Analysis: Missouri's political map favors Republicans but falls short of gerrymandering

The way Missouri's political districts are drawn is unusually generous to Republicans, rewarding the party with more legislative seats than suggested by vote percentages, according to an Associated Press analysis.

In the 2016 U.S. House and Missouri House races, GOP candidates won more often than expected — even considering that about three out of five Missouri voters in the last election voted for Republican candidates.

The Associated Press conducted statistical analyses of all U.S. House and state House races to calculate "efficiency gaps" — a measure of how many votes are "wasted" by giving futile support to losing candidates or unneeded assistance to winners.

Researchers have used the efficiency gap metric to find possible cases of gerrymandering, which occurs when a district is drawn with the intent of helping one political party.

The AP's analysis found that states with Republican-skewed districts are four times more common than those biased toward Democrats. Similar analysis is being considered in the U.S. Supreme Court's review of a lower court decision that ruled Wisconsin's 2011 redistricting is unconstitutional.

According to the AP, Missouri had the 11th-highest disparity in statehouse races between average votes for a Republican and the number of seats won. In Congressional races, Missouri's map also gave an edge to the GOP, though it was less pronounced.

In November, the average Missouri Republican state legislative candidate received about 59 percent of the vote, compared to an average of 41 percent for Democrats, according to the Associated Press. The analysis notes that about 60 percent of races featured only one major-party candidate.

The result: Republicans controlled about 72 percent of the seats in the Missouri House.

The efficiency gap figure is 3.9 percent in favor of Republicans, giving them an extra 6.32 seats beyond what would be expected, according to the AP analysis.

In Congress, Republicans captured six of Missouri's eight districts after the state lost a seat in redistricting. GOP candidates took home an average of 60 percent of the vote per district.

The Associated Press determined this resulted in 0.38 excess Congressional seats for Republicans, which indicates a slight disparity.

Here's a look at how Springfield's districts changed in redistricting An Associated Press analysis found evidence that Missouri's political maps give a slight advantage to Republicans. Here's a look at how the most recent redistricting played out in Springfield following the 2010 Census.

Are Missouri's maps gerrymandered?

Missouri's legislature decides how Congressional maps are made, while a bipartisan commission appointed by the governor draw districts for state lawmakers.

The state commission contains equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans, making it difficult for one party to draw a map that grants an obvious advantage. The latest Congressional map was passed by GOP state lawmakers with the help of a handful of Democrats, overriding the veto of Gov. Jay Nixon.

Greg Vonnahme, an associate professor of political science at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, said there are two main factors that could have given Republicans inflated totals in Missouri: deliberate partisan gerrymandering, or what he called "natural gerrymandering."

Vonnahme said he thinks the first situation is unlikely. "There is some imbalance, but there's only so many ways you can slice the state into eight chunks."

In Missouri, Democrats are highly concentrated in St. Louis and Kansas City, with a smaller liberal center in Columbia. In contrast, he said, Republicans tend to win more frequent but thinner majorities elsewhere.

The Associated Press analysis shows that Missouri's efficiency gaps are lower than the 7 percent threshold that Vonnahme says could be the threshold for gerrymandering the Supreme Court uses in the Wisconsin case.

Peverill Squire, a professor of political science at the University of Missouri-Columbia, said gerrymandering is potentially a problem when it comes to how Missouri determines Congressional districts.

"We don't have enough seats for this to make a real difference, but you could draw one more competitive seat," he said, adding that while the GOP was likely to have more seats no matter what, he thought "Republicans drew it to maximize their advantage."

Squire said he sees gerrymandering at the statehouse level, as well — but not to benefit a single party. He said the bipartisan commissions that crafts local lawmakers' districts does so to protect the status quo and these maps are "rigged to some extent to protect incumbents."

In a hypothetical world where Republicans didn't beat expectations, the Missouri GOP would still easily maintain a majority in both Congress and the state legislature.

Not only that, but a Missouri House with only 111 or 110 Republican members would still give the party a supermajority capable of overriding the governor's veto.

Still, the upcoming Supreme Court action and the Associated Press' analysis are likely to draw more attention to redistricting processes in states like Missouri.

Supreme Court To Consider Case On Partisan Gerrymandering The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to consider whether drawing political boundaries in a state can be so hard on a minority political party that the resulting gerrymander violates the U.S. Constitution.

Partisan disagreement

As in other states, Missouri's political districts are arbitrary boundaries based on Census data, which is released every decade. Rules for turning this data into meaningful maps are included in the Missouri Constitution.

Districts are supposed to be drawn to be as compact as possible and to respect the "one person, one vote" credo. The compactness requirement is supposed to prevent gerrymandering.

Leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties in Missouri have different opinions about how well the state's redistricting process has accomplished that goal.

Todd Graves, chairman of the Missouri Republican Party, doesn't see any gerrymandering in the statehouse seats and noted the irony that a commission appointed by Jay Nixon, a Democrat, would create a map that gave a slight advantage to Republicans.

Democratic districts are "naturally packed," Graves said, pointed to the deep-blue zones of Kansas City and St. Louis where liberal candidates often win by huge margins.

In contrast, Graves said, Republicans carry rural and "collar counties" like eastern Jackson County and St. Charles. Especially in the suburbs, Republicans are more likely to win by slimmer margins, he said.

"The system we have (for the statehouse) was designed to remove partisan advantage as much as possible," Graves said. "You can't assume that the Republican redistricting commissioners are smarter than Democrats."

Graves acknowledged that a Supreme Court ruling might have some effect on Missouri's Congressional redistricting process and noted the impact of losing a seat last time.

"That probably naturally favors the Republicans," he said. "Some could say that's gerrymandering, or someone could say that's the nature of the district."

Stephen Webber, chairman of the Missouri Democratic Party, is of the mind that the most recent Congressional drawing was "a purely partisan map."

"There's no question there is a gerrymandering problem," Webber said. "... Republicans have absolutely abused redistricting here in Missouri."

Like Graves, Webber acknowledged that the heavy concentration of liberal voters in Missouri's urban areas likely had something to do with the slight advantage Republicans enjoyed.

What happens next?

Missouri's statehouse maps may boost Republican fortunes, but the problem isn't as prevalent as it is in Wisconsin or Michigan, where the Associated Press analysis shows uncommonly large advantages for the GOP, or in Colorado, where Democrats won a majority despite receiving less than 50 percent of the vote on average.

The next redistricting efforts are expected to begin in 2021. It's unclear whether Gov. Eric Greitens wants to stick around for a second term, but if he does, and if he wins, he'll appoint the next statehouse redistricting commissions.

Based on Real Clear Politics' projections, the Show-Me State is unlikely to regain a ninth Congressional seat. Missouri continues to grow, according to the state Office of Administration, but at a lower rate than the rest of the country.

Even so, there are at least two good reasons for all Missourians to pay attention to the Supreme Court's decision on Wisconsin's maps, said Vonnahme, the UMKC professor.

For one, what happens with other states' redistricting processes could affect the makeup of Congress, which in turn impacts the whole country, he said.

And second, because partisan gerrymandering is "loathed" by voters of all stripes, Vonnahme said, a Supreme Court ruling leading to redistricting reform could inspire more faith in American political institutions.

Change could come to Missouri regardless of the Supreme Court's decision and before the next census. A proposal to alter the way state legislative districts are drawn could go before voters in 2018, if the Clean Missouri initiative has its way.

The reform-minded political action committee, which received $250,000 this year from the Missouri NEA, has proposed a multi-part referendum "to make our state government more transparent, limit the power of big money in our legislature, and ensure we're able to hold legislators accountable when they fail to act in the public interest."

According to Clean Missouri's website, one part of the plan is to "ensure that neither political party is given an unfair advantage when new maps are drawn after the next census."

Sean Nicholson, campaign director for Clean Missouri, said the initiative would use a formula similar to the efficiency gap method used by the AP to reduce the number of wasted votes.

The proposed process would empower a nonpartisan state demographer to draw maps based on previous elections for presidents, governors and senators, Nicholson said. The Clean Missouri petition has been certified for the ongoing signature-gathering process

"We want a world where voters pick the politicians," Nicholson said, not the other way around.