Texas’ Redistricting Map Makes House Districts Redder

The new congressional map released last month by Texas Republicans aims to lock in the party’s advantage in Washington over the next decade by building on the map previously gerrymandered in 2010. The proposed district lines also offset recent population growth spurred by communities of color, diminishing the voting power of those groups.

Rather than create more Republican congressional districts, the Texas legislature chose to bolster incumbents with even safer districts; there are far fewer toss-up or competitive districts in the proposed map, dealing a blow to any Democratic hopes of flipping a competitive seat or two in Texas during the 2022 midterm elections, and risking deeper polarization through pumped-up primaries.

The result: just one district — the 15th — where the 2020 presidential margin of victory would have fallen within 5 percentage points under the redrawn map.

For example, seats that were listed as toss-ups by the Cook Political Report in 2020 will now have significant double-digit margins: The 10th Congressional District will see the presidential margin grow from a 2-point Republican advantage to 20, and the 21st District’s margin will rise from 3 points to 20 points, according to a New York Times analysis. More than a dozen proposed districts will have a Republican vote share of at least 60 percent.

This defensive redistricting strategy, some election experts argue, could become more prevalent this year in other states.

“It’s defensive in the way in which these maps are already strong Republican gerrymanders,” said Michael McDonald, a professor of political science at the University of Florida. “So when we’re talking about protecting incumbents, we’re talking about baking in what was already Republican gerrymandering.”

Of course, this is the first draft of Texas’ map, and it is subject to changes throughout the process. But legislators on both sides of the aisle do not expect many significant alterations, and redistricting in Texas carries national implications — as it was the only state to gain two additional congressional seats through reapportionment.

Here are four ways the Republicans further gerrymandered the map.

1. Adding a Republican district in Harris County

The Texas legislature didn’t just consolidate Republican support; already safe Democratic incumbents will have even safer districts. For example, the 7th District in the Houston area grew from a margin of 8.5 percentage points for Democrats to a 30-point margin.

By compacting the district, home to Representative Lizzie Fletcher, a Democrat, and other Democratic districts in the area, Republicans were able to draw a new, safely Republican district in northwest Harris County, where a large part of the booming county’s white population lives.

Mr. Trump would have carried the new 38th District by 18 percentage points.

2. Splitting Dallas into more large and rural areas

The Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area and surrounding suburbs, in particular, drifted Democratic in 2020. So the new map extends districts from the Dallas area to the broadly rural surrounding parts.

The 6th District, for example, which was home to Republican Representative Ron Wright, went for Donald J. Trump by 3 points. It now extends much farther to the southeast to add more rural and Republican-leaning voters, increasing the vote margin of Trump voters to 20 percentage points.

A similar transformation occurred for the 25th District held by Representative Roger Williams, a Republican. The redrawn district was expanded significantly to the west, out of the Fort Worth suburbs and into rural areas, fortifying his advantage.

3. Consolidating Democratic growth in Austin

Austin is the most decidedly blue city in the state. In 2011, Democrats saw their power diluted as Austin was split into six congressional districts, becoming the only U.S. city of less than 1 million people spread out across so many districts — and after the 2020 election, Republicans controlled five of them.

But Democratic growth in Austin over the past decade meant some of those districts were growing more competitive.

Now, Texas legislators have created the state’s second new district, the 37th, which President Biden would have carried by roughly 50 points. This is what election experts refer to as a “vote sink.”

By giving Democrats one new district, with most of the Democratic voters in the city packed into it, the surrounding districts that extend into the suburbs and rural areas can remain safely Republican.

4. Spreading out the Latino vote

The explosive growth in Texas was, in large part, the result of a booming Latino population. But despite that growth, Republican legislators avoided drawing a new Latino-majority district.

“That is fairly incredible, considering that the Hispanic population grew by 1.98 million since the last census, enough to drive nearly all of Texas’ population growth,” said Samuel S. Wang, the director of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project.

For example, the Republican legislature split the dense Latino areas in western Dallas and eastern Irving across four districts — the 6th, 24th, 25th and 33rd — all with contorted geographic lines.

While it is unclear exactly what partisan advantage could be gained by not adding a new Latino district, especially as Mr. Trump made large gains with Latino voters in Texas in 2020, the lack of a new majority-minority district attracted immediate attention, especially in the Rio Grande Valley and in the Dallas area, as potentially violating the Voting Rights Act.

But even if there is legal action to challenge those district lines, it is unlikely that any maps passed this year would be changed or knocked down before the 2022 midterm elections.

“With redistricting, and really with many election laws, there’s very little moral hazard because it takes time to build the evidence for a court to review the constitutionality or the state statutes regarding redistricting,” Mr. McDonald said. “So, you may get one or two elections, sometimes even more, before you will see a map overturned.”

Take a look at the maps below to see how the proposed districts compared with the existing ones.

Source: Elections - nytimes.com