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A Perfect Storm: Polarization, Representation, and the 2026 Redistricting Battle in the United States

by Rogier Platter

Introduction

American democracy has been fragile and contested since its inception. Abraham Lincoln’s “government of the people, by the people, for the people” has often more accurately turned out to be ‘government of some of the people, by some of the people, for some of the people.’ Political scientist Harold Lasswell famously defined the meaning of politics in his book Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (1936) – which is an apt description of the United States’ 250-year history, which has indeed been marked by a vigorous struggle over access to resources, the corridors of power, and the narrative and course of the nation. Thus, looking back at the country’s history, one may wonder: what is really new about today’s rampant polarization in the United States, and to what extent should we be worried?

One could approach this question from many angles, but in this contribution, I consider partisan gerrymandering, a redistricting practice that is rooted in the founding era and continues to shake up the American political landscape. Recently, President Donald Trump and rivalling Governors Greg Abbott of Texas and Gavin Newsom of California have taken this ‘shaking up’ to a new – and, I argue, alarming – level in the leadup to the 2026 midterm elections. In this contribution, I examine the practice’s history and its current (mis)use, and aim to (begin to) answer the question: to what extent does the current redistricting battle across the US and its potential to damage voter representation threaten American democracy to a new extent, given recent socio-political developments and today’s polarization levels?

By walking through the history of partisan gerrymandering, the crucial matter of democratic representation, the current redistricting battle and levels of polarization in the US, this piece aims to shed light on the extended risks of contemporary gerrymandering, a practice that is far from new, but that now bears the potential of playing a novel role in a tense political arena.

Gerrymandering in the United States: A Brief History

Before moving to current developments, it is worthwhile to consider the meaning and history of partisan gerrymandering in American politics so that today’s developments can be put into perspective. Partisan gerrymandering is “the practice of deliberately and unfairly manipulating district lines to favor one party over others” (McGhee 2020: 172). When not partisan gain but diluting racial minority voting strength is the primary objective of redistricting, analysts speak of racial gerrymandering (Odujinrin 2022: 170). Both forms are highly relevant today and can (but do not always) overlap. Nicholas Stephanopoulos stipulates that districting manipulation is usually done “in one of two ways: the cracking of a party’s supporters among many districts, in which their preferred candidates lose by relatively narrow margins; or the packing of a party’s backers in a few districts, in which their preferred candidates win by overwhelming margins” (2017: 2121).

The original ‘Gerrymander’ of 1812

Although sometimes misconstrued as a product of modern political strife, partisan gerrymandering in the US exhibits deep historical roots: Patrick Henry was accused of attempting to keep James Madison out of Congress by redrawing a district map in the 1780s, and in 1812, when Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry signed a redistricting bill that favored his own party and that contained an oddly-shaped district that resembled a salamander, the term gerrymandering was born (Engstrom 2013: 21-22). Erik Engstrom’s Partisan Gerrymandering and the Construction of American Democracy, in which he asserts that “[t]hroughout the 19th century, partisan gerrymandering systematically structured the competitiveness of congressional elections” (ibid.: 15), does justice to the practice’s place in American history. Notably, in the decades that followed the Civil War, racial gerrymandering became an effective tool to suppress representation of minorities who had just – partially – won their hard-fought right to vote (Kang 2020: 1395).

The Supreme Court has, to this day, shown reluctance and uneasiness when it comes to ruling on the legality of redistricting efforts (Engstrom 2013: 203). Striking examples are a majority opinion in the 1940s that reads that courts “ought not to enter this political thicket” on the basis that it would “bring courts into immediate and active relations with party contests” and the 2019 Rucho v. Common Cause ruling that decided that although excessive gerrymandering is “incompatible with democratic principles”, claims of partisan (but not racial) gerrymandering are “nonjusticiable” by federal courts . This latter decision firmly put the ‘partisan gerrymandering regulation ball’ back in the courts of Congress and state legislatures. That said, Supreme Court decisions have set off a flurry of developments since the 1960s after relative continuity (of often already strongly gerrymandered districts) during the first half of the 20th century.

In a series of important decisions in the 1960s (e.g. Baker v. Carr, Wesberry v. Sanders, and Reynolds v. Sims), the Supreme Court decided on the ‘one person, one vote’ principle, “which required at least approximate population equality across districts to ensure equality of representation”, and which gave way to state legislatures to fight a districting battle at least around every decennial census (McGhee 2020: 173). In subsequent decades and on the basis of the Equal Protection Clause and the Voting Rights Act, the Supreme Court moved to outlaw redistricting that was predominantly based on race. This has not meant, however, that procedures and benchmarks are not subject to debate and clarification in this domain: in a 2024 case, for example, the Supreme Court emphasized that challengers carry the burden of proof of violation and that the Court must presume state legislatures to act in good faith (National Conference of State Legislatures).

Since the early 2010s, gerrymandering efforts have expanded and been conducted with high levels of sophistication. And although courts still try to maintain their distance (e.g. the ‘nonjusticiable’-decision), they remain at the center of legal contestation. A critical observer could intervene here with an intuitively sensible question: if gerrymandering is deemed lawful and constitutes an apparent part of American democracy, why should we even bother to discuss it at length, let alone consider the practice a serious threat? Nicholas Stephanopoulos provides an answer to this question that touches upon an important distinction: “We might not be too concerned about partisan gerrymandering if the damage is limited to bloodless concepts like seat and vote shares. But if gerrymandering distorts legislative representation – the beating heart of a democracy – then there may be more cause for alarm” (2017: 2118). As we are watching a nationwide partisan gerrymandering race between states unfold, I argue that serious distortion of representation is indeed at stake – with far-reaching potential consequences.

An Unprecedented Redistricting Battle

One method that reformers have adopted to curb partisan gerrymandering is the creation of nonpartisan or bipartisan independent redistricting commissions that do not generally benefit either party (Stephanopoulos 2017: 2148). Another method is to limit the frequency of drawing new state maps, primarily through refraining from redistricting more often than after every census, which takes place every ten years (and next in 2030). When President Donald Trump urged the initially hesitant but ultimately cooperative Texan governor Greg Abbott to pursue an uncommon mid-decade redistricting effort to flip five Democratic House seats for the Republicans in 2026, however, an unprecedented, arms-race-like redistricting battle ensued.

California governor and presidential hopeful Gavin Newsom took center stage by initiating Proposition 50, also pointedly called the ‘Election Rigging Response Act.’ After a campaign in which Newsom managed to coalesce Democrats from all across the country – from Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) to Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and President Obama – around his cause, Californian voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 50 on November 4, suspending the state’s independent redistricting commission’s work until the next census and paving the way toward five extra Democratic House seats in 2026.

Governor Newsom and President Trump, two frontline figures in the current redistricting battle

Newsom’s “fighting fire with fire” move initially contained a pledge to only take effect if the Texan effort succeeded, but this conditionality was timely removed. Thus, even when a federal court in Texas blocked the state from using its new map on the finding that it was racially gerrymandered, a decision that Supreme Court subsequently overruled, California’s move – which is facing legal challenges of its own – remained unaltered and sparked similar ongoing initiatives and debates in blue and red states alike.

Gerrymandering and Democratic Representation

The purpose of this contribution is not to fully detangle all latest developments on the 2026 ‘redistricting war’, but to weigh its risks by placing it in both a historical and a contemporary perspective. This is done in order to create an understanding of the novelty of today’s battle and to consider the (potential) impact of present-day levels of polarization, respectively. Crucial in weighing both perspectives, however, is democratic representation. This section examines the impact of gerrymandering on representation in threefold.

First, it is important to note that as district maps are gerrymandered in one party’s favor, states end up with House delegations that are either significantly more liberal or more conservative than their constituents – a phenomenon that one author calls “ideologically distorted representation” (Stephanopoulos 2017: 2149). This distortion can be further exacerbated when gerrymandering leads to maps full of ‘safe districts’ for either party, because when interparty competition is de facto absent, “the only thing a congressperson has to fear is a primary challenger from farther to the right (…) or a primary challenger from further to left” (Ruiz 2019: 14).

Secondly, racial gerrymandering remains a serious and persistent threat to democratic representation. Wherever gerrymandering takes place, litigation on the basis of racial gerrymandering seems to follow. And although it is up to the (predominantly conservative) Supreme Court to judge claims case by case, the simple fact that it has occasionally deemed district maps racially gerrymandered, makes the continuing existence of the violation practically undebatable. A striking case in point is a ruling in 2023, in which it was determined that “in Alabama, a state where there are seven congressional seats and one in four voters is black, the Republican-dominated state legislature had denied African American voters a reasonable chance to elect a second representative of their choice.” One author notes that racial gerrymandering “has deep, profound, and long-lasting impacts” and can, for example, enforce systemic racism and encourage voter suppression (Odujinrin 2022: 191). Thus, the mere risk of gerrymandering – even if not primarily – on a racial basis underlines the practice’s enduring potential threat to democracy.

Thirdly, as districts across the US become less and less competitive and states’ district maps tend to turn either redder or bluer, a party that is left with little to fight for in places that were gerrymandered ‘against’ it will have less of an incentive to maintain a serious party presence in those areas and to fund (ever more costly) campaigns that are doomed to fail.

Underlining the direness of the status quo is the finding that in 2024, nearly 85 percent of US House seats were uncompetitive. In this light, the gerrymandering effort that Texas recently embarked on, and the unprecedented chain reaction that followed from California’s – perhaps politically defendable but potentially hugely detrimental – response, pose a serious threat to democratic representation that could further spiral into a ‘race to the bottom’. Having considered both the novelty of this battle in historical context and the representational risks it encompasses, the last step toward an answer to the introduction’s main question is to reflect upon these observations through a contemporary scope.

Today’s Polarization: Algorithms, Media, and Rhetoric

In order to be able to assess whether today’s redistricting battle harbors the potential to pose any ‘new’ threat to American democracy, I consider it important to, in this final section, zoom in on polarization and some of its (plausible) drivers. Two main forms of polarization are ideological polarization, “the divergence of political opinions, beliefs, attitudes, and stances of political adversaries” and affective polarization, which refers to ways in which “identity salience in politics and within groups can exacerbate out-group animosity” (Kubin & Sikorski 2021: 188). There is some debate as to whether gerrymandering itself causes polarization. While some argue it does not (McCarty, Poole, & Rosenthal 2006: 29), others argue it does – for example through its impact on races in ‘safe’ districts (Ruiz,2019: 14). The argument here, however, is not that one necessarily causes the other, but rather that in the present moment, the two go hand in hand at the expense of healthy political competition and robust democratic representation.

So, what levels of polarization is the US dealing with? Michael Kang explains that although polarized partisanship was also very common before the – relatively bipartisan – Cold War period, today, “Democrats and Republicans have not been more bitterly divided along partisan lines since Reconstruction, nor more aggressively hostile to each other in the history of the two major parties” (2020: 1380-1381). Amid a lack of any “ideological overlap between congressional Republicans and Democrats”, he calls it “no surprise” that “the re-emergence of hyperpartisanship gave rise to the re-emergence of hyperpartisan gerrymandering during the twenty-first century” (ibid.: 1420). Pew Research polls reflect similar sentiments in American society: compared to 1994, “hardly a time of amicable partisan relations”, the amount of people who have very unfavorable impressions of the ‘opposing’ party more than doubled in 20 years.

Finally, two important factors – political echo-chambers and current presidential politics – further accelerate polarization and deepen the same homogeneity of representation that partisan gerrymandering has been contributing to. The first is the increasing degree to which people overwhelmingly consume political coverage that reaffirms and emboldens their existing views. Americans tend to predominantly surround themselves with people that share their political convictions (Pew Research). Concerningly (but not surprisingly), social media algorithms also increase polarization by amplifying content consistent with viewers’ beliefs, while suppressing content that is not (Javed and Javed 2023: 44).

While these phenomena are far from being uniquely American, there are (at least) two other US-context specific factors within the creation of these so-called political ‘echo-chambers’ that further add to the problem. The first one is the bias of oftentimes ideology-driven mass media, which 67 percent of Americans do not trust (very much) to report fully, accurately and fairly (Gallup poll), and the growing problem of news deserts, which further decrease the variety (in quantity and nature) of news people consume (Abernathy 2023: 290).

The second polarization-accelerating phenomenon that adds to the current ‘perfect storm’ of division that spurs on the redistricting battle and encourages extreme partisanship is the output of presidential politics, specifically the rhetoric and policies that emanate from the White House. Donald Trump has, in his second term, capitalized on his animosity toward Democrat-led states and cities in notable and oftentimes unprecedented ways. One could think of Trump’s comment that his opponents represent “the enemy from within” who “are more dangerous (…) than Russia and China”, his move to send the National Guard into Democratic cities that he calls “anarchist jurisdictions”, and his disproportionate cutting and withholding of federal funding to Democratic states.

Moreover, modern technology and partisan boundary-pushing coalesce in Mr. Trump’s public communication to produce undeniably polarizing materials, such as two controversial AI-generated videos (one that targets Democratic Congressional leaders and another one that targets ‘No Kings’ protestors). This observation is, by no means, made in pursuit of a partisan argument. Democratic leaders have, after all, just as well been guilty of polarizing behavior and the favoring of Democratic states and cities (Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables”- comment serves as a case in point). The Trump White House, however, takes ‘us versus them’ policies and rhetoric – i.e. affective polarization – to another level. By doing so from the bully pulpit of the presidency, and in concert with urging states like Texas to redraw its districts mid-decade, I argue that the executive significantly adds to the already fertile breeding ground of potentially harmful partisan gerrymandering.

Conclusion

This contribution examined the history and practice of partisan gerrymandering in the US, the current nationwide redistricting battle, and numerous contextually important factors that play into this battle. These examinations culminated from the following central question formulated in the introduction: “to what extent does the current redistricting battle across the US and its potential to damage voter representation threaten American democracy to a new extent, given recent socio-political developments and today’s polarization levels?”

First, the sections on the history of partisan gerrymandering and its relation to democratic representation established the real and enduring risks that the practice continues to pose to American democracy. Inherent to gerrymandering are serious risks of decreased representation, ideological skewing, and (unlawful but at times hard to prove) racial gerrymandering. The second part of the question, which aims to assess whether today’s redistricting battle inhibits a ‘new extent’ of democratic threat considering contemporary US politics, calls for a break-down of a more complex web of developments and mechanisms.

Certainly, today’s redistricting battle, initiated by President Trump and followed up by (among others) Governors Abbott and Newsom, has marked a new threat in the sense that it took partisan gerrymandering into the arena of interstate competition. My argument is that this elevation of the practice to a highly charged national battleground in which the Supreme Court has set the bar for legal intervention incredibly high, is likely to lead to a snowball effect of nationwide redistricting that disregards the importance of fair democratic representation. If this snowball effect materializes in its ‘worst’ way, entire states are left with barely any truly competitive districts – and thus with barely any healthy political competition.

If such a loss of healthy political competition transpires or worsens in individual states, voters will have less to choose from, parties will have less reason to build an organization in ‘unfriendly’ places, and executives will, potentially, have less reason to represent constituents from states in which there is little or nothing to be electorally won for them. I argue that, especially in a tense political climate of ideological echo-chambers and affective polarization, such a development does indeed constitute a new threat to American democracy. Naturally, this threat remains challenging to quantify, and further research and writing on this matter would be of great value. Today’s redistricting battle and its risks to democracy are, after all, far from over.

About the Author

Rogier Platter works at the Netherlands Atlantic Association, a Dutch platform for debate on trans-Atlantic relations and international security issues. He holds a B.A. in political science and an M.A. in Transatlantic Studies, both from Radboud University. His research interests are the domestic history, contemporary politics, and foreign policy of the United States, where he spent three half-year periods for study (Western Washington University and UNC Chapel Hill) and for an internship at the embassy of the Netherlands in Washington DC. Email: rogier.platter@hotmail.com.

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Header

Slowking4, GFDL 1.2 <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/fdl-1.2.html>, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gerrymandering_032624.jpg.


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Rogier Platter (December 17, 2025). A Perfect Storm: Polarization, Representation, and the 2026 Redistricting Battle in the United States. HCA Graduate Blog. Retrieved May 10, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/15ddu


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