WASHINGTON -- The number of competitive congressional districts is on track to dive near -- and possibly below -- the lowest level in at least three decades, as Republicans and Democrats draw new political maps designed to ensure the outcome of the vast majority of House races.
With two-thirds of the new boundaries set, mapmakers are on pace to draw fewer than 40 seats -- out of 435 -- that are considered competitive based on the 2020 presidential election results, according to a New York Times analysis of election data. Ten years ago, that number was 73.
Critics of the process says a lack of competition in general elections can widen the ideological gulf between the parties.
"The reduction of competitive seats is a tragedy," said former Attorney General Eric Holder, who is chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. "We end up with gridlock, we end up with no progress, and we end up with a population looking at our legislatures and having this feeling that nothing gets done.
"This gridlock leads to cynicism about this whole process," he added.
In previous decades, both parties have used the map-drawing process to create districts dominated by voters from one party or to bolster incumbents. And it's not yet clear which party will ultimately benefit more from this year's redistricting. Republicans control the mapmaking for more than twice as many districts as Democrats, leaving many in the GOP to believe that the party can take back the House majority after four years of Democratic control largely by drawing favorable districts.
But Democrats have used their power to gerrymander more aggressively than analysts expected. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report on Thursday forecast that Democrats are on track to gain as many as three seats from redistricting, given developments in New York, Pennsylvania and Alabama, where a court struck down a map on the grounds that it discriminated against Black voters, who overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.
And on Friday, North Carolina's Supreme Court threw out Republican-drawn congressional and legislative maps, saying they violate the state constitution.
In New York, the Democratic-controlled Legislature on Wednesday approved a map that gives the party a stronger chance of flipping as many as three House seats currently held by Republicans.
"Democrats in New York are gerrymandering like the House depends on it," said Adam Kincaid, executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, the party's main mapmaking organization. "Republican legislators shouldn't be afraid to legally press their political advantage where they have control."
New York's new map doesn't just give Democrats a chance to win more seats; it also eliminates competitive districts. In 2020, there were four districts where Biden and former President Donald Trump were within 5 percentage points. There are none in the new map.
Without competition from outside their parties, many politicians are beginning to see the biggest threat to their careers as coming from within.
"When I was a member of Congress, most members woke up concerned about a general election," said former Rep. Steve Israel of New York, who led the House Democrats' campaign committee during the last redistricting cycle. "Now they wake up worried about a primary opponent."
Israel, who left Congress in 2017 and now owns a bookstore on Long Island, recalled Republicans telling him that they would like to vote for Democratic priorities like gun control but feared a backlash from their party's base. House Democrats, Israel said, would like to address issues such as Social Security and Medicare but understand that doing so would draw a robust primary challenge from the party's left wing.
"The parties are contributing to more and more single-party districts and taking the voters out of the equation," said former Rep. Tom Davis, who led the House Republicans' campaign arm during the 2001 redistricting cycle. "November becomes a constitutional formality."
'AN AMERICAN PROBLEM'
In the 29 states where maps have been completed and not thrown out by courts, there are just 22 districts that either Biden or Trump won by 5 percentage points or less, according to data from the Brennan Center for Justice, a research institute.
The Cook Political Report offered a lower number of competitive districts, saying there are just 13 toss-up seats in the 269 districts drawn so far.
By this point in the 2012 redistricting cycle, there were 44 districts defined as competitive based on the previous presidential election results. In the 1992 election, the margin between Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush was within 5 points in 108 congressional districts.
The practice of parties using redistricting to gain an edge is as old as the republic itself, but it has escalated in recent decades with more sophisticated technology and more detailed data about voter behavior. Americans with similar political views have also clustered in distinct areas -- Republicans in rural and exurban areas, Democrats in cities and inner suburbs. It's a pattern that can make it difficult to draw cohesive, competitive districts.
This year, Republicans who control redistricting in Texas, Georgia and other states have made GOP seats safer, in part by targeting for redesign the suburban districts that have been trending Democratic and adding in rural areas.
The 24th District in Texas was changed from one that Biden carried by more than 5 percentage points in 2020 to one he would have lost by 12 points, for example, based on the new boundaries that shift Black and Hispanic voters in Dallas County into other districts and add white Republicans from Tarrant County, which includes neighboring Fort Worth.
In the 2020 election, there were 12 competitive districts in Texas. After this year's redistricting, only one is projected.
"The fact that it's going to be harder for us to pick up congressional seats is a big concern," said Gilberto Hinojosa, chair of the Texas Democratic Party. "That doesn't mean that we think that it's not important to mount challengers; it's just a reality that it's going to be harder."
"Politically, it is looking bleak, to be perfectly honest," said 2020 Democratic congressional candidate Candace Valenzuela, who came within 4,600 votes of becoming the first Black Latina in Congress from Texas' 24th District. "This isn't a Democrat-Republican problem. It's going to be an American problem, if it isn't already."
The battle over the maps is still playing out in courts and state legislatures. The Texas congressional map, which sets boundaries for 38 districts, or 8% of the entire U.S. House of Representatives, will be used unless a court intervenes. The U.S. Justice Department is challenging it in court.
And the Ohio Supreme Court invalidated the state's congressional map Jan. 14, ruling that it unconstitutionally favored Republicans and ordering the Ohio Legislature to approve a new map in 30 days.
Harrell Kirstein, a spokesman for the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said a loss of competitive districts will hurt Democrats by leaving fewer opportunities to flip seats. She cited a committee analysis that showed that if no districts were gerrymandered, there would be a 40% increase in competitive seats, largely because of demographic shifts.
Information for this article was contributed by Reid J. Epstein and Nick Corasaniti of The New York Times and by Ryan Teague Beckwith and Mark Niquette of Bloomberg News (WPNS).