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The standard crack about gerrymandering is that it empowers politicians to pick their voters, rather than voters picking their representatives. But during wave elections, redistricting efforts can backfire if greedy politicians draw districts with too-narrow partisan margins.
Will the GOP’s unprecedented mid-decade US House district gerrymanders create a spate of these so-called “dummymander” losses? And if so, how many districts might flip, in which states, and what voting group will be most pivotal to turning Republican-designed districts into Democratic House seats?
Packing and cracking
The state party that controls the redistricting process — let’s call it the “advantaged party” — gerrymanders House district maps to create as many winnable seats as possible, given their state’s overall partisanship. To dilute the opposing party’s voting power, the advantaged party uses two strategies in tandem — “packing” and “cracking” — to maximize the number of seats it is favored to win.
Packing stuffs as many voters who identify or lean toward the disadvantaged party into one or a few districts with overwhelming and inefficient majorities of, say, 75 percent to 95 percent. Packing allows the advantaged party to then “crack” the disadvantaged party’s remaining voters across the state’s other districts, creating thin-yet-comfortable majorities for the advantaged party of, say, roughly 55 percent.
But those narrow-margin districts are potentially vulnerable to adverse, short-term effects. The advantaged party’s candidate in such a district may retire, resign, die, or suffer a debilitating scandal, turning a marginally safe district into a pickup opportunity for the opposing party. These cases are rare, but wave elections can threaten many more narrow-margin seats, creating the possibility for dummymanders.
Coined by political scientists Bernard Grofman and Thomas Brunell, “dummymandering” suggests that foolhardy mapmakers drew district lines without properly surmising the risks. But politicians and their consultants draw these high-risk districts precisely because they promise the higher reward of winning more seats in their House delegation. “Riskymander” might be a more apt label.
Sensing an opportunity to insulate the Republicans’ razor-thin US House majority, Donald Trump in 2025 started pressuring state Republicans to redraw their House maps mid-decade. With notable exceptions like the Tom DeLay-led redistricting of Texas following the 2004 election, mid-decade redistricting until last year was rare and usually triggered by court edicts. Per tradition, parties waited until after next census to redraw the maps.
But the party that blocked Barack Obama’s Supreme Court appointee Merrick Garland and repeatedly assaults ballot access long ago stopped caring about political traditions or norms. On cue, several GOP-controlled states in 2025 began redrawing their House maps.
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