Gavin Newsom Says Republicans Gerrymandered The Dakotas, West Virginia, and Alaska - Which Only Have One Seat

Back in 2018, The View’s Joy Behar made headlines for claiming that Republicans made Senate gains in the midterms due to “gerrymandering.” The comments were widely mocked, as there are no Senate districts that can be gerrymandered. 

But she’s just a clueless commentator, surely no politician would make a similarly ridiculous claim?

Enter: Gavin Newsom. 

As Texas is making headlines with their new proposed legislative map that would add five new GOP seats, the Democrat governors of the most gerrymandered states in the union have fired back without any sense of self-awareness. 

Among them is California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who tried to claim that Republicans were the true gerrymanderers by listing 12 states with no Democrat seats.

One obvious problem stands out: Alaska, North and South Dakota and Wyoming only have one seat, and thus gerrymandering isn’t possible. 

The other states are all small too; West Virginia, Montana, and Idaho only get 2 seats in the House. Nebraska gets 3, while Utah, Iowa, and Arkansas get 4, and Oklahoma 5. The states are small and red enough where it would be hard to draw a Democrat district if they tried. 

In other words, Newsom’s list only accounts for 30 seats, or 7% of the composition of the House of Representatives. 

Even if there was some gerrymandering going on there (and there isn’t), it would be more than counterbalanced by large blue states gerrymandering their districts. 

In Illinois in 2024, Republican House candidates got 47% of the vote to Democrats’ 53%, but only got 3 seats to their 14 (just over 21% of the total). 

Meanwhile, Massachusetts’ governor is threatening to gerrymander the state… which has zero Republican representatives to begin with. 

Democrats have also long benefitted from a different form of gerrymander: illegal aliens being counted as population in the census, and thus earning them more representation in the House that way.