Support for NPR and the following message come from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation,

investing in creative thinkers and problem solvers who help people, communities, and the planet flourish.

More information is available at Hewlett.org.

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Sam Greenglass. I cover

Congress. And I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. And today on the show, a political trend that experts say is killing bipartisanship and making government work worse. Ashley, you have some reporting this week that shows that this trend was actually really heightened by the redistricting arm race that we saw last year.

Can you explain all this?

Yeah.

So basically what we found is that this redistricting fight that was started by Trump when he asked Texas Republicans to redraw their congressional map so that there were more favorable seats for Republicans in the state. And then, you know, obviously that prompted other Republican states to do the same and Democrats countered with maps that favored their party in other states, including California. This has created a situation where really no party now has like a significant edge electorally coming into the midterms.

But what it did do was it created the situation where there are fewer competitive seats now, meaning there are more seats that will pretty much be settled by primary elections and not those general elections in November because those were drawn to quite explicitly favor one party over the other.

Got it. So like super red districts or super blue districts as opposed to the districts that actually

have a chance of going either direction. Why does that actually matter? Well, I mean,

let's look it from the voter side, right? Like if you're like a blue voter and one of those red

districts, like what incentive do you have in November to go vote?

Like, you just feel like a little bit, like, not represented. Like, there's no real person on your

side who has any sort of fighting chance to represent you. You pretty much only have some power

in deciding who wins the primary. It means that you don't have like really a say in where power goes in

Congress. And then on, you know, the legislative side, like if you're a lawmaker, you pretty much

don't have to listen to the part of your electorate that doesn't vote in primary. So meaning

not the ideological partisans in your party, the independent voters,

and independent voters are the largest growing electorate in the country. There are more people

who are registering as independents and part of either party. So that is like a whole swath of voters

who are just pretty much either ignored or not heavily factored in their lawmakers thinking. Yeah. And, you know,

...