To win control of the U.S. House, Democrats needed to secure at least 218 seats. By Wednesday night, the party won at least 240 — picking up more than two dozen additional seats, and flipping the Senate too.
A year ago Democrats were far less confident they could pull off the blue wave. Back then, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott — at the urging of the Trump administration — carried a gerrymander to create five more Republican districts in his state. It threatened to stack the deck against Democratic gains.
Gov. Gavin Newsom counter-punched with his own bid to draw five more seats for California Democrats, Proposition 50.
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In the end, however, it wasn’t necessary — and some Prop. 50 critics say it did a disservice for democracy in general.
As CalMatters’ Maya C. Miller and Nadia Lathan explain, at least five of California’s nine-member Republican delegation suffered losses. It’s not clear yet whether California Democrats could have gained those seats anyway without the gerrymandering, but the party would have had enough to flip the House regardless.
Meanwhile, the partisan redistricting didn’t work out so well for Texas: GOP lawmakers drew five Republican-leaning seats and lost all but one of them.
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