Gerrymander Blitz Could Undo GOP Progress With Black Voters |
Republicans from Donald Trump on down are excited that the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana v. Callais has invited a wave of partisan gerrymanders in states they control. This could save GOP control of the House in November’s elections, and lead to even bigger gains over the next few election cycles. The Virginia Supreme Court’s shock decision on Friday invalidating a voter-approved retaliatory pro-Democratic gerrymander in that state has added to their excitement. But Republicans would be wise to take a beat to think about what the gerrymandering frenzy is likely to do to their efforts to shed their reputation as a lily-white party hostile to minority voters.
As recently as 2024, there was a lot of talk about the Donald Trump-led GOP bringing back a “big tent” appeal to nonwhite voters, despite the boss’s alleged lapses into racism. And indeed, Trump achieved a higher share of the Black vote (15 percent) than any Republican presidential candidate since 1960 — nearly doubling his percentage from four years earlier — despite facing a Black Democratic opponent. His percentage reached 21 percent among Black men, according to Pew’s authoritative validated voter study. It looked to some GOP optimists like the beginning of a realignment. Perhaps Democrats would no longer be able to count on Black voters as a key element of the party base, with particularly importance in battleground states ranging from Michigan and Pennsylvania to Georgia and North Carolina.
This narrative has already taken a beating thanks to Trump’s second-term record. A May 4 Economist-YouGov survey showed that just nine percent........