Utah Gov. Spencer Cox expressed concern last week at the long-term impact of the widening redistricting battle in America.
“Sometimes, I think we make changes to long-standing norms and policies, not realizing the consequences of those changes to those norms and policies,” Cox said in his weekly press conference. “I fear that this may be one of those.”
Raising the possibility of “every two or four years we’re redistricting,” the governor said, “I can’t see a scenario where that makes life better for anybody.”
Scholars we contacted at Utah’s universities largely agree with the governor’s concern, while highlighting this as a systemic problem among both political parties.
Josh Ryan, political scientist, Utah State University
Josh M. Ryan is a professor of Political Science at Utah State University in Logan, Utah, with a research specialty in state legislatures. In an email to the Deseret News, he writes: “I agree with Governor Cox that this is an escalation of previous redistricting battles. And, like most national political issues, polarization and partisanship are the accelerants that make the stakes higher and increasingly lead to violations of tradition and norms.”
When asked whether this an aberration, or more of a continuation of historical trends, Ryan responds, “Yes, things like this have happened throughout American history, but not in recent history. Can states do mid-cycle redistricting? Yes. Should they? No.”
Jeremy Pope, political scientist, Brigham Young University
“This redistricting is occurring against a long-standing backdrop of redistricting that is pretty similar (though not carried out this late in the cycle),” writes Jeremy C. Pope, a professor of political science at BYU and a senior scholar with the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy.
But then Pope adds: “A lot of people on the left are saying that doing so is ‘stealing’ seats, but they’re quite willing to redistrict at the same time.”
It’s true there are a number of other states with a significant percentage of Republican voters, but with no GOP-controlled seats in the U.S. House. That includes:
- Massachusetts (30–40% Republican, 0 GOP seats out of 9 total)
- New Mexico (38% Republican, 0 GOP seats out of 3 total)
- Connecticut (32% Republican, 0 GOP seats out of 5 total)
“I’m not sure what to make of that claim of ‘stealing’” Pope continues. “A man toting a TV from a broken store window complaining about the guys who lifted a recliner is not in a real strong position to throw stones.”
The Brigham Young University scholar concludes, “Do I like what the Republicans (and Democrats) are doing? No. Do I think it’s the largest worry at the moment? Certainly not.”
James Curry, political scientist, University of Notre Dame
James M. Curry, political science professor at the University of Notre Dame, similarly calls “battles between the parties to give themselves whatever electoral edge they can” a “constant throughout American history. Gerrymandering has become a ”weapon of choice” for several reasons, he says, “including improved data and computer power helping strategic politicians draw more effective maps.”
Yet in an email to Deseret News, Curry remarks on what sets this recent escalation apart especially. “In the past, parties were less transparent in their efforts to try to use gerrymandering to shape election outcomes. It was widely viewed as inappropriate to be so open about the nature of the power grab.”
But the Trump administration and its allies have been open about wanting to redraw district lines to specifically ensure more safe Republican seats for the 2026 midterms, Curry notes, with Democrats making clear they are trying to shore up more safe Democratic seats in response.
“The veil, however thin, has fallen,” he concludes. Even though polling shows that the public is generally not happy about this, Curry says “we will see if gerrymandering itself becomes a potent election issue in 2026.”
Matthew Burbank, political scientist, University of Utah
“It is true that drawing political districts for partisan gain (gerrymandering) has been around as long as drawing districts and indeed probably predates the development of organized political parties in the United States,” writes Matthew J. Burbank, professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Utah, in an email to the Deseret News: “What is different about the new maps in Texas and the potential for new maps in California, Missouri, Ohio, etc., are two things. One is the timing. It is extremely unusual for states to be changing established congressional district lines in the middle of a decade prior to a mid-decade congressional election.”
“This push for new maps at this point in time appears to be an escalation of the typical state politics around redistricting that occurs shortly after the decennial census (with the usual goal of getting the maps done before the first congressional election following the census).”
Another unusual aspect of this process, Burbank states, is “the extent to which this process is being driven by national political leaders of the party holding the presidency and Congress for the stated purpose of holding on to power. I cannot think of another time when a US president said publicly that redistricting should occur in a state in order to help the president’s party maintain control of the US House. These statements from the president and the governor of Texas and the responses by the governors of California and Illinois again seem to be an escalation of the usually contentious state politics of redistricting and appears to be driven by national politics rather than state needs.”
He continues, “It is not hard to believe that if the Republican party is successful in the 2026 midterms with the strategy that the next step will be to attempt to redraw political boundaries whenever a party in power has the ability to do so, unrelated to new population data. And that, to me, is a troubling development in the ongoing process of partisan polarization.”
Nate Silver, pollster and statistician
Many have argued in recent weeks that the end result of a redistricting war may ultimately benefit Republicans. But in an article entitled, “Democrats can win the redistricting war,” pollster Nate Silver says that if California succeeds in their own redistricting push, that will mean Democrats are “joining Republicans in a race to the bottom as parties with firm control over their state legislatures do whatever they can to maximize their expected number of seats in the U.S. House.”
Yet he argues that actions like Governor Newsom’s could help Democrats “keep the playing field level in the long run — or even eke out an advantage.”
Silver goes on to dispute a claim showing up in Reuters headline this weekend, “Trump’s redistricting push could bring decades of Republican rule” in the House.
“That’s probably wrong,” he argues. “If both parties pursue a maximalist strategy, there’s no particular reason why Democrats should expect to be at a structural advantage. They just need to win elections to statewide offices that determine control of the redistricting process — and then be just as ruthless as Republicans have been.”
“To be clear, excessively partisan districting is bad — as are districts that change every two years instead of every ten,” Silver says. “If a genie gave me three wishes to change the U.S. Constitution, putting some curbs on this would be one of them.”