According to some of the most prominent scholars in the field, the answer is yes.

Earlier this year, Nick Stephanopoulos, Eric McGhee, and Chris Warshaw published an essay in the Washington Post which showed that after the 2020 round of redistricting, the net effect of state gerrymanders on the House was relatively low. Their study concluded that the House in 2024 had a 7 seat bias in favor of the Democrats.

This work is based on using the efficiency gap as a measure of partisan gerrymandering, which is also a principal basis that the widely-used Plan Score site uses to assess the degree of gerrymandering in a state map. My sense is that journalists rely heavily on Plan Score for information about gerrymandering.

My own view is that the efficiency gap, while convenient, is not the best measure of gerrymandering. But it is widely used and these authors are well-respected scholars of gerrymandering. I’m opposed to mid-decade redistricting; it’s extremely destabilizing and will only accelerate the redistricting wars. As I noted yesterday, I filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court a number of years ago urging the Court to bar the practice except when done pursuant to judicial order or, possibly, extraordinary circumstances. I flagged this study when it first came out and in light of current issues, I thought it worth noting again.