ANALYSIS — Republicans and Democrats are locked in a redistricting battle for the ages, and there’s bipartisan complaining about different parts of the process. But the two parties are a long way from a truce, and redistricting is looking more like a biennial exercise than a once-a-decade event.
Amid the day-to-day tracking of the redistricting state of play, it’s important to remember that this cycle’s surge in cartography was caused by the White House. In an effort to secure the House majority for another two years, President Donald Trump and allies pushed Republican-led states to draw more favorable maps mid-decade. Without GOP efforts and new maps in Texas and Missouri, Democrats would not have responded in California and Virginia.
That doesn’t mean that Democrats don’t gerrymander or that the process isn’t political. The point is that Democrats would not have been as aggressive in their redistricting efforts in the middle of the decade were it not for the initial Republican action.
