The redistricting arms race that reshaped the midterms
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How is the recent redistricting reshaping the 2024 midterm elections?
Good morning. As the redistricting battle draws to a close, the Cook Political Report explains who came out on top and how it's reshaping our politics.
This has become existential, and the retaliation, the one-upsmanship here, has reached a point of absurdity.
The Verge tells us why it's so hard to regulate tech, and the Israeli documentary winning plaudits abroad and sharp critiques at home. It's Friday, September 18th. I'm Gideon Resnick. This is Apple News Today.
This year's midterm elections have been defined in part by how much maps have changed. Through the process of redistricting, a recent report estimated that now about 1 in 10 Americans live in a different district than they did just two years ago. Typically, redistricting happens every 10 years after the census and was initially intended as a means of making sure that districts have equal populations and that legislative bodies reflect the people they represent. But this recent partisan redistricting push has led to real questions and concerns how polarized politics in America could affect our democracy. David Wasserman is a senior editor and elections analyst for the Cook Political Report who covers these changes closely.
I talked to him this week about what this all means and how this election cycle has diverged from the norm.
Well, contentiousness and litigation over redistricting is not new. We've been dealing with it for many decades, and there have been plenty of instances in past decades of mid-decade redistricting, either because courts have struck down maps as racial gerrymanders or because parties have decided to press their advantage where they can. Texas Republicans spearheaded by Tom DeLay, embarked on a gerrymander of Texas in 2004. That was highly controversial.
What did David Wasserman say about the partisan advantage gained by Republicans?
New York Democrats revisited the congressional map to make it friendlier to their side in 2024. But we've never seen a gerrymandering assault on this scale, and this was... launched by the White House for the purpose of safeguarding Republicans' majority. So by the numbers at this
point, where are we? Does any party have a political advantage numerically in the House race from these efforts?
Well, Gideon, this has been a year of whiplash. Last summer, it looked as if Republicans might be able to squeeze 10 to 12 additional seats by instructing every red state to gerrymander its boundaries to eliminate as many Democratic seats as possible. Then it looked like this might be a wash or even it might backfire on Republicans because California Democrats have led by Governor Gavin Newsom, convinced voters to pass a constitutional amendment to allow Sacramento to retaliate against Republicans in Texas. And in Florida, Republicans passed a map targeting four Democratic seats, and the U.S. Supreme Court reinterpreted the Voting Rights Act to mean that as long as your motives are partisan rather than racial in drawing a map, you can draw any map you want, which really removed the last remaining guardrails protecting majority-minority districts in the Deep South.
And so when you add this all up, it's kind of a middle scenario. I think Republicans have netted about five seats from this gerrymandering war, this arms race. But it's a far cry from the dozen seats the White House was hoping for at the outset, and it's not nearly enough to safeguard Republicans' majority heading into a difficult midterm.
And to take a step back here, what are some of the criticisms of this process when it's initiated by either party, and what impact does it have on voters directly?
Well, the lead criticism is that we allow politicians to choose their voters rather than the other way around. And this is a uniquely American debacle, the way that we draw district lines.
Why do critics argue that gerrymandering lets politicians choose their voters?
No other first-past-the-post single-member district democracy in the world litigates in a partisan way. war, how district lines are drawn. What's happened that's made it fundamentally different today is Americans are so geographically sorted along party lines between mostly urban versus rural, they're just sorted into highly
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
How is the recent redistricting reshaping the 2024 midterm elections?
0:04–1:56
2
What did David Wasserman say about the partisan advantage gained by Republicans?
1:56–4:15
3
Why do critics argue that gerrymandering lets politicians choose their voters?
4:15–6:38
4
How is the new map‑making affecting voter choice and competition?
6:38–8:42
5
What are the main concerns about regulating AI after OpenAI’s incident report?
8:42–10:10
6
Why do tech leaders disagree on the need for AI government oversight?
10:10–12:04
7
What controversies surround the Israeli documentary ‘NAZA’ and its portrayal of Gaza?
12:04–14:29
8
What recent U.N. and U.S. developments (war crimes claim, ICE nominee, new wildcat) were highlighted?
14:29–16:22
Speakers
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