Democrats are fighting mad about Trump-led Republican efforts to conduct mid-decade redistricting in Texas and other states in advance of next year’s midterms — and, perhaps for a change, they’re in a mood to fight back.
Late last week, a UC Berkeley poll for the Los Angeles Times1 found 55 percent of “voters who regularly cast ballots in statewide elections” favor California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to remove control of the state’s redistricting process from a nonpartisan commission, which would allow the Democrat-dominated state legislature to aggressively target the 9 of 52 seats that elected Republicans to Congress last year.
In the same poll, 34 percent are opposed. The 21-point margin in the survey almost exactly matches Kamala Harris’s victory margin over Trump in the Golden State last year. That’s not a coincidence, with support breaking down strongly along partisan lines.
So Newsom might not have a lot of work left to do to persuade his base of the necessity of the measure. It has been endorsed by party heavyweights like Barack Obama and even conceded to by Common Cause, the plaintiff in a 2019 Supreme Court case that deemed partisan gerrymandering nonjusticiable. That decision held that it was up to Congress if it wants to place limits on gerrymandering — but that isn’t going to happen any time soon, in part because gerrymandering itself means the FDR-like supermajorities that might once have produced large-scale change in the governance of elections are all but out of reach.
According to Polymarket, there’s an 87 percent chance that the initiative, Proposition 50, passes, which would place us in a new paradigm, with Democrats joining Republicans in a race to the bottom as parties with firm control over their state legislatures do whatever they can to maximize their expected number of seats in the U.S. House. That 87 percent figure is high already — but I’d probably take the over considering that the initiative will be on the ballot in a special election this November, a circumstance under which Democrats have repeatedly overperformed in recent years.
The initiative marks the end of a decade-plus of a “when they go low, we go high” attitude among Democratic leaders, which the party base has increasingly soured on. And here, the base has the right strategic instincts. Actions like Newsom’s could help the party keep the playing field level in the long run — or even eke out an advantage.
A Reuters headline on Sunday claimed that “Trump’s redistricting push could bring decades of Republican rule” in the House. But that’s probably wrong….
image….CNN