Democratic Gov. Tony Evers signed new legislative districts into law on Monday to replace gerrymandered Republican maps that the new liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down in December. If the court signs off on the new maps, Wisconsin would finally get much fairer districts after more than a decade of tilted maps that have locked Democrats out of power in this longtime swing state.
Evers had recently proposed these maps to the court in the hopes that the justices would select them, but in a surprise, the Republican-run legislature passed them last week before the court could act. The court is still likely to review these new maps to ensure they comply with the criteria it laid down for any remedial plans, including that they be politically neutral.
As illustrated in the graphic at the top of this story, Joe Biden would have won an 18-15 majority of seats in the state Senate, while Donald Trump would have carried a 50-49 majority of state Assembly districts. (Click here and here for interactive versions with partisan and demographic data from Dave’s Redistricting App.) The now-invalid Republican maps, by contrast, gave Trump an 22-11 edge in the Senate and a 64-35 advantage in the Assembly.
Because only half of the seats in the Senate will be up for election in November, Democrats would likely have to wait until the 2026 elections before they could flip the upper chamber. However, the new maps would give them a chance to take back the Assembly this fall.
Republicans may have opted for Evers’ proposals because they are slightly more favorable to the GOP compared to other plans that were under consideration by the court. Nonetheless, Evers’ maps are still much fairer than the current GOP gerrymanders, which let Republicans win a veto-proof two-thirds supermajority in the Senate in 2022 and nearly hit that mark in the Assembly despite Democrats winning most statewide races that same year.
