A majority of voters in both political parties support gerrymandering to bolster their own side’s chances in the upcoming midterm elections, according to a Politico poll released Friday.
Fifty-four percent of Democratic voters and 52% of GOP voters favor redrawing congressional district maps as a way to “gain advantage” in the midterms, the newly released Politico survey shows. Moreover, 68% of Democrats and 57% of Republicans back redistricting in order to “neutralize the other party,” according to the poll.
However, a Marquette Law School poll released on Wednesday found that 71% of all voters said they were opposed to states redrawing their congressional maps mid-decade. Meanwhile, only 28% of respondents said they favored mid-decade redistricting, according to the Marquette Law School survey.
A minority — 38% — of Americans backed drawing political maps through an “independent, politically neutral” process, according to the Politico poll.
The Politico survey found that 34% of respondents said political maps should be drawn by state legislatures but approved by voters, while 7% said they should be drawn by state legislatures without approval by voters and 21% responded they were unsure.
On Tuesday, a three-judge federal panel ruled 2-1 that Texas cannot use its newly redrawn Republican-backed congressional map which Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law in August. Abbott told Fox News host Sean Hannity during a Wednesday interview that the decision “was a gross misjudgment,” the Houston Chronicle reported.
California voters meanwhile greenlit Proposition 50, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s gerrymandering measure, on Nov. 4. Prop 50 seeks to add up to five Democratic seats in California in an effort to push back against Texas’ decision to redraw its congressional district lines in order to add more Republican seats.
The California Democratic Party has touted Prop 50 as a measure that ensures the 2026 midterms “are conducted on a level playing field without an unfair advantage for Republicans.” The California GOP has conversely claimed that Prop 50 “takes California backwards.”
The Politico poll surveyed 2,098 U.S. adults online from Nov. 14 to 17. The poll’s results were weighted by age, race, gender, geography and educational attainment and have an overall margin of sampling error of plus or minus two percentage points.
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