Given the tough medium-term scenario, the Democrats have a brief window to ban gerrymandering

The House isn’t the only chamber where the pitch institutionally favors Republicans. The Senate does too. Thanks to the maldistribution and legacy of the GOP’s 19th century efforts to create new states for partisan gains, Republicans have a great advantage beyond their popular support. As a result, rural white voters have disproportionate power at the expense of urban color voters.

As our recently compiled table shows, Senate Republicans have not won more votes or represented more Americans than Democrats since the late 1990s. Even so, they have ruled the body a little more than half the time since then, and this pattern of minority rule that continued from 2014 to 2020 could repeat itself over the next year. With more Americans voting straight for tickets, it has become nearly impossible for Democrats to win the Senate if the stars don’t align as they did in 2018 and 2020.

The other major challenge for Democrats over the next year is that the presidential party almost always loses a significant number of seats in Congress in mid-term elections when opposition voters are encouraged to vote and the presidential supporters are usually demobilized.

This dynamic has been evident in the medium term since 2006, and the vast majority of them since World War II. The few exceptions include elections like 2002, when the GOP benefited from George W. Bush’s surge in popularity after September 11, coupled with a pro-Republican shift in redistribution, or 1998, when Bill Clinton’s approval rating peaked at over 60% achieved the best economic growth cycle in decades and a backlash to impeachment efforts by the GOP. Joe Biden is unlikely to benefit from such one-off factors, especially since the polarization of the partisans only grew stronger in the years that followed.

However, a mitigating factor for the Democrats in 2022 is that, unlike earlier interim times like 2010 or 1994 when the Democrats suffered massive downballot losses, the Democrats have far fewer seats to protect that are hostile to their party at the presidential level.

In 2010, the Democrats defended 48 House seats that voted for John McCain in 2008, and another 19 where Barack Obama won by less than his national lead. Democrats would lose 50 of those 67 districts in November. The Senate’s story is similar: when the Republicans flipped the Senate in 2014, the Democrats tried to hold seven seats in states that Obama lost during his re-election campaign, and the GOP turned everyone on the way to nine seats that year.

However, following the 2020 election, the Democrats only hold seven House districts that voted for Donald Trump and another 15 that Biden won by less than his national lead of 4 points. In the Senate, none of the states that rose in 2022 voted for Trump, despite four backing Biden by less than his national lead.

While House Democrats are unlikely to suffer a setback anywhere near as monumental as the 63 net seats they lost in 2010, the post 2020 Democratic majority of just 222 seats out of 435 is also much smaller than the 256 seats they lost the party held the 2010 election. A net loss of just five seats would be enough to return the house to the Republicans, which is entirely plausible – if not likely – if 2022 turns out to be typically medium-term. In the Senate, Republicans also only have to take a single seat to retake the Chamber next year, compared to the six they had to flip in 2014.

A booming economy and an end to the pandemic could improve the fortunes of Democrats in 2022 by propping up Biden’s approval rating, but the combined threats of GOP gerrymandering, Senate maldistribution, and the typical medium-term penalty make Democrats underdogs for the next year. As a result, Congress Democrats must use the limited time to pass reforms that are vital to maintaining democracy in the face of an increasingly authoritarian Republican Party.

Most important of these reforms is the use of Congressional constitutional powers to ban walking in Congress by requiring states to pass independent redistribution commissions and to use impartial criteria when creating new maps to promote fairness. The House Democrats passed just such a law, the For the People Act – best known as HR 1 – which also includes a historic expansion of the protection of electoral access. However, to turn it into law, the Democrats will have to overcome a filibuster, which means any Democratic Senator will be brought on board with changing Senate rules.

Another important bill that would lessen the Senate’s pro-Republican bias would be giving Washington, DC statehood, ending the disenfranchisement of 700,000 American citizens and adding a heavily urban and black state to a body that underrepresents both groups would. However, DC statehood alone would give the Democrats two more seats in the Senate and still leave the Senate with a great inclination towards the GOP. To further improve the playing field, Democrats should also offer Puerto Rico statehood, an idea the island voted for in a referendum last year, and consider other ways to expand the chamber.

Most of the Republicans in Congress backed Trump’s attempted coup after his defeat, underscoring that the party that controls Congress will also hold the fate of free and fair elections in their hands. It’s easy to imagine that a Republican-controlled Congress could simply turn down an electoral college that didn’t like 2024, just as two-thirds of the House’s Republicans voted in favor just hours after Trump instigated an insurgent mob that stormed the Capitol had.

To avoid this future of escalating autocracy, the Democrats must carry out serious structural reforms to our democracy while they can. The time is short and getting shorter.