On December 17th, 2014 the last undecided congressional race was determined with AZ Republican Martha McSally squeaking out a razor thin victory. This placed Republicans in control of 247 House seats. A week earlier Republican Bill Cassidy defeated incumbent Mary Landrieu in a runoff bringing the net gain of GOP Senate seats to 9, for a majority of 54 seats. This makes the 114th Congress the most Republican dominated Congress since 1929. Republicans picked up an additional 8 chambers in state legislatures (NV Assembly & Senate, CO and ME Senates, and the MN, NM, WV, & NH State Houses), bringing their total to 67—34 State Senates and 33 State Houses.
What led to this wave? Commentators on the right will point to the President’s low approval ratings. Pundits on the left will say the deck was stacked against them this cycle in the Senate. However a closer look at the gains Republicans made in their respective state legislatures shows a relationship to the gains Republicans made nationally. It wasn’t just a shift of opinion by the electorate that helped Republicans win huge this cycle. It was math…election math, as it relates to the legislative redistricting process and how it significantly favored Republicans.
Redistricting or Gerrymandering is a legislative decennial process that happens at the state level effecting Congressional & state legislative seats. The geographic boundaries are redrawn to reflect appropriate shifts in population based off of Census results. The historic gains of 2014 at the Congressional and as well as the state level were paved by the inroads Republicans made in the governors’ mansions and statehouses in 2010. In essence, the Tea Party picked a convenient year to come alive. Timing was everything.
In the aftermath of the 2010 midterms Republicans controlled the governor’s mansion and both legislative chambers in 21 states, with Democrats reciprocally in command of only 11. Republicans were set up to be in their best position in decades since the Supreme Court’s ruling of Baker v. Carr in the 1960s. In 2011 when Census data was released, Republican legislatures went to work approving district maps that would go into effect in 2012 and beyond.
In October 2012 the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law released an in depth report titled Redistricting and Congressional Control: A First Look which analyzed the gains of 2010 against the redistricting process making bold predictions which ultimately came through for the GOP in 2014.
Redistricting differs state by state. Pennsylvania’s Congressional redistricting was relatively simple. The Senate State Government Committee put forth a proposal which was voted on by the legislature and signed by the Governor. However redistricting for its state legislative seats was done by a Legislative Reapportionment Commission. Their proposal led to a protracted court battle reaching the state Supreme Court. The legal battle pitted a group of minority plaintiffs who felt the proposed district lines had been un-contiguously drawn to divide municipalities in violation of Article II §16 & 17 of the PA Constitution which stated: “Unless absolutely necessary no county, city, incorporated town, borough, township or ward shall be divided in forming either a senatorial or representative district.” In January 2012 the Court agreed with the plaintiffs sending the plan back to the LRC for revisions. Finally, after further legislative refinement the plan was ultimately approved by the court.
As Vox’s Andrew Prokop put it:
“Because Republicans controlled more state governments than Democrats did post-2010, those gerrymanders disproportionately benefited Republicans, but Democratic states got in on the action…MD’s map, which divvies up liberal areas, then combines them with less liberal portions of the state…Compare that to PA, where Republicans did the opposite: packing liberal urban segments into as few districts as possible.
To the victor go the spoils. Gerrymandering favors the party in power who carves the map. In 2010’s aftermath 21 states had Republican controlled dual state house chambers and governor’s mansions, passing legislation which eliminated biennial swing Congressional districts and further made their state house majorities more solidly red.
2010 set the stage, 2012 was its test run, and 2014 was the year that wave fully came to fruition.
February 2, 2015