This is first in a two-part examination of the relationship between redistricting/reapportionment and the Congress that will take office in January 2023. It concludes that without any extreme gerrymandering, reapportionment and redistricting alone will likely cost Democrats their majority, even before taking into account the national mood or the general tendency toward midterm losses for the party holding the presidency. Of course, litigation may change the calculus, but absent court losses in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Virginia and Florida, Republicans would likely control the House in the 118th Congress elected in 2022. For our purposes here, however, we will assume that there will be no sea changes in voting laws.

I’ll proceed state-by-state and keep a running tally of the effects of a normal partisan redraw (to wit, one that favors a party, but would not be classified as an aggressive gerrymander) and reapportionment. Because a seat eliminated in reapportionment does not automatically translate to a gained seat for another party, the numbers won’t necessarily add up until the end. We’ll skip single-member states.