Redistricting is suddenly shifting the midterms in the Democrats’ favor
For much of the last several months, since the close of the election day 2021 (which itself was something of a mixed bag for Democrats), we’ve been hearing a whole lot of doomcasting from the pundits who claim to know best – that the GOP is bound to take control of Congress and/or that there’s some magical solution that Democrats need to implement right away that will prevent them from being voted out.
Hell, since Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 election they’ve been chanting that Democrats were doomed based on gerrymandering alone. They’re now referring to what is history over a decade old – when the GOP was able to get away with brutally gerrymandered maps that kept those least likely to vote Republican in their place and led to one of the most brutal midterm years for Democrats in memory in 2014 – when many of the most despised Republicans in the Senate today won their seats.
There is, however, a ray of hope – and one of the biggest hurdles we all anticipated came crashing down today when Cook Political Report, one of the most trusted election forecasters in the country, projected that Democrats gained a 2-3 seat advantage in the midterms after redistricting. This is a major victory due in part to Supreme Court challenges being struck down in Ohio and North Carolina. Of course, this by no means makes the House safe blue – but it’s an encouraging sign to turn out as many new voters as possible to keep an insurrectionist party from regaining control in 2022 as they are desperate to do. Let’s take the momentum while it’s on our side.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making