The 2024 elections are a highly competitive race, and not just for the presidency: Control of Congress is also at stake. But despite all the money and energy spent on House and Senate campaigns, very few seats are likely to change hands. This is because seats, especially in the US House of Representatives, have become virtually the property of one party or another, and very few switch sides. Gerrymandering (the practice of drawing district lines to favor one party or another) has long played a role. But so do Americans’ practices of clustering in similar geographic areas.

Occupational Safety for Members of Parliament

“In any given election, the overwhelming majority of House districts are won by the party that currently holds them,” said Pew Research’s Drew DeSilver. noted last week. “For example, in 2020, 93 percent of districts remained in the hands of the same party; only 18 of 435 districts (4%) were flipped.”

With a slim majority in the Republican House 220 seats and 3 vacancies for 212 DemocratsThis means that control can actually be seized. This also means that only a handful of seats will count to determine who will have the majority in the next Congress. The incumbent’s reelection rate in 2020 was not an outlier.

Looking at incumbent representatives (not parties) over the decades, OpenSecrets found: reelection rate In the past decade, the proportion of members of the Assembly was over 90 percent. It hasn’t fallen below 85 percent for at least 60 years.

Pew’s DeSilver went back even further, to 1922, and found most of it. The high point for competitive House races in which any seat changed hands between political parties at least twice was between 1932 and 1942. During this period “there were 71 mixed-party districts, accounting for 21% of the 342 districts we analyzed”

DeSilver believes “only 40 of the 435 seats in the House are competitive” in this year’s election. These are where control of the House of Representatives will be decided.

By comparison, the Senate A little more turnover. The third is on the ballot in any federal election. Over the last 40 years (reelection rates were lower in the 60s and 70s), the lowest reelection rate was 75 percent in 1988. Otherwise, the rate was 80 percent (okay, 79.3 percent in 2000 and 2006) and has been higher since then. All incumbents running for re-election in 2022 won their races. Jazmine Ulloa, “first time no Senate incumbent has lost a general election since 1914” wrote for New York Times.

This is impressive job security for an organization with minimal trust (32 percent according to Gallup) from the American people.

Gerrymandering Helps Create Safe Seats

As the House debates, many critics point to gerrymandering as the culprit. This is “the practice of drawing electoral district boundaries in a way that favors one political party, individual or constituency over another”. based on To Ballotpedia. Such antics were tolerated by many political parties that controlled redistribution; Its name dates back to then-Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry, who signed a particularly distorted map in 1812 to keep his allies in power.

“Most gerrymander initiatives can best be understood through the lens of two basic techniques: crushing and packaging.” to explain Julia Kirschenbaum and Michael Li of the Brennan Center for Justice. “Fracking divides groups of people with similar characteristics, such as voters belonging to the same party, into multiple districts. When voting power is split, these groups have a hard time electing their preferred candidates in any given district. Packing is the opposite of fracturing: mapmakers divide certain groups of voters into as few districts as possible.” In these few districts, ‘full’ groups are likely to elect their preferred candidates, but elsewhere the groups’ voting power is weakening.”

Sorting Americans by Politics Makes Seats Even Safer

But these days, you may have to gerrymander aggressively to create something. competitive districts. This is because the “big genre” sees Americans voluntarily moving politically toward increasingly homogeneous communities. The term “big genre” was coined by Bill Bishop. 2008 book by name. This phenomenon continues today Noted by PBS in 2023He found that “Americans are quickly divided by their politics.”

In an analysis published last week, Ronda Kaysen and Ethan Singer New York Times It looked at voter registration records for 3.5 million people who have moved since the 2020 presidential election.

“Among all movers, Republicans picked districts where Donald J. Trump won by an average of 19 percentage points in 2020, while Democrats picked districts where President Biden won by the opposite margin (also 19 points).” wrote. “Overall, moves began in neighborhoods with a 31 percentage point margin; they ended in neighborhoods with a 38 percentage point margin.”

Here’s the result: “More Democrats turned out than Republicans in all but three states that voted for Mr. Biden in 2020. In states won by Mr. Trump, the opposite is true; more Republicans turned out in all but one.” And disproportionately in 36 states loss Members of the losing side moving elsewhere. Yes we are talking about California but it is not Only this situation.

Interestingly, the analysis found that politics was only one factor in deciding where people moved. But lifestyle preferences are now so closely tied to partisan preferences that walkable urban neighborhoods are becoming more Democratic, while small towns and rural areas closer to the wilderness are becoming more Republican. People also like to relieve tension by swapping places with like-minded neighbors.

While some scholars once blamed gerrymandering for our increasingly fractious and hostile politics, this self-categorization may play a larger role.

Peter Feuerherd writes, “The districts themselves suffered a ‘decoupling’ that suppressed any effects of gerrymandering.” observed In a study conducted in 2018 JSTOR Daily. “Liberals and conservatives are now much less likely to live close to each other. This clustering makes it easier to create more homogeneous political districts.”

And of course, homogeneous political districts will tend to keep House seats held by the same party. The more clearly Republican or Democratic all states become, the more Senate seats will likely do the same. No one trusts Congress, but we’re more likely than ever to keep it in the same hands.