There’s a solution, which involves adding 158 new seats to the House of Representatives, making it proportionally similar to most modern democracies. To understand the implications of a larger House, we enlisted software developer Kevin Baas and his Auto-Redistrict program to draw 593 new congressional districts for the entire country. (Read on for an explanation of how we chose that number.) Then we used historical partisan scores to determine which party would win each district.
While our expanded House map hasn’t been subjected to the same testing as a real redistricting plan, it offers a sense of how a bigger House might affect the nation’s politics. One main takeaway: it would create a more competitive landscape, with 25 percent of seats qualifying as toss-ups, compared to just 10 percent today. Many states that elect only Republicans today would elect a Democrat or at least become more competitive, and vice versa.
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