Without Gerrymandering, Would the Dominant Party Run the Table?
Gerrymandering may look corrupt, but without it, “fair” districts would hand one-party states even more lopsided power—sometimes backfiring on their own leaders.
By Edward Ring
August 25, 2025
The argument against gerrymandering begins with visuals. Across the U.S., almost without exception, if you view a map of state and federal electoral districts, they appear as convoluted, obviously contrived jigsaw puzzles, drawn with no regard for geographic features or municipal boundaries. In the face of such obvious manipulation, so the argument goes, the process of establishing districts and periodically engaging in redistricting must be compromised. Reformers cry out to eliminate the corruption and draw districts with logical borders.
There’s a problem with this, however. The more we come up with electoral districts that are logical in shape instead of gerrymandered, the more undemocratic the representation will become in our state legislatures and in the U.S. Congress.
Gerrymandering, ironically, might be the only way to prevent the dominant party in any state from electing a vastly disproportionate number of representatives.
To understand this, begin with the current situation in Texas and California. Using the percentage of votes for Trump vs. Biden as a proxy for the statewide proportions of Republican and Democrat voters, we can compare that to the percentage of Republicans vs. Democrats in each of those states’ congressional caucuses. In California, Trump got 38.3 percent of the 2024 vote, and Republicans control 15 percent of the state’s congressional seats. In Texas, Trump got 56.3 percent of the vote, and Republicans control 68 percent of the state’s congressional seats. Hence, we might conclude that Republicans are underrepresented by 24 percent in California and Republicans are overrepresented by 12 percent in Texas.
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https://amgreatness.com/2025/08/25/without-gerrymandering-would-the-dominant-party-run-the-table/
