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The Hill
a day ago
- Politics
- The Hill
Republican New Hampshire governor rules out redistricting
New Hampshire Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte will not engage in the tit-for-tat redistricting war ahead of the 2026 midterms. 'The timing is off for this because we are in the middle of the census period, and when I talk to people in New Hampshire, this is not at the top of their priority list,' she said in an interview with local station WMUR on Friday. New Hampshire, generally considered a swing state, has two competitive seats that are now held by Democrats, according to The Cook Political Report by Amy Walter. In the 1st Congressional District, Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.) is leaving Congress, which could open up an opportunity for Republicans; however, without redistricting it will likely stay in Democratic hands in 2026. Ayotte's predecessor, Gov. Chris Sununu (R), vetoed a new map passed by Republicans in the state legislature in 2022. A political war over congressional districts has escalated in recent weeks after Texas called for a special legislative session to redraw voting lines in an attempt to gain five new seats in the midterms. Redistricting typically happens every 10 years after the census has been conducted. In outrage, Texas House Democratic lawmakers fled the state to ensure a vote on new districts would not take place because it lacked a quorum. Legislators fled to blue states such as California, Illinois and New York. On Thursday, President Trump weighed in and called for the Commerce Department to conduct a new census, ahead of the next count, scheduled for 2030. He also said that the new census should not count people in the U.S. illegally. In response to Texas, a handful of blue states have talked about efforts to also gerrymander their districts to limit the gains Republicans might have in Texas in 2026 and increase the number of Democratic seats in Congress. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has called for a special election in November. The state created an independent redistricting commission to offset the dangers of political interference in voting lines. The special election would therefore bypass the commission and let voters approve a bill to allow Democrats to pass a new voting map.
NBC News
3 days ago
- Politics
- NBC News
Why redistricting is so important, in 3 charts
Texas Republicans' move to redraw their congressional map mid-decade and Democrats' retaliatory redistricting efforts have captured national attention for a very simple reason: How House districts are drawn can shape American politics for years. Gerrymandering generally reduces the number of competitive races, and it can lock in nearly immovable advantages for one party or another. Under the new map proposed in Texas, no seat's presidential vote would have been decided by single digits in 2024, and Republicans would have a path to pad their narrow congressional majority in the 2026 midterm elections. This means more people could reside in congressional districts under solid control of one party. NBC News analyzed how the question of who draws the maps — and how they do it — can shape elections for years afterward. The difference between safe seats and competitive districts Who draws district lines can make the difference between contested general elections in a state in November and elections that are barely more than formalities. NBC News analyzed every House race in the country from 2012 to 2020, the last full 10-year redistricting cycle, based on how each district was drawn. In states where state legislators drew the maps, single-digit races (elections in which the winners won by less than 10 percentage points) were rarest. Only 10.7% of House races fell into that competitive category. There are plenty of reasons that don't involve gerrymandering. For one thing, voters of both parties have increasingly clustered in recent years, leaving fewer places around the country that are politically divided. Still, gerrymandering does play a significant role. When commissions or state or federal courts drew the lines last decade, the rate of competitive elections jumped, though safe seats are still overwhelmingly likely. Competitive elections were especially prevalent in states with court-drawn districts: 18.1% of races in those states had single-digit margins from 2012 through 2020. A look at Pennsylvania, whose legislative-drawn map was thrown out and replaced in 2018 by the state Supreme Court, illustrates the dramatic change that can come based on who draws congressional lines. The same state with the same voters living in the same places suddenly had many more competitive elections. From 2012 through 2016, just three of Pennsylvania's 54 House general elections under the initial map had single-digit margins. After the state Supreme Court threw out the map and imposed a new one, the number of battleground races bumped up. Eight of 36 House races had single-digit margins in 2018 and 2020. Meanwhile, ahead of the 2026 midterms, The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter rates 40 House districts as toss-ups or slightly leaning toward one party. More than half (23) of those 40 competitive districts are in states where commissions or courts drew the maps. How a state's partisanship compares with whom it sends to Congress The power of the redistricting process can bend a state's representation in Congress away from its overall partisanship, with wide differences between the statewide vote in some states and the makeup of their House delegations. Take Illinois, for example, where Donald Trump got 44% of the vote in 2024. Republicans hold only three of the state's 17 seats in Congress, or 18%. (NBC News is looking at presidential data instead of House data here because some races are uncontested.) And even though Trump got 38% of the vote in California last year, Republicans hold only 17% — that's nine seats — of the state's 52 congressional districts. On the other side of the ledger, Trump got 58% support in South Carolina last year, and 86% of the state's House delegation is Republican. In North Carolina, 51% voted for Trump last year, and Republicans have 71% of the delegation. The comparison between House seats and presidential election performance isn't perfect. But it demonstrates that how district lines are drawn can generate different results from what statewide results might suggest. Right in the middle of the chart is Virginia. Its 11 congressional districts split 6-5 for Democrats, meaning Republicans hold nearly 46% of the state's seats in Congress, and Trump won 46% of the vote in Virginia last year. Also, just because a state's maps favor one party compared with the statewide results after one election doesn't mean the redistricting process was biased. Tightly divided Pennsylvania has seven Democrats and 10 Republicans in Congress, and three GOP-held districts are rated as toss-up or lean-Republican races in 2026, according to the Cook Political Report. Each state charts its own course Since each state is responsible for handling its own redistricting, the process is different depending on where you look, giving immense power to different institutions state by state. In 27 states, legislatures approved the maps. In seven, independent commissions approved them, seven had court-approved maps, two had political commissions, and one state's maps were approved by a backup commission, according to data from Loyola Law School. (The six states that elect only one person to the House don't draw new congressional maps.) Loyola Law School's " All About Redistricting" website defines politician commissions as panels elected officials can serve on as members. The website defines backup commissions as backup procedures if legislatures can't agree on new lines.
Axios
01-07-2025
- Politics
- Axios
Moderates flee Congress
Congress has gotten so miserable that the traditional "I'm sad to leave" has now become "not a hard choice" to retire. Why it matters: Exhausted lawmakers are choosing retirement over bipartisan dealmaking that their own parties clearly don't want. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) announced his retirement on Sunday. "I haven't exactly been excited about running for another term," Tillis said in a statement. "It's not a hard choice, and I will not be seeking re-election." Tillis capped off his retirement day by savaging the "big, beautiful bill" for its cuts to Medicaid and renewable energy tax credits. Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said Monday he won't run again. Bacon is one of just three House Republicans who won in congressional districts won by Vice President Harris in 2024. In his retirement announcement, Bacon bragged about his record on bills that became law. Zoom out: The trend line is scary for fans of working across the aisle. Sens. Mitt Romney, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema chose to retire in 2024, citing the difficulty of getting bipartisan deals done in Congress. Before they left, a bipartisan deal on immigration collapsed in 2024 after then-former President Trump urged Republicans to kill the bill, and Democrats with competitive races also voted it down. In this term, a bipartisan deal on groundbreaking crypto regulation nearly collapsed after Democrats demanded it include language targeted at the Trump family's crypto empire. What to watch: Sen. Susan Collins' (R-Maine) re-election race is currently rated "lean Republican" by The Cook Political Report. In Alaska, fellow moderate GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski isn't up for re-election and is ruthlessly focused on helping her state. That even includes entertaining the longshot possibility of caucusing with Democrats if they create a 50-50 tie after the midterms. In Texas, Republicans are freaked out by the prospect of Sen. John Cornyn losing his primary. He's facing firebrand Texas AG Ken Paxton, who would have a much tougher time in a general election. What's next: Republicans are carefully watching the Louisiana Senate race. Sen. Bill Cassidy is expected to face numerous GOP primary challengers.
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Will 2026 Be a 2020 Redux?
Take a hypothetical walk with me about 18 months into the future to November 3, 2026. Americans (well, likely less than half of the eligible voting population) have just voted in a hard-fought midterm election to determine which party will control the House of Representatives. Despite economic uncertainty and the expectation that the incumbent president's party typically takes a hit in a midterm, the outcome between Democrats and Republicans is still too close to call. We're all waiting on California to finish tabulating a handful of its congressional races before we know whether President Donald Trump will have another two years of a pliant Republican House or if Democrats will be back in control. If it's the latter, congressional investigations, a stymied legislative agenda, and even another impeachment are all on the table for the remainder of Trump's term. With the current Republican majority at just a three-seat margin, this scenario is well within the realm of possibility. According to The Cook Political Report, five Republican-held congressional seats in California have a partisan voter index with just a 2- or 1-point advantage for the GOP. California, too, is notoriously slow at counting votes and declaring winners thanks to its expansive vote-by-mail voting practices. It's not hard to imagine that as America waits for California to count its votes, Trump himself enters the fray to cast doubt on any outcome that allows Democrats to win back control of the House. Republican-run Florida had its results on election night, after all, so what Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Democrats are doing in California is automatically suspicious, part of a plot to steal the House elections and shackle the duly elected president! What tools could the Trump administration use to, um, stop the steal? Lawsuits, the Department of Justice, the Insurrection Act? Is it all on the table? This is the 'nightmare scenario' posited by Stephen Richer, the former elected recorder for Maricopa County, Arizona. In a recent interview with me, Richer said the House majority hinging on a couple of elections in California might all of the sudden prompt a deluge of action. 'I could and can imagine that that would launch an investigation into the California secretary [of state], various election officials, L.A. County's election director, so on, and so forth,' Richer told me. 'California allows ballots to just be postmarked on Election Day. California has some competitive U.S. House races, and of course, you know, California is the bogeyman.' And Richer would know. The Republican was elected in 2020 to a position that put him in charge of everything from voter registration to tabulating mail-in results in Maricopa. But upon taking office he found himself having to defend the previous election as Trump allies demanded recounts and audits. His refusal to bow to conspiracy theories about the 2020 election in Arizona earned him the opprobrium of MAGA world, and as a result, last year Richer lost the Republican primary for Maricopa County recorder. We're at this point in early 2025, pondering how populist Republicans might undermine the legitimacy of 2026 as they did in 2020, thanks in large part to Trump himself. He still seems unable to let go of his hang-ups about losing that election more than four years ago. A case in point is a one-two punch of executive orders signed by the president in the last few weeks, which have been lost in the reigning chaos of Trump's tariff actions and the economic fallout. The first, issued on March 25, would represent a significant federal incursion into how state and local governments conduct federal elections. Under the premise that Trump's administration is seeking to enforce the limited number of existing federal election laws, the order as written seeks to throw out mail-in ballots received after Election Day even if they otherwise comply with state laws about postmarking; ban vote-tally machines that use bar codes and QR codes (which a large majority of jurisdictions currently employ); and require the federal departments of Homeland Security and Government Efficiency to 'review each State's publicly available voter registration list and available records concerning voter list maintenance activities.' The second order came last week and targeted Christopher Krebs, the first and former director of the federal agency responsible for ensuring cybersecurity over all areas of government. Krebs, a Republican, was appointed by Trump to head the new Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in November 2018. Under his leadership, the agency provided pushback via official webpages to online rumors and conspiracy theories on everything from Covid-19 to election fraud. Two years and a day after his appointment, Trump fired him after Krebs stated publicly that there was no evidence of fraud in the 2020 election. 'The recent statement by Chris Krebs on the security of the 2020 Election was highly inaccurate,' Trump tweeted at the time. More than four years later, Trump's executive order appears to continue where he left off with Krebs, calling him a 'significant bad-faith actor who weaponized and abused his Government authority.' The order also calls on multiple high-level officials, including the attorney general and the secretary of homeland security to 'review' Krebs's activity while the head of CISA, including whether Krebs improperly disseminated classified information. The executive order does not offer evidence to suggest Krebs acted improperly along these lines. 'Nobody is even pretending that it's about anything other than he said that the 2020 election wasn't stolen and that it was safe and secure,' said Richer, who knows Krebs personally. But if we're looking for canaries in the coal mine for election chicanery on the part of the Trump administration, these orders fit the bill. They signal a willingness for the administration to get involved in the nitty-gritty of elections and target government officials who threaten to stand in their way.
