When a district is drawn so that one party is guaranteed to win, something happens to the politics. The general election stops mattering. The only election that counts is the primary — and primaries are dominated by a small number of the most dedicated party voters.

So candidates don't compete for the middle. They compete for the edges. They take more extreme positions, because that's who shows up to vote in a low-turnout primary. The incentive isn't to represent the district — it's to avoid getting outflanked by someone even more partisan.

This isn't a theory. Watch what happens in safe districts. The rhetoric gets hotter. The positions get more rigid. Compromise becomes a dirty word — because compromising with the other side can cost you the only election that matters.

Gerrymandering doesn't just pick the winners. It pulls them toward the extremes. And all of us pay for it.

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Only 8% of voters are choosing 83% of Congress. A 2022 Unite America report found that just 8% of all eligible voters cast ballots in partisan primaries for "safe" congressional seats — yet those primaries effectively determined the winners in 83% of all House contests. (Unite America)

95% of House seats are "safe." The Cook Political Report's 2024 ratings found only 22 of 435 House races were true toss-ups — about 5%. FairVote's analysis found five of six 2022 House races were decided by more than 10 points. (Bipartisan Policy Center)

Members of Congress know where the real threat is. Brookings Institution's Primaries Project found that in safe seats, "members of Congress know that the only place they can be defeated is in a primary. Thus, members of Congress are finely attuned to that electorate — in some instances, more so than to their general election electorate." (Brookings)

The Bipartisan Policy Center's Commission on Political Reform concluded that primary elections are "corroding our political system in an era of high polarization." (BPC)

Wisconsin's own data: Under the old gerrymandered maps, only 4 of 99 Assembly races were decided by fewer than 5 points in 2022. In 29 districts, one party didn't even field a candidate. Under the new maps in 2024, 82 of 99 districts had both-party candidates — the most since 2010. (See CM-8, Competition)

Further reading:

• Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter, The Politics Industry (Harvard Business Review Press, 2020) — argues the political system functions like a duopoly that suppresses competition
• Nick Troiano, The Primary Solution: Rescuing Our Democracy from the Fringes (Simon & Schuster, 2024) — makes the case that primary reform is the single most impactful democratic reform
• Protect Democracy, "How Did We Get Here: Primaries, Polarization, and Party Control" (2025)
• Brookings, "A Primer on Gerrymandering and Political Polarization"
• The Fulcrum, "When Politicians Pick Voters: Why Gerrymandering Is Undermining Democracy"

General gerrymandering resources: See CM-5 for links to PlanScore, Princeton Gerrymandering Project, MIT Election Data + Science Lab, Brennan Center, and Dave's Redistricting App.

Related Civic Minute segments: Competition (CM-8), Packing and Cracking (CM-5), Final Five Voting (CM-3)