Competition has become an endangered species in legislative elections. A New York Times analysis of nearly 6,000 congressional and state legislative elections in November reveals just how scarce genuine competition is. Virtually all were either dominated by an incumbent or held in districts heavily skewed in favor of one party. The result was a series of one-sided victories, even in a country where politics is narrowly divided. Astonishingly, only 8% of congressional races (36 out of 435) and 7% of state legislative races (400 out of 5,465) saw a margin of victory less than five percentage points. The consequences of the death of competition are apparent. Approximately 90% of races are now decided not by general-election voters in November but by partisans who tend to vote in primaries months earlier. This favors candidates who appeal to ideological voters and lawmakers who are less likely to compromise. It exacerbates the polarization that has led to deadlock in Congress and statehouses. ‘Due to partisan and racial gerrymandering, the end result is skewed outcomes and legislative bodies that do not necessarily reflect the political composition of the states or, by extension, the House of Representatives representing the will of the American people,’ said Eric H. Holder Jr., the attorney general in the Obama administration and chair of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, who has at times criticized his own party’s redistricting practices. In 2020, during the last national redistricting exercise held once every decade, both parties largely followed a similar strategy. Their maps typically made districts safer by concentrating voters from one party, rather than breaking them up to gain seats. As the party in control of the redistricting process in more states, Republicans drew more of these biased districts than Democrats. Other factors have contributed to the vanishing of competition, including demographic shifts and ‘political sorting’ – the tendency of like-minded citizens to live in the same community. However, the role of redistricting becomes evident when examining a single state in detail.
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