The Democrats received close to 4 million more congressional votes than Republicans in yesterday’s midterm election, yet they will likely only hold a modest advantage of about 25 seats in the House.

The reason why is simple: gerrymandering.

Related 4 winners and 2 losers from the 2018 midterm elections

Back in 2010, the Republican Party, on the heels of a sweeping loss to Barack Obama in 2008, hatched a scheme it called REDMAP, short for Redistricting Majority Project. It was “the most audacious political heist of modern times,” writes David Daley, author of Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America’s Democracy, a 2016 book about REDMAP.

What the Republicans created, Daley writes, was a firewall against the popular will of voters by carving out districts that systematically favor the GOP and neutralize support for Democratic candidates. What’s more, district lines are only drawn once a decade, in conjunction with the census, so there aren’t many opportunities to reverse them. (The next census is in 2020 and the following one will be in 2030.)

One of the big questions heading into the 2018 midterm election was whether the Democrats would gain enough power — particularly in state legislatures — to redraw some of these district lines and level the playing field. As Vox’s Andrew Prokop recently explained, Democrats have a plan to win the redistricting game, but much of it turns on winning elections.

Now that the results of the midterms are in, I wanted to asked Daley whether the Democrats’ successes on Tuesday are enough to help them solve their gerrymandering problem. “The Democrats made some gains, but I’m not sure that they made enough gains to ensure that they have a reasonable voice in the process,” Daley told me.

A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.

Sean Illing

Heading into Tuesday’s election, how much of a built-in advantage did Republicans have thanks to gerrymandered districts?

David Daley

Republicans drew themselves a giant firewall in the US House through gerrymandering. In North Carolina, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, and elsewhere, they used the 2010 census and their power in state legislatures to redraw district lines and ensure themselves almost two-thirds of the congressional seats from these otherwise competitive, closely contested swing states.

Heading into the midterms, Republicans controlled 48 of 69 congressional seats in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. That’s a 27-seat advantage, which means that their edge in those five overall purple states was larger than their edge in Congress overall. Prior to Tuesday night, Democrats had only flipped one seat in any of those five states on these maps this entire decade, and that was in the Conor Lamb special election in 2018.

Sean Illing

Bottom line: Did the Democrats gain enough power Tuesday night to redraw the American political map in their favor?

David Daley

They made small gains. What’s important to understand is that flipping the House doesn’t do anything to change who draws the maps after the 2020 census. That process, in most states, is run by state legislatures and governors. What the Democrats needed to do last night was win themselves back seats at the table for a redistricting after 2020, seats that they simply did not have in 2010.

They won a handful of those seats. They appear to have won the governorship in Wisconsin, which will give Democrats a seat at the table in a state where Republicans have been able to win super-majorities in the state legislature even in years when Democrats won 175,000 more votes statewide.

Indeed, last night the power of gerrymandering in Wisconsin showed through. Democrats swept all of the statewide offices there, but did not make any gains in the assembly or the state senate, which remain overwhelmingly Republican.

Democrats also won the governorship in Michigan, which is one of the key states. Michigan, however, also passed a redistricting reform ballot initiative on Tuesday night, so that the process there will be conducted by an independent commission for the first time, which is great news for reform and competition.

Michigan is one of those states where Democrats made gains last night, but throughout this entire decade, Republicans gave themselves a 9-5 edge in the congressional delegation there.

And Democrats failed to make gains in Florida, where winning the governor’s office would have given them a seat at the table in redistricting. That was a big, big loss for the Democratic Party in a massive swing state.

“When one side has complete control of the process, the lines always end up more extreme”

Sean Illing

Why were the gubernatorial races in Florida and Ohio so consequential?

David Daley

Florida and Ohio are probably the two biggest missed opportunities. Republicans will retain trifecta control in both of those states through the 2021 redistricting and right now that’s 43 seats in Congress, so nearly a tenth of the entire body.

Democrats simply got wiped out in Ohio. There were three key races on the ballot that would have given them seats at the table on the redistricting commission, and that’s the governor’s race, the secretary of state, and the state auditor, and not a single one of them even turned out to be close.

Democrats also won’t have a seat at the table in Florida, which they could have had simply by winning one statewide race. So Republicans will dominate the maps in those two major states now through 2031.

Sean Illing

Who actually controls the redistricting process in states? Is it a combination of the state legislature and the governor? Does the governor at least have veto power?

David Daley

Every state is different. In most states, governors have veto power, but not all states. In North Carolina, for example, Democrats were able to break the Republican super-majorities in both the state House and Senate, and Democrats have Roy Cooper in office as governor. But Republicans will still run the redistricting there in 2020 unless Democrats make additional gains next time around, because the governor in North Carolina does not have a say in redistricting.

In Kansas, Democrats won a seat at the table, because the governor has veto power. But in Massachusetts and Maryland, the governor also has a say in the redistricting process, and Republicans won both of those races, so that is very bad news for Democrats.

Sean Illing

It’s probably worth noting that these redistricting processes only happen once every 10 years, so after 2020 the Democrats will not have another crack at this until 2030.

David Daley

That’s exactly right. It’s why 2018 was so important, because all of these governorships were on the line this year. The Democrats made some gains, but I’m not sure that they made enough gains to ensure that they have a reasonable voice in the process.

What we know is that when one side has complete control of the process, the lines always end up more extreme. When both sides have a seat at the table, you end up with some semblance of a compromise. It’s not always perfect, but the maps tend to be at least slightly more representative of the state when both sides have seats at the table.

Sean llling

In your opinion, will the Democrats ever catch up to Republicans on this front? The Republicans got the jump on Democrats in 2010, and it seems like it will be near-impossible to close the gap.

David Daley

It’s a really long road back, and you began to see steps on that road in Tuesday elections. But those are small steps, like breaking super-majorities in state legislatures. The Democrats managed to break super-majorities last night in Pennsylvania, in Michigan, in North Carolina, and that’s important for their future electoral prospects in those states.

The thing is, you’re not going to have a 9-point generational wave every year, and when it takes a 9-point generational wave simply to break a super-majority in a swing state, that’s a really serious structural advantage.

I think Democrats are going to need successive generational waves in these states if they want to have a shot at parity next time around. It’s a really long road back. That said, I think they made some important inroads last night, but there’s a lot of work to be done.

Sean Illing

So basically the Democrats can expect to face a comparatively unfair political map for another decade?

David Daley

Yes. Democrats have won themselves back a few small seats at the table, but they’re still at the kids’ table.