Districts for a New Decade—Partisan Outcomes and Racial Representation in the 2021–22 Redistricting Cycle

Abstract

This article provides an overview of the new congressional and state legislative districts that were drawn around the country during the 2021–2022 redistricting cycle. We provide background on the redistricting landscape, most notably the changing federal role in both partisan and minority representation. We also discuss the process used to draw the new districts in each state. We then provide an empirical look at partisan fairness, competitiveness, and minority representation in the new plans. We find that both parties have enacted increasingly extreme partisan gerrymanders when they control the redistricting process. The combination of Republicans’ control of the redistricting process in far more states than Democrats and the inefficient concentration of Democrats in cities has enabled Republicans to largely maintain an advantage in the translation of votes to seats in both Congress and many state legislatures. As a result, the policymaking process in many states will continue to be skewed in a conservative direction. At the same time, nonpartisan commissions appear to offer a consistent means to produce less biased and more competitive maps than when parties drawn the lines. Finally, while Black and Latino representation has improved in some places, both groups of voters remain underrepresented. We conclude by discussing lessons for both scholars and advocates.