A new congressional district map approved by California voters Tuesday in direct response to redistricting in Texas gives Democrats a chance they wouldn\u2019t have had before to take control of the House in 2026, a Northeastern University expert says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a very tightly divided Congress,\u201d says Mark Henderson, professor of public policy on Northeastern\u2019s Oakland campus. \u201cIn the absence of this measure passing in California, but with Texas adding the seats that they are engineering, it would be entirely impossible for the Democrats to take control of the lower House. With this passing, it\u2019s possible that the Democrats could do it. So it\u2019s gone from impossible to possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Proposition 50<\/a> passed with nearly 64% of the vote and could send up to five additional Democratic representatives<\/a> to Congress. In a major win for Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, the Associated Press called the results<\/a> the moment polls closed based on the number of mail-in ballots. A coalition of California Republicans filed a lawsuit <\/a>Wednesday to block the state\u2019s new map.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The measure asked voters to approve or reject \u201ctemporary changes to congressional district maps in response to Texas\u2019 partisan redistricting.\u201d The new map was designed to boost the number of seats for Democrats in the 2026 midterm elections.<\/p>\n Republicans have a six-vote <\/a>majority over Democrats in the House of Representatives, 219 \u2013 213.<\/p>\n Mid-cycle redistricting efforts in California, Texas and a handful of other states are \u201cunprecedented,\u201d Henderson says. While state procedures for drawing district maps vary, all states use census data collected every 10 years. The next census is scheduled for 2030.\u00a0<\/p>\n The wave of redistricting efforts was set into motion when the Texas legislature approved <\/a>a new congressional map in September designed to flip five Democratic seats to favor Republicans, setting off talk of redistricting in a number of other states. Only California took the question to voters this month, but other states are pursuing the process legislatively.\u00a0<\/p>\n When one state changes its district maps, another state with a majority of voters from the opposite party is likely to follow suit, says Nick Beauchamp, associate professor of political science on Northeastern\u2019s Boston campus.<\/p>\n \u201cStates do various things to try to maximize the state level goals,\u201d he says. \u201cSo if the state is 52% Republican, they\u2019re going to want to get 100% of their seats to be Republican. If it\u2019s 52% Democrat, they\u2019ll do the opposite.\u201d<\/p>\n In California, an independent Citizens Redistricting Commission draws new maps when new census data becomes available. The new map approved by the passage of Proposition 50 will only apply to elections held in 2026, 2028 and 2030. The commission will redraw that map based on 2030 census data.<\/p>\n In October, the North Carolina state legislature voted <\/a>to move six coastal counties and precincts in another county into a district currently held by a Democrat, making it more favorable to Republicans. In September, Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe of Missouri signed a revised congressional map<\/a> into law.\u00a0 Lawmakers in Indiana plan to meet in early December to consider new congressional maps, and the Florida state legislature formed a select committee <\/a>in August to redraw maps.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve never had mid-decade redistricting,\u201d Henderson says. \u201cBasically, states set their districts once a decade and that\u2019s the structure of power for the next 10 years. And then we count the people again and reallocate seats.\u201d<\/p>\n But as the two major political parties in the U.S. have become more polarized, Henderson says, congressional district maps have evolved to become more focused on national party platforms than local issues.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a long period of time where we had moderate Republicans and we had more conservative rural Democrats, and that\u2019s basically been filtering out,\u201d he says. \u201cI hate to use the phrase \u2018battle lines,\u2019 but the lines between the parties have sharpened for the most part.\u201d<\/p>\n It is easier than ever now to manipulate the outcomes of district lines, says Beauchamp, with data analytics tools that make processing census data faster and more efficient.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe that was the Pandora\u2019s box,\u201d he says. \u201cThis was always the vulnerability in the system and then the technology finally caught up to allow people to really maximize that vulnerability.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new congressional district map approved by California voters Tuesday in direct response to redistricting in Texas gives…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40193,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,1752,1751,13,1748],"class_list":{"0":"post-40192","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-california-headlines","10":"tag-california-news","11":"tag-congress","12":"tag-democrats","13":"tag-politics","14":"tag-republicans"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}