When politicians of either party think about elections, they often don’t see voters as people. Voters may be broken down into groups that candidates want to appeal to, or numbers in a poll, but too many political operatives don’t see voters as human beings.
One of the elements that has been ignored in the gerrymandering arms race of 2026, especially in the rushed redrawn maps in already heavily gerrymandered red states, is that those “numbers” that are being shifted from district to district are human beings who vote in elections, and human behavior combined with math can create unintended consequences.
For example, Texas Republicans thought they were creating five new Republican seats with their gerrymander, but, according to election analysts, the reality is that they are more likely to win only 2-3 due to Hispanic voters in these newly carved-out districts swinging back to Democrats.
Human beings don’t always play along with the expectations of the politicians who construct these maps, which is something that Southern states that are rushing to gerrymander out majority-minority districts after the Supreme Court’s recent ruling gutting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act need to keep in mind.
Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), who is facing the possibility of his district being eliminated in South Carolina, was on CNN’s State Of The Union, where he issued a warning to Republicans.