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The Democratic Protectorate of Illinois
Few do partisan gerrymanders better than Springfield liberals.

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The Editorial Board
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Aug. 5, 2025 5:33 pm ET

Texas Democrats have fled to Illinois to escape having to vote in Austin on the Republican plan to gerrymander the Lone Star State’s Congressional district map. The destination is amusing since no one knows more about partisan gerrymanders than Illinois Democrats.

Texas Democrats Skip Town to Block a GOP Gerrymander

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and his allies purport to be outraged by the new Texas map, which could yield the GOP from three to five new House seats. But ol’ JB knows how that’s done. Illinois has 17 House seats, and 14 of them are held by Democrats.

Thanks to successive map-drawing by Democrats, with no GOP check, the state’s districts are among the most gerrymandered in the country. Democrats control 82.4% of the state’s House seats, though in 2024 they won only 52.8% of the House popular vote in those districts. The presidential election wasn’t really contested in the state, but President Trump still won 43.5% of the vote.



The nearby map offers a sense of the artistry required to pull off this gerrymander. Democrats packed Republicans into three largely rural and exurban safe seats—the 12th, 15th and 16th. Three Democratic districts are worth noting in particular for their design to include as many Democratic voters as possible.

The 13th is carefully carved inside a surrounding GOP district. It runs from East St. Louis through the state capital of Springfield (think government workers) to the college town of Champaign. The 17th is also a modern sculpture between two GOP districts, meandering to include Rockford in the north, Moline and Rock Island in the Quad Cities on the Iowa border, and down to include Peoria. The sixth district is less artistic but was carefully constructed after the 2020 Census to gain more Democratic votes in the near-Chicago suburbs to make it safer for a Democrat than it was in the 2010s.

Mr. Pritzker is sabre-rattling that if Texas moves ahead with its new map, then Illinois might redraw its map to eliminate the three remaining Republicans. That may be possible—Massachusetts has nine House Democrats but no Republicans. But please spare us the sanctimony that the Texas gerrymander is a unique threat to democratic competition.


Link: Illinois