In Dallas County, Republican gerrymandering backfired in 2018
Anchia recalled telling the Republican colleague, who he declined to name, that Dallas Democrats were “getting screwed.” But the colleague offered a puzzling piece of solace: “There’s not going to be one [Dallas] Republican left by the end of this decade.”
Seven years later, that political forecast almost became reality. Amid their zeal for control, Republicans in 2011 opted for keeping their numbers up in the county and dismissed the possibility of creating a district with a black and Hispanic majority that could’ve made their seats safer in a Democratic wave election. Going into Election Day, Republicans held seven of the 14 House seats in Dallas County. But a collapse of the Republican-leaning redistricting scheme has left them with just two seats — and even those were won by narrow margins.
“The lesson is you can get too clever in gerrymandering,” said Michael Li, a redistricting expert with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.
The Republican control of Dallas County seems to have buckled under the combined pressure of increased Democratic turnout and nearly a decade of population growth that’s further diminished the county’s white population. But the GOP majority was vulnerable to begin with.
https://www.texastribune.org/2018/11/07/dallas-county-republican-gerrymander-backfires-2018/
