Heading into the once-a-decade reapportionment process, Democrats and political forecasters warned that Republicans could capture the House majority—now held by Democrats with a mere five-seat margin—through gains won by gerrymandering alone. Yet with maps completed for more than two-thirds of the nation’s 435 House seats, the biggest surprise has been how well Democrats have done. They have fought Republicans at least to a draw and, according to one prominent forecaster, David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report, they might have even gained a few seats overall. “It’s just going to be another election cycle when the prognosticators are wrong,” Stefanik said. (She neglected to mention that those same shaky prognosticators still predict Republicans will take back the House.) Former President Donald Trump offered his own assessment of the national landscape, complaining in a statement that “Republicans are getting absolutely creamed by all the phony redistricting going on all over the country.”

Democrats have fared better for a number of reasons. Victories in competitive 2018 gubernatorial races gave Democrats veto pens in some states, such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where Republicans control the legislature. Democrats also began laying the groundwork for the redistricting fight years in advance with the formation of groups like the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, launched by former Attorney General Eric Holder with the support of former President Barack Obama. In GOP-controlled states such as Texas and Georgia, Republicans have pursued a more defensive mapmaking strategy, seeking to consolidate their power rather than attempting a maximalist (but riskier) approach of knocking out Democratic seats. State courts have struck down more aggressive GOP gerrymanders in North Carolina and Ohio. A major factor, however, is that despite their anti-gerrymandering rhetoric, Democrats have been at least as ruthless as Republicans in the biggest states where they have unfettered power to draw new districts. In Illinois, Democrats approved a map that will likely wipe out two of the GOP’s five current congressional seats. Their haul could be twice as big in New York.