How Republicans and Democrats are Redistricting Urban Areas to Tilt the House

American cities — densely populated and overwhelmingly Democratic — are typically prime targets for aggressive gerrymanders. This past year has been no different, as urban areas became casualties of newly partisan maps, drawn by both Republicans and Democrats in a rare bout of middecade redistricting.

With nearly 80 percent of the United States population living in urban areas, according to the census, mapmakers using modern data technology can surgically split cities block by block to eke out a partisan advantage. They “pack” like-minded voters into a single district, or “crack” them, linking slivers of concrete-covered downtowns with farmland hundreds of miles away.

While the intentions are often political, these julienned districts often leave communities with little in common, and no cohesive representation in Congress. Roughly 37 percent of congressional districts are either urban or an urban-suburban mix, while 63 percent remain rural or rural-suburban, according to the District Density Scale.

So far this year, state lawmakers have carved up major Democratic cities in the nationwide redistricting arms race, drawing new maps in five states. Virginia could be next, if voters approve a referendum Tuesday to redraw boundaries and potentially add four Democratic seats.

Kansas City, Mo.

Take the Kansas City, Mo., area as a clear example. Late last year, Gov. Mike Kehoe signed into law a new map that would pave the way for eliminating a Democratic seat and add a Republican one, potentially ousting a longtime representative, Emanuel Cleaver, who was also the first Black mayor of Kansas City.

The proposed map effectively slices apart — or “cracks” — the old Fifth District, which previously held a majority of Democratic-dominated Kansas City and its metropolitan area, into three parts.

As a result, Democratic voters from Kansas City are spread out across three new districts where they are likely to be outnumbered by Republican voters. The Kansas City area went from having one Democratic district and two Republican districts to having three Republican districts.

Northern Virginia

While Missouri illustrates how a single-district city can be cracked apart to dilute the votes of a densely packed partisan area, Virginia is taking a different approach. Its proposed map spreads out Democrats from the crammed northern Virginia suburbs into multiple districts spreading more than a hundred miles into deeply red areas for the opposite outcome: to tilt more districts blue.

While there is no central city in northern Virginia — Fairfax County, the state’s largest municipality, boasts nearly 1.2 million people but sprawls across nearly 400 square miles — the northern reaches of the state have a population in the millions and are mostly Democratic.

The result is an exceptionally aggressive “cracking” of Democratic voters in the northern part of the state across five congressional districts, which would lead to the elimination of three Republican-held seats (the proposed Virginia map eliminates all but one Republican-controlled district).

Houston

In larger cities like Houston, mapmakers have the opportunity to get creative in their carving. At President Trump’s behest, Texas was the first state to redistrict last year. Let’s look at Houston’s old Ninth District.

The old Ninth District was mostly swallowed by the newly crafted 18th District, and remaining voters were funneled into three Republican-leaning districts and one Democratic one.

But Houston’s maps also illustrate a second gerrymandering strategy: “packing.” The new 18th District was drawn to be exceptionally Democratic, “packing” a high concentration of Democrats into a single district, thereby ensuring that they would be outnumbered in neighboring districts.

Dallas

As another densely populated city, and one with a large population of people of color, Republicans in Texas sliced some congressional districts in the state, while packing Democrats into others.

The newly drawn 32nd District is a textbook example of “cracking,” splitting apart the eastern and northern suburbs of Dallas and extending the district more than a hundred miles east, into more rural and deeply Republican areas of East Texas. As a result, the new 32nd District is solidly red compared with its previous blue tint.

The cracking and packing in Dallas achieved another outcome: drawing current incumbents out of their districts, forcing some into primaries against one another while prompting others to leave the House entirely. In Dallas, Representative Jasmine Crockett chose to run for Senate after being drawn out of the 30th District (She lost in March to James Talarico).