Illinois election results show gerrymandering's bad outcome

The 2024 national election is behind us. Much of the attention was on the presidential race and seven battle ground states. Then there were some key senate races like Ohio and Montana that drew national attention (and big money) given how they impacted which party would win majority control. Lastly, the battle for control of the House of Representatives came down to a few key house districts in Maine, California, Iowa and Ohio.

Never once was Illinois in any such conversations, given how well the Illinois state legislature gerrymandered the state.

Among Illinois’ 17 House districts, 14 were won by Democrats and three by Republicans, which the gerrymander guaranteed. Among the 14 Democrat wins, 12 were won by at least 10 points. The closest races were Districts 6 and 17, which the Democrats won by just over eight points each.

Among the three Republican wins, two were uncontested and the other was won by nearly 50 points. This illustrates how well Republican voters were packed into these three districts, effectively diluting their influence in the other 14 districts and any chance that the 14-3 outcome would be upset.

What these results demonstrate is how inconsequential Illinois has become, by drawing a House of Representatives map to guarantee that certain party candidates will win. Who runs in such districts is mostly irrelevant. The party they represent determines the winner.

House District 13 ranks as one of the most gerrymandered in the nation. It snakes through downstate micro-urban cities like Urbana, Champaign, Decatur, and Springfield, eventually touching the East St. Louis area. Such a carefully crafted district carved out Democrat-leaning voters across a wide expanse of rural Republicans. Surrounding this district from both the east and west is District 15, which was easily won by Mary Miller, uncontested.

If I chose to look at and analyze Texas in a similar way, the same script would be written, with the roles of the Democrats and Republicans flipped. To illustrate this point, just two of Texas’ 38 House of Representative districts were won by under 10 points. This highlights why gerrymandering is not a Republican or Democrat problem, it is a problem for our democracy, demonstrating a disrespect for voters and mitigating their influence on who represents their state and how states are run.

Local elections with no competition

It gets even worse when one looks at the Illinois Senate and House.

Among the 23 Illinois Senate seats up for grabs, 11 were uncontested and 12 were won by at least 12 points. In the Illinois House, with all 118 districts up for grabs, around one-half were uncontested. One strand of good news is that results in four races (the 47th, 52nd, 76th and 104th) were all within two points, forcing the candidates to be responsive to their constituent or risk losing their seat in two years.

When people criticize the threat to democracy posed by who wins the White House, one need only look more locally, where the bigger threat to democracy resides.

Such results explain why some ask whether downstate Illinois should break away from the Chicagoland area and become their own state. The resulting mostly rural area would largely resemble a state like Iowa or Nebraska.

Competitive elections do not guarantee good representation. However, uncompetitive elections guarantee that the elected officials can serve the needs of their party rather than the needs of the constituents that they represent. Sometimes such needs overlap, but not always.

The dark side of gerrymandering is exposed after an election, when the hand of power is obtained by who garnered the most votes, or more accurately, the most seats. In 2024, the two happen to coincide, suggesting that a Republican majority in the House of Representatives was well earned.

Yet in a state like Illinois, with over 43% of the votes cast for Donald Trump, having just three out of 17 House of Representatives seems unfair, perhaps disrespectful.

There is nothing that will change Illinois’ situation in the short term, and perhaps even the long term. As long as Illinois’ maps are drawn by the party in power, rather than an independent mapping commission, Illinois’ election results will continue to be predetermined. The unfortunate side effect of such gerrymandering is that voter turnout will continue to trend downward. For example, more people voted in Michigan than in Illinois, even though Illinois’ population is 25% higher than Michigan’s.

Computational tools exist to draw a map that give voters a voice in our state. Are they asking too much for the elected officials to listen?

Sheldon H. Jacobson, Ph.D., is a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Gene Lyons is off this week.

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