ST. LOUIS — A Republican plan to redraw Missouri’s eight congressional districts likely would cement GOP control of seven of those districts, while only slightly elevating the party’s risk in future elections, according to experts who reviewed a Post-Dispatch analysis.
If the proposed boundaries had been in place for the 2020 presidential election, Republicans would have secured double-digit margins of victory in seven of the eight districts, the newspaper found.
“If the goal is to create seven safely Republican districts, mission accomplished,†said David Kimball, chair of political science at the University of Missouri-51ºÚÁÏ.
If the new map becomes law, Democrats would be unlikely to flip any seats in future elections unless there was “a national Democratic landslide,†he said.
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“These districts were drawn to withstand a political earthquake,†he said.
The Republican-dominated Missouri Legislature is considering a plan to redraw the state’s eight congressional districts to eliminate one of two safe Democratic seats. The House voted 90-65 Tuesday to advance the new boundaries to the Senate.
Gov. Mike Kehoe called the special session on Aug. 29 in response to President Donald Trump’s demand that Republican-led states redraw their political boundaries to favor GOP candidates ahead of the midterm elections.
Missouri and Texas each answered his call by launching mid-decade redistricting efforts. Democratic-led California has countered by asking voters to approve a new map that would send more Democrats to Congress.
Democrats have called Missouri’s effort an “authoritarian power grab,†and promised to bring lawsuits over whether congressional maps can be drawn mid-cycle without a new census count to ensure all districts are of equal population.
They complained Thursday during a special committee meeting that Republicans were rushing the bill through without providing data that would show the impact of the boundary changes.
To understand the effects of the redistricting effort, the Post-Dispatch analyzed two sets of data:
To examine the effects on race and ethnicity, the newspaper grouped population counts from the 2020 decennial census using the current congressional boundaries and the proposed boundaries, then compared the results.
To see how the redistricting might shift actual votes, the Post-Dispatch analyzed results from the 2020 presidential election, using precinct-level data prepared by Michael P. McDonald of the University of Florida and the Voting and Elections Science Team. The newspaper grouped the votes by the current congressional boundaries and also by the proposed boundaries, then compared the differences.
It shared the analysis with political experts in Missouri and elsewhere.
“What you’ve laid out here mirrors our own findings on the map,†said Kyle Kondik, director of communications for the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
Bleaching the Fifth
The newspaper’s analysis shows the new map, if passed, likely would accomplish Republicans’ primary goal: flipping the 5th District, which currently includes Kansas City and is represented by Democratic U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver.
The Republican plan achieves this goal, Kimball said, “by bleaching the 5th, removing non-white votes from the 5th District specifically.â€
According to decennial census data, changing the 5th District’s boundaries to exclude some of Kansas City while adding Republican areas to the east would shrink the percentage of minority voters in the district by 9 points, from 42% to 33%.
The political result? Instead of a Democratic margin of victory of 26 points in the 2020 presidential election, Republicans would have won there by a margin of 14 points.
For his part, Cleaver has said he will run for reelection, regardless of whether Republicans succeed in changing the boundaries of his district.
Under the Republican plan, the neighboring 4th and 6th Districts each would absorb parts of Kansas City, bumping their minority percentages by 3.5 and 4.5 points respectively.
The newspaper’s analysis shows that while both districts would vote less overwhelmingly Republican, the GOP still would have won each in 2020 by strong margins: 19 points in the 4th, and 25 points in the 6th.
“The new plan takes a solidly Democratic district and turns it into a solidly Republican district without really hurting the surrounding Republicans in any meaningful way,†Kondik said.
Jeremy Walling, a political science professor at Southeast Missouri State University, said he often has used maps of Illinois’ congressional districts to show his students what gerrymandering looks like.
Missouri’s proposed 5th District offers him a new example, he said. Its shape, like an appendage reaching west from central Missouri but not quite touching the Kansas border, is “a pretty clear gerrymander,†he said.
Slightly more risk
Looking at 2020 presidential votes under the current congressional boundaries, only one seat in Missouri — the 2nd District, held by Republican U.S. Rep. Ann Wagner — would have been considered “competitive,†meaning the incumbent got less than 60% of the vote.
The new boundaries in the Republicans’ redistricting proposal would dilute GOP votes somewhat, pushing four of the eight seats — Districts 2, 3, 4 and 5 — under that 60% threshold, the Post-Dispatch analysis shows.
“With these numbers the GOP are putting some of their seats slightly more at risk,†Peverill Squire, political science professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia, said in an email.
“Under most circumstances, their incumbents would still likely win by comfortable margins,†he wrote. “But if there is a ‘Blue Wave’†— a “big if,†he noted — “the redistricting may backfire on them.â€
In the case of the 2nd District, the newspaper’s analysis shows that redistricting may actually give Wagner slightly more cushion.
Under the current 2nd District boundaries, which include west 51ºÚÁÏ County, all of Franklin County, and parts of St. Charles and Warren counties, the GOP would have secured 53% of the 2020 presidential vote there — 7.7 points more than the Democrats. Under the proposed boundaries, which shift the district southward, the GOP margin in 2020 would have increased to 11.1 points.
Walling said he was surprised the 2nd District is not being adjusted more to make it even safer for Wagner, noting Republicans probably prefer a higher vote margin.
The 3rd District, currently held by U.S. Rep. Bob Onder, would be reconfigured to take in all of St. Charles County. The paper’s analysis showed the proposed changes would have slightly diluted Republican support there in 2020, shrinking the GOP margin of victory in the presidential election from 26.1 points to 18.5 points.
The 1st District, which covers 51ºÚÁÏ city and much of 51ºÚÁÏ County and is represented by Democrat Wesley Bell, would see small changes under the redistricting plan, but those would have resulted in little difference in the 2020 presidential vote, the analysis found.
The boundaries of the 7th and 8th Districts in southern Missouri would not change under the proposed map.
The Post-Dispatch analysis looked only at the 2020 race for president because geographic vote data for it was readily available. Experts noted that Democrats performed better nationally in 2020 than they did four years later, so an analysis of the Missouri redistricting plan based on 2024 data might show Republicans in an even stronger position.
And while the Republican map likely would dilute Democratic voters’ power statewide by dispersing them into various districts, experts cautioned that each election is unique, as is each candidate.
“Decisions like this have consequences, both intended and unintended,†Walling said.
