This is an adapted excerpt from the Nov. 5 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”
On Tuesday, voters in California overwhelmingly approved a measure that allows the state’s legislature to redraw its congressional districts, flipping up to five seats to Democrats in next year’s midterm election.
We are in a gerrymandering arms race, and there is no mystery as to why.
It’s known as Proposition 50 and was championed by Gov. Gavin Newsom as a response to the new Texas congressional maps that Republicans drew up at Donald Trump’s request, which could take up to five seats away from Democrats in next year’s midterms.
On Wednesday, California Republicans sued to stop the state from moving forward with redistricting and claimed the new map is unfair — even as their party seeks to gerrymander other red states.
It appears Republicans are pretty much committed to picking their voters, rather than letting the voters pick them. This year, four Republican-controlled states have already redrawn their maps at Trump’s request: Texas, Missouri, Ohio and North Carolina. The new maps would flip nine seats to Republicans — at least in theory.
But nobody is talking about stopping there. Republicans in Indiana, Nebraska and Florida are all at least exploring redder congressional maps at Trump’s behest. And several Democratic-controlled states are talking about responding in kind.
We are in a gerrymandering arms race, and there is no mystery as to why. After Tuesday’s drubbing, House Speaker Mike Johnson made it clear that redistricting is how Republicans think they will win.
“I think the midterm is gonna be a great one for us,” Johnson told reporters on Wednesday. “We had a demographic shift in 2024. We have a very favorable election map on the Republican side, and it will be even more favorable once all the redistricting stuff has settled out.”
Political scientists even have a word for the phenomenon: “dummymandering.” But based on what we saw at the polls, I’m not so sure redistricting alone is going to be enough for Republicans. If you are pulling supporters from a deep-red district to make another district red, you end up with two less-red districts. You also can’t guarantee that your red voters from the last election will turn out for you again. That means the Republicans’ plan could backfire. If voters are angry enough at them, as they were on Tuesday, Republicans could lose both those “red” districts. Political scientists even have a word for the phenomenon: “dummymandering.” Dumb or not, this is how Republicans think they’ll win. But as Newsom said on Tuesday, they will be opposed. The California governor had a message for his fellow blue state governors: “We need the state of Virginia. We need the state of Maryland. We need our friends in New York and Illinois and Colorado. We need to see other states, the remarkable leaders that have been doing remarkable things, meet this moment head-on as well.”
Chris Hayes hosts “All In with Chris Hayes” at 8 p.m. ET Tuesday through Friday on MS NOW. He is the editor-at-large at The Nation. A former fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Hayes was a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation. His latest book is “The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource” (Penguin Press).
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW.
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