Gerrymandering Wars Will Harm Democrats Far More Than Republicans, New Analyses Suggest

Republicans hold fewer seats than their share of the national vote suggests, meaning they have far more to gain from an all-out map war.

As California Democrats push forward with a plan to redraw the state's congressional districts, concerns are mounting about a potential domino effect that could lead to widespread partisan gerrymandering across the nation. If that were to happen, it would inordinately hurt Democrats—not Republicans—according to new analyses. 

At least in the Golden State, the gerrymandering proposal—designed to counter similar efforts by Republicans in Texas—is enjoying fairly widespread support from Democrat leaders and voters alike. In only one week, Governor Gavin Newsom’s initiative raised over $6 million and secured high profile endorsements from former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Kamala Harris, U.S. Senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, and California AFL-CIO—the state's largest labor federation.

The initiative could very well succeed, and result in Democrats gaining five additional seats for the party. But at what cost?

There are two problems Democrats must recognize. Firstly, Democrat-controlled states have largely already been extensively gerrymandered. The same is not true for most Republican-controlled states. Secondly, Republicans currently hold fewer House seats than their share of the national vote would suggest. This means that even though Republicans have been successful in drawing favorable district lines in several states, their overall national representation lags behind their opponents.

“There’s been sophisticated studies of gerrymandering. And it boils down to the Republicans are short some six to ten seats in the House based on the proportion of the national vote they have received. The Democrats know that, but they’re angry about the Texas reapportionment and gerrymandering,” historian Victor Davis Hanson told the Daily Signal. “Their attitude is ‘we’ve already gerrymandered our states to the maximum. Don’t dare try to emulate us.’”

Put simply: Democrats have more to lose because they have had better success than Republicans in concentrating power in states where they are already highly represented in many states. There is only so much water to squeeze out of the proverbial rock. But if Republicans begin aggressively redistricting in states across the nation, they stand to gain considerably more ground.

That former point is exaggerated by the fact that between the last two Presidential elections, Democrats have lost ground to Republicans in every single state that tracks voter registration by political party. In a piece published last week by the New York Times, political correspondents and data journalists Shane Goldmacher and With Jonah Smith wrote that the “four-year swing toward the Republicans adds up to 4.5 million voters… a deep political hole that could take years for Democrats to climb out from.”

“All four presidential battleground states covered by the Times analysis—Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania—showed significant Democratic erosion,” said Goldmacher and Smith. “The stampede away from the Democratic Party is occurring in battleground states, the bluest states and the reddest states, too.”

And yet, many Democrats are proceeding full steam ahead with a plan that will only further insulate the Party’s influence.

“It’s on, Texas,” Newsom recently said on Twitter/X.

“And Indiana. And Missouri… If this keeps up, the effort to oppress working Hispanics in California will completely backfire and you could lose even more seats,” responds pollster and analyst Rich Baris.

Baris argues that the Democrat-proposed maps are an “obvious attempt to temporarily counter [Hispanics’] rightward shift.” That sentiment is also shared by former US Congressional Candidate Dave Galluch, who chimed in to say that there is “no question working Hispanics are being disenfranchised by this move in CA.”

“If you look at the proposed CA redistricting map, you’ll see that if shifts amongst Hispanics continue toward R’s, there will be about 10 additional districts over [the] current baseline that will be extremely competitive… Even if this indefensible gerrymander is voted up and then upheld in the courts, it could still blow up in [Democrats’] faces,” said Galluch. “The trends are real.”

The last major redistricting wave in 2010—powered by Republican statehouses following the Tea Party surge—was decisive in locking in GOP dominance for nearly a decade. Democrats at the time underestimated just how far Republicans would push once given the political incentive, and the result was a House majority that Democrats could not seriously threaten until 2018. 

In the six years since 2018, the gap between the number of voters registering as Republican versus registering as Democrat narrowed and narrowed until 2023, when the former overtook the latter. Across the last six years, Republican registrations have risen by 9 percentage points; while Democrat registrations fell by 8 points.

“Any hope that the drift away from the Democratic Party would end organically with Mr. Trump’s election has been dashed by the limited data so far in 2025. There are now roughly 160,000 fewer registered Democrats than on Election Day 2024, according to L2’s data, and 200,000 more Republicans,” said Goldmacher and Smith.

If California opens the door now, Republicans will absolutely feel justified in unleashing another round of aggressive map-drawing in states like Florida and Ohio—where GOP legislatures still hold commanding influence. Missouri is already proceeding with a plan to do just that. 

Gerrymandering is a Pandora’s box which will unleash consequences that cannot be contained. And, once it’s been opened, there is very little that can be done to close the lid.

This is a wake-up call for Democrats, if ever there was one.