The reason that we have seen such a high percentage of incumbents re-elected and why such a large number of House seats continue to be safe for one party or the other is that we haven't seen any major shifts in the contours of votes in the past 10 years. Nationally, the balance of votes for the two parties in House races have remained almost identical in five successive elections. Rounded off, Republicans won the popular vote for the House by 49.0 to 48.5 percent in 1996, 49to 48 percent in 1998, 49 to 48 percent in 2000, 51 to 47 percent in 2002, and 50 to 47 percent in 2004. Historically, that is a remarkably stable balance. Moreover, there have been no major shifts in the contours of support for the two parties since the showdown between Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich in 1995–96. The issues may have changed and Clinton and Gingrich have left office, but just about all of us are voting the way we were when Bill and Newt were squaring off.
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That is the real reason that incumbents have been re-elected in such numbers and why there are an unusually low number of marginal House seats. Critics can call on legislatures or voters in referenda to create independent redistricting commissions, and they may have some success. But the real solution to the problems they see in the current situation is for voters to change their minds, either to shift massively to the Democrats or Republicans, or for voters in some types of districts to shift to the Democrats and in others to the Republicans. I have been looking for evidence of such shifts, and so have both the Democratic and Republican election experts I most respect; but so far as I know no one has seen any.
No one knows which party will be in a stronger position in the next redistricting cycle. That will depend primarily on the outcome of state elections in 2006, 2008, and 2010. But I think O'Connor got one rule right and the other wrong. There are no standards for deciding which partisan redistricting is too partisan. Any such standards would be, like O'Connor's standard for deciding whether racial redistricting was too racial, purely aesthetic. Redistricters, however skilled, cannot make permanent a majority for a party that has lost significant popular support. Today's political contours will not stay in place forever. Different issues will emerge, and different leadership will reshape the parties' images and stands: Imagine a John McCain or Rudy Giuliani Republican Party or a Democratic Party headed by the likes of Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen or Virginia Gove. Mark Warner. We have been in a period of 10-year stasis in partisan alignments. But history tells us that such stasis doesn't last forever. We don't need judges guessing which plans are too partisan. We need voters to change their minds.
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