 So gerrymandering has been a huge concern to me for quite some time now because the GOP is a minority party But in spite of that fact they still have an unfair advantage because of our biased political system And all that they needed to do is gerrymander themselves a couple of extra seats And they would be virtually guaranteed to win at the end of this year But most states now have redrawn district lines And it doesn't look as bad as we previously thought like don't get it twisted The GOP still has an unfair advantage, but It's not as biased as it was previously Which is surprising considering looking at the way that some states controlled by Republicans redrew district lines You kind of expected them to just gerrymander the country into oblivion But at least according to one report it doesn't seem that bad and by the skin on their teeth Democrats seemed to actually have avoided a complete disaster When it comes to gerrymandering now that's not to say that Democrats are going to win in 2022 because at the end of this year I still think it is overwhelmingly likely that the GOP is going to wipe them out and the report even says that but when it comes to gerrymandering Not as bad as everyone was expecting at least so far So Greg Sargent of the Washington Post explains the long-awaited long-feared gerrymandering apocalypse of 2021 Has not materialized for Democrats after all throughout last year many analysts and panicked Democrats concluded that Republicans would win the house in 2022 because of their outsize control over the redrawing of district clients Some suggested Republicans could take the house on the strength of extreme gerrymandering alone But that conventional wisdom just took a big hit with the release of a new analysis by the Cook political report It concludes that the redistricting wars are shaping up as a wash And that the map may be somewhat better for Democrats than during the past decade The analysis finds that in the 34 states that have completed redrawn house district lines thus far President Biden would have carried 161 of 293 districts based on the 2020 vote totals versus 157 under current lines now there's a couple of really important caveats here Not all states have completed the process So we don't know what the final map will look like But they're basing this report on two-thirds of states that have completed their redistricting process So we don't know that also another caveat is that it's still a map overall That's biased in favor of the GOP, but it's just slightly less the biased than it was before and even with these changes Still based on the political climate if Democrats don't deliver they still very likely will lose at the end of this year They still have to do more like pass voting rights reform and whatnot But when it comes to gerrymandering it doesn't look as bad as people previously anticipated which is Encouraging because as much as I despise both parties I still think that we have to have the most unbiased political system as we possibly can have which is why I don't think that partisan Actors should be redrawn district lines. This should be a duty that non partisan Independent commission commissions conduct based on demographic change is not based on how somebody can like create an Advantage for themselves in their party that that's absurd to me But let's get to what cook says about this because their insight here is actually really interesting a cook political report with Amy Walter analysis Finds that in the completed states Biden would have carried 161 of 293 districts over Donald Trump in 2020 an uptick from 157 of 292 districts in those states under the current lines nationwide Biden carried 224 of 435 seats and if the Democrats were to aggressively gerrymandered New York or court strike down GOP drawn maps in North Carolina and or Ohio the outlook would get even better for Democrats However, the partisan distribution of seats before and after redistricting is only one way to gauge the process because Democrats currently possessed the lion's share of marginal seats Estimating the practical effect of new lines in 2022 still points towards a wash or a slight GOP gain But ultimately again, we'll have to wait and see now the question is why why is it not turning out as bad as people had Previously expected and it's because the GOP rather than trying to aggressively gerrymandered new seats for themselves They're trying to shore up seats that already exist So if they see that a Republican is vulnerable or they may become vulnerable over the next few years due to demographic changes They're trying to just make sure that that seat is more safe rather than giving themselves more seats So they're kind of going for the long term over the short term advantages that they may gain by just being super aggressive because that could come back to bite you in the ass if you spread Yourselves too thin you could end up losing seats in a couple of years so it's you know, again, I don't want to Give people this assumption that you know, it's over and Democrats now they they did it They're gonna win. No, they're still overwhelmingly likely Going to lose at the end of this year in spite of this. It's just that now, you know There's not as big of a chance as or I should say Maybe the bloodbath that we're all anticipating won't be as bloody as previously thought again They say it's a wash. So it's it's not necessarily, you know, something that is going to make a huge difference It's just not going to be as negatively impactful as people had previously thought which is encouraging But again wait until you kind of like form an opinion on this until we see all of these states and then we read those analyses But I mean just meanwhile, it's kind of good news that I didn't expect. So, you know, I thought I'd share with you It's it's a little bit encouraging that our political system is only a super duper fucked and not super duper duper fucked So cool