Dave Wasserman’s Latest Analysis on the Partisan Impacts of Independent Commissions

Rick H. earlier linked to this report. I want to highlight a couple additional points, in part because Dave’s tweet a month or so ago about how Democrats might be strongly disadvantaged by voter-adopted redistricting commissions received a lot of coverage. In this more recent analysis, Dave now says:

In Texas, Republican mapmakers’ main objective was to shore up their own vulnerable incumbents, not seize a lot more Democratic seats. Republicans passed on going nuclear in Indiana and Iowa, and for parochial reasons appear unlikely to dismantle remaining Democratic seats in Kansas, Kentucky and Missouri. In fact, so far Republicans have only gone on offense in GeorgiaNorth Carolina and Ohio — all of which face court scrutiny. 

Meanwhile, Democrats unabashedly gerrymandered IllinoisNew Mexico and Oregon. They scored highly favorable maps from commissions in California and New Jersey, and to a lesser extent Michigan. Republicans’ only mild commission “wins?” Arizona and Montana. And five states where the GOP had exclusive authority back in 2011 — Louisiana, Michigan, PennsylvaniaVirginia and Wisconsin — are now under split or commission control.

In addition, Dave’s earlier tweet focused only on reforms that took the form of redistricting commissions. But voters, through constitutional amendments, have also tried to restrain partisan gerrymandering by adopting legal constraints against it, rather than commissions. Any overall assessment of redistricting reforms (including their partisan impacts) needs to take these substantive reforms into account as well. The most important of these voter-imposed constraints is in Florida. Dave recognizes this and includes these observations about FL, where the process will begin in full next week:

Theoretically, Florida is Republicans’ biggest redistricting weapon in the country, and the process will start in earnest when the legislature convenes next week. The Florida Supreme Court, charged with enforcing the state’s “Fair Districts” anti-gerrymandering law, has taken a hard right turn in the last few years. Still, there is some internal GOP disagreement in Tallahassee.

The most aggressive draft published by Florida House Republicans could give the GOP a 19R-9D advantage, up from 16R-11D today, though several seats would still be competitive. Other drafts published by Senate Republicans appear to pay more deference to the “Fair Districts” law and might top out at 17R-11D or 18R-10D. Likewise, Republicans in Missouri, New Hampshire and Tennessee appear to be debating how magnanimous (or not) to be.

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