even after the census count reduced the overall delegation by one seat.
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