Brennan Center for Justice – “Many Democrats are optimistic about their chances of winning a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm elections. But in a new report, we measured how much harder partisan gerrymandering will make it for Democrats to win seats — and found that even a blue wave election akin to 2006 would be far from enough. Maps drawn after the 2010 tea-party wave to favor Republicans, particularly in big swing states like Michigan, North Carolina, and Ohio, mean Democrats would need to win the national popular vote in 2018 by the biggest margin in a midterm since 1982…The 2018 elections will test the grip of modern gerrymandering. Voters appear poised to speak loudly. Early indications point to an exceptional wave election. But will that voice translate into electoral results? While Americans have had wave elections before, one complicating new factor this decade is the pervasiveness of extreme gerrymandering in the drawing of congressional maps. Both parties gerrymander when they can but the practice has been worsened by increasingly sophisticated data and map-drawing techniques. The U.S. Supreme Court considers two partisan gerrymandering cases this year, but rulings will come too late to likely affect the 2018 elections. Instead, Americans in key states will vote again under gerrymandered maps that thus far have proven highly resistant to change. This comprehensive study poses a stark warning to both courts and the public. What looks to be one of the most important recent midterm elections may turn out, in fact, to show how effectively extreme gerrymandering distorts American democracy and blunts the public’s voice. Because of maps designed to favor Republicans, Democrats would need to win by a nearly unprecedented nationwide margin in 2018 to gain control of the House of Representatives. To attain a bare majority, Democrats would likely have to win the national popular vote by nearly 11 points. Neither Democrats nor Republicans have won by such an overwhelming margin in decades. Even a strong blue wave would crash against a wall of gerrymandered maps…”