# The 2025 move to brazen gerrymandering Before the modern era of hyperpolarization and constant moves to maximizing power, gerrymandering certainly happened. There was also some minor degree of pretending that it wasn't happening. Not so starting in 2025. Consider the following clip from Donald Trump on August 18, 2025. Traditionally, congressional districts were redrawn every ten years after census work is completed. Not so anymore "[Trump on Texas redistricting: We are entitled to five more seats](https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/05/trump-texas-redistricting-00493624)" (Politico, Aug 5, 2025)  Representatives of the opposing party [left the state in protest](https://www.texastribune.org/2025/08/11/texas-redistricting-map-vote-senate/), preventing the Texas legislature from proceeding. [Eventually they will convene again](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/18/texas-democrats-california-electoral-maps-redistricting), and the governor of Democrat-majority California has sworn to retaliate if Republican-biased redistricting in Texas moves forward. One of the goals of our course in probability and statistics is to gain the ability to watch interactions like these and critically assess claims that are being made. In the video above, the president says that because he won Texas by “the highest vote in history” ([[#“The highest vote in history”?]]) he is “entitled” to more seats. A good starting point is to ask, well, how many seats should Republicans have in Texas? > [!NOTE] Fact summary > In the 2024 presidential election, [Donald Trump won 56.14% of the vote](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_elections_in_Texas). > >There are 38 congressional districts in Texas, so if Republicans won 22 districts, that would constitute 57.9% of districts. > >In fact, [Republicans won 27 districts in 2024](https://www.texastribune.org/2025/07/30/texas-redistricting-congressional-maps-house-republicans/). And the president is asking the state to redraw the maps so that he can win five more. Clearly, 27 is more than 22, but maybe things just worked out that way by chance? Gerrymandering is the colloquial name given to the act of drawing congressional districts in such a way that they favor the party currently in power. We can use probabilistic and statistical thinking to assess whether it is possible that a real-life outcome falls within a reasonable range of natural variation, or if the real-life outcome is such a severe outlier that the process that generated it could not be fair. A number of mathematicians, statisticians, political scientists, and economists have taken on the challenge of quantifying gerrymandering, i.e., trying to put a number on the degree of bias and develop the ability to definitively declare whether a process of drawing maps is unfair. At its core, probabilistic thinking involves assessing a reasonable range of outcomes for a given situation and then deciding if the “real-world” outcome falls within that range, or is a concerning outlier. The trick is to develop mathematical models that adequately capture the scenario we are interested in. On the page [[Gerrymandering Resources]] there is a list of academics and their approaches to quantifying gerrymandering. The Princeton Gerrymandering Project does state-by-state assessment of fairness in districting. According to their simulations, the reasonable range of outcomes would be between 19 and 23. Clearly, 27 is outside of that range, and 32 would be another story altogether. [![[Gerrymandering-Texas2026.png|400]]](https://nervous-noyce-f2ebc6.netlify.app/redistricting-report-card/?planId=recL5EF85h0ILukMA) #### Updates in the news - July 30, 2025: “[Texas House Republicans unveil new congressional map that looks to pick up five GOP seats](https://www.texastribune.org/2025/07/30/texas-redistricting-congressional-maps-house-republicans/),” The Texas Tribune. - August 18, 2025: “[Texas House approves GOP congressional map after two-week delay from Democrats’ walkout](https://www.texastribune.org/2025/08/20/texas-house-vote-congressional-map-redistricting-democrats-trump/),” The Texas Tribune. - Feb 17, 2025 [Tracking the Battle to Reshape Congress for the Midterms](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/02/18/us/politics/midterms-house-maps-redistricting.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share) - April 21, 2026 [How Republicans and Democrats are Redistricting Urban Areas](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/04/21/us/politics/congress-redistricting-virginia-missouri-texas.html?smid=url-share) #### “The highest vote in history”? During his comments, the president made the following claim: > “I got the highest vote in the history of Texas, as you probably know …” Did he though? This is an example of citing an absolute count rather than a proportion to give extra weight to a claim. Because the state’s population size is growing, the person who wins the state almost always sets a new record for the number of votes won. Check out the two charts listed below that were provided in a table from the Wikipedia entry “[United States presidential elections in Texas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_elections_in_Texas).” | Texas Presidential Elections by Total | Texas Presidential Elections by Share | | ------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------- | | ![[TexasVoteShare1.png]] | ![[TexasVoteShare2.png]] | In the first table we see that, indeed, Trump broke the record for the most votes ever recorded by a presidential candidate in Texas. In fact, his finishes are ranked 1st, 2nd, and 3rd of all time. But when you say you “got the highest vote” what the average person thinks is that you “won by the largest difference in proportion.” But that is far from true. Looking back over Texas history, Franklin D. Roosevelt won Texas with over 80% of the vote three separate times. If you rank the outcomes by who won the largest proportion of the state’s vote, Trump’s victory in 2024 ranks 26th out of 39 presidential elections since 1872.