by Edward Ring
Gerrymandering may look corrupt, but without it, “fair” districts would hand one-party states even more lopsided power—sometimes backfiring on their own leaders.
Perhaps it would, but the result would be an even more lopsided result. Republicans control 25 of California’s 58 counties. But that sea of red on the electoral map in California only represents 9 percent of the population. If California had logical electoral district boundaries, using county lines and urban density as the criteria, it is possible the GOP caucus would shrink from 9 down to only 4 out of their 52 seats in Congress.
But according to the logic of drawing less convoluted and more logically shaped congressional districts, it would be fair, because there would be no gerrymandering.
This is an awkward fact of political geography that nobody wants to acknowledge. If you create electoral districts that conform to geographic and demographic logic in any state where one party has a clear registration advantage, there’s a good chance in these winner-take-all districts that party will run the table. Gerrymandering, for whatever reason, throws a wrench into what is otherwise an inevitability. The only way to counter it would be to move to a parliamentary system.
As for California, however, Newsom could be playing with fire. In 2024, to everyone’s surprise, Trump carried four California counties that Democrats currently control, and three of them are demographic heavyweights: Orange, population 3.1 million; Riverside, population 2.5 million; and San Bernardino, with a population of 2.2 million. Altogether, these counties, were they to incorporate winner-take-all, non-gerrymandered congressional districts, could—if they only had candidates for Congress as popular as Trump was in those counties last November—swing another 11 congressional seats into the GOP caucus, raising Republican “non-gerrymandered” total seats in California from 4 to 15. That would still leave the GOP “underrepresented” in California, since that would only raise their percentage of the congressional caucus up to 29 percent, compared with Trump’s 38 percent share of the state’s 2024 vote, but it would be a far cry from Newsom’s redistricting goal of reducing GOP congressional representation from the current 9 seats down to 4 seats.
Watch out, Governor Newsom. Even if you convince voters to accept your new district boundaries, your packing and splitting of GOP voters could backfire. Even in deep blue recesses of the Golden State, realignment is in the air.
The argument against gerrymandering begins with visuals. Across the U.S., almost without exception, if you view a map of state and federal electoral districts, they appear as convoluted, obviously contrived jigsaw puzzles, drawn with no regard for geographic features or municipal boundaries. In the face of such obvious manipulation, so the argument goes, the process of establishing districts and periodically engaging in redistricting must be compromised. Reformers cry out to eliminate the corruption and draw districts with logical borders.
There’s a problem with this, however. The more we come up with electoral districts that are logical in shape instead of gerrymandered, the more undemocratic the representation will become in our state legislatures and in the U.S. Congress.
Gerrymandering, ironically, might be the only way to prevent the dominant party in any state from electing a vastly disproportionate number of representatives.
To understand this, begin with the current situation in Texas and California. Using the percentage of votes for Trump vs. Biden as a proxy for the statewide proportions of Republican and Democrat voters, we can compare that to the percentage of Republicans vs. Democrats in each of those states’ congressional caucuses. In California, Trump got 38.3 percent of the 2024 vote, and Republicans control 15 percent of the state’s congressional seats. In Texas, Trump got 56.3 percent of the vote, and Republicans control 68 percent of the state’s congressional seats. Hence, we might conclude that Republicans are underrepresented by 24 percent in California and Republicans are overrepresented by 12 percent in Texas.
The current debate over mid-decade redistricting in Texas and California tends to focus on these metrics. And from this standpoint, it is fair to point out that even if Texas picks up five more congressional seats for Republicans in 2026, the percentage by which they are allegedly overrepresented in Congress will only rise to 25 percent, which is equal to California’s percentage of overrepresentation of congressional Democrats. Hence, we may argue, Texas’s engagement in mid-decade gerrymandering is merely compensating for gerrymandering that California has already done. Hold off, California! It’s not fair.
Which brings us to an uncomfortable truth. If any state’s composition of Republicans and Democrats in their state legislatures and congressional delegations is to roughly approximate the relative party preferences of their residents, gerrymandering is inevitable. To see why this is the case, imagine California if districts were not gerrymandered but instead had logical boundaries. In every district, there would be a winner-take-all election, i.e., if there were a majority of Democrats, the Democratic candidate would always win. A quick look at the map makes this clear.
In California, when viewing party control by county, a pattern emerges that is familiar to most states, especially blue states. The urban centers are deep blue, and the rest of the state is a sea of red. In California’s case, less than one-third of the map is blue, but that constitutes the numerous and populous coastal counties where the major cities are located.
California has 58 counties, and their boundaries are based on historical settlement patterns and geographic features. Which is to say they are logical and not gerrymandered. So what if congressional districts took as their primary criteria for boundaries the preexisting boundaries of California’s counties? Wouldn’t that be logical and fair?
Perhaps it would, but the result would be an even more lopsided result. Republicans control 25 of California’s 58 counties. But that sea of red on the electoral map in California only represents 9 percent of the population. If California had logical electoral district boundaries, using county lines and urban density as the criteria, it is possible the GOP caucus would shrink from 9 down to only 4 out of their 52 seats in Congress.
But according to the logic of drawing less convoluted and more logically shaped congressional districts, it would be fair, because there would be no gerrymandering.
This is an awkward fact of political geography that nobody wants to acknowledge. If you create electoral districts that conform to geographic and demographic logic in any state where one party has a clear registration advantage, there’s a good chance in these winner-take-all districts that party will run the table. Gerrymandering, for whatever reason, throws a wrench into what is otherwise an inevitability. The only way to counter it would be to move to a parliamentary system.
As for California, however, Newsom could be playing with fire. In 2024, to everyone’s surprise, Trump carried four California counties that Democrats currently control, and three of them are demographic heavyweights: Orange, population 3.1 million; Riverside, population 2.5 million; and San Bernardino, with a population of 2.2 million. Altogether, these counties, were they to incorporate winner-take-all, non-gerrymandered congressional districts, could—if they only had candidates for Congress as popular as Trump was in those counties last November—swing another 11 congressional seats into the GOP caucus, raising Republican “non-gerrymandered” total seats in California from 4 to 15. That would still leave the GOP “underrepresented” in California, since that would only raise their percentage of the congressional caucus up to 29 percent, compared with Trump’s 38 percent share of the state’s 2024 vote, but it would be a far cry from Newsom’s redistricting goal of reducing GOP congressional representation from the current 9 seats down to 4 seats.
Watch out, Governor Newsom. Even if you convince voters to accept your new district boundaries, your packing and splitting of GOP voters could backfire. Even in deep blue recesses of the Golden State, realignment is in the air.
Edward Ring
Source: https://amgreatness.com/2025/08/27/without-gerrymandering-would-the-dominant-party-run-the-table/
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