No state illustrates the Democrats’ predicament better than Colorado, where the party holds the governorship and solid control of the legislature. That power could have allowed Democrats to draw a favorable new congressional seat, shore up their four House incumbents, and target the reelection bid of freshman GOP Representative Lauren Boebert, who supported Trump’s bid to overturn last year’s election. In 2018, however, Democrats backed a ballot initiative to hand power over congressional redistricting to a nonpartisan commission. The map that the panel has proposed would instead make the new Eighth District north of Denver a toss-up, potentially jeopardize at least one of the Democratic incumbents, and ease Boebert’s path to another term, Carroll told me. The difference between the commission map and what Democrats might have drawn themselves could be nearly enough to tip the balance of power in the entire House. “It is a problem,” a high-ranking Colorado Democrat told me, speaking on the condition of anonymity to offer a candid assessment.

In Virginia, Democratic leaders initially supported the creation of a nonpartisan redistricting commission, but they reversed course once the party won control of both chambers of the legislature in 2019. Voters, however, overruled them in 2020, backing the commission by wide margins in a constitutional amendment on the ballot. The commission has whiffed so far: Its members announced last week that they could not agree on a state legislative map and kicked the job up to the Virginia Supreme Court instead. A similar failure is possible when the panel turns to the congressional map, and the right-leaning court is unlikely to draw lines as favorable to Democrats as they would have drawn themselves without a commission.

Democrats do stand to benefit from some of the redistricting panels.