New York Redistricting Could Make or Break Democrats in 2024

Likely control of the U.S. House has been teetering between the two parties for months. Now New York’s next move may decide it.

Party control of the U.S. House of Representatives has recently been on a knife’s edge. From 2021 to 2023, Democrats held a slim five-seat majority that often fell to near extinction when its members were sick or otherwise absent. Republicans entered 2023 with their own five-seat majority, which then fell to four or three or even two seats with deaths, illnesses, and resignations. As we learned with the eventual ejection of Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a tiny margin of control can give enormous power to small extremist factions in the majority party (though longtime Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi never seemed to have quite the problems her Republican counterparts have encountered on that score). At the same time, any margin of control, however small and shaky, gives the majority party total power over the House agenda; in the current configuration, Speaker Mike Johnson’s troops have a veto over legislation proposed by a Democratic White House and enacted by a Democratic Senate.

Understandably, the fight for control of the House in 2024 is going to be very intense. Republicans are modestly favored to flip the Senate, and at the moment the outcome of the presidential contest is impossible to predict, but it could reinstall Donald Trump. If Republicans win a trifecta, a lot of the horrific second-term plans Trump has hatched will become immensely easier, while a Democratic House could mitigate the damage. To borrow Joe Biden’s famous words to Barack Obama about the Affordable Care Act, it’s a “BFD.”

There are an ongoing series of developments in courts, legislatures, and commissions heading into 2024 that could have a major impact on the balance of power in the House after the dust has settled. They involve re-redistricting congressional districts, normally complete within two years of the decennial census but occasionally reopened by disputes in the courts. Democrats stand to gain a House seat in Alabama thanks to a federal court order involving a Voting Rights Act challenge to that state’s gerrymandered 6-1 Republican congressional delegation. It’s possible that a back-and-forth battle between Republican state legislators and the federal courts in Georgia and Louisiana on similar grounds could produce a one-seat Democratic gain in each state. Meanwhile, North Carolina Republicans, who managed to overturn Democratic control of a state court that had blocked their own gerrymandering plans, have remapped their state’s House delegation in a way that is likely to give the GOP three to four new seats. Democrats are in federal court fighting this move, but the odds of the map staying in place at least through 2024 are high.

But the heaviest shoe to drop on the national 2024 congressional map was in New York, where the state’s top court has just ordered a re-redistricting that could net Democrats as many as six House seats.

Last year, New York’s bipartisan independent redistricting commission couldn’t reach an agreement on new lines, so the Democratic legislature adopted a map that Republicans successfully challenged in the courts. Ultimately, the state’s Court of Appeals appointed a “special master” to draw hypothetically neutral lines. As my colleague Nia Prater explained, that helped the GOP make big gains in 2022:

Colleagues found themselves drawn into districts together, prompting some to either seek new seats or challenge their newfound neighbors. The new map made several districts more competitive than they would have been under the Democratic version, with Republicans winning most of the races in tight districts.

New York Democrats went back to court, arguing that the redistricting commission should get a second shot at creating a House map, and in a 4-3 decision, the Court of Appeals agreed.

House Democrats nationally and in New York had already made the state a major target for 2024, beginning with the upcoming special election to fill the vacant seat of expelled Republican George Santos. Indeed, before the re-redistricting order, the Cook Political Report had listed five Republican House seats from New York as “toss-ups.” While the new map is very likely to be more hospitable to the Democratic Party, Republicans have been making gains in their New York vote share, so it’s hard to predict how things will turn out. While New York’s re-redistricting will likely offset North Carolina’s and tilt the seesaw back toward Democrats, the national political climate and specific campaigns will determine who ultimately prevails. Would-be Speaker Hakeem Jeffries will be a keen observer of developments in his home state.