Politico published a story last week under the headline “Poll: Americans don’t just tolerate gerrymandering — they back it.”
Still, a close review of the data shows the poll does not support that conclusion. The poll shows that Americans overwhelmingly prefer either an independent redistricting process or a voter-approved process — not partisan map-drawing without voter approval. This is the exact opposite of the narrative Politico’s headline and article promoted. The numbers Politico relied on to justify its headline came only from a subset of partisans.
The most unambiguous indication of how Americans view redistricting came from the first question in the survey, which was asked of all 2,098 adults.
Respondents were presented with only four choices describing who should draw political maps:
“Political maps should be drawn through an independent, politically neutral process.”
“Political maps should be drawn by state legislatures, but approved by voters.”
“Political maps should be drawn by state legislatures, without approval by voters.”
“Don’t know.”
The results showed 38 percent favored an independent, politically neutral process. Another 34 percent supported legislature-drawn maps only if voters approved them.
Only 7 percent supported legislature-drawn maps without voter approval.
21 percent said they did not know.
A combined 72 percent either supported independent map drawing, supported voter oversight, or were uncertain.
Only a small minority favored giving state legislatures unchecked authority. Yet the headline for the poll in POLITICO says: “Poll: Americans don’t just tolerate gerrymandering — they back it.”
Independent and undecided voters showed even less support for partisan map drawing. Among those respondents, 29.8 percent supported an independent process, and 15.4 percent favored legislature-drawn maps with voter approval. Just 2.7 percent supported legislature-drawn maps without voter approval.
A majority, 52.1 percent, said they did not know which option they preferred. These results do not in any way indicate that Americans outside the two major parties support gerrymandering.
A chart in the story also contains a misleading headline, “A majority of Americans support partisan map-drawing…Percentage of Americans who support redrawing congressional districts to neutralize the other party — and those who support doing so to gain a midterm advantage.” But the chart includes only the responses of Democratic and Republican voters.
Only those who planned to support Democrats were asked whether they would support Democrats redrawing congressional districts “to gain an advantage” over Republicans. In that subgroup, 54.25 percent supported the idea, 29.55 percent neither supported nor opposed it, 9.80 percent opposed it, and 6.39 percent said they did not know.
A parallel question was asked only of those who planned to support Republicans, asking whether their party should redraw districts to gain an advantage over Democrats. Among that subgroup, 52.76 percent supported the idea, 28.06 percent neither supported nor opposed it, 12.26 percent opposed it, and 6.92 percent said they did not know.
The poll did not ask independent, undecided, or non-aligned voters these questions. It did not ask all adults whether they support partisan gerrymandering generally. The only majorities favoring partisan redistricting appeared when partisan voters were asked whether their own party should act in its own political interest in a hypothetical scenario. Those results cannot be generalized to the population at large.
The survey asked all respondents how each party should respond if the opposing party gerrymandered first. In the scenario where Republicans acted first, 20.5 percent said Democrats should challenge the maps in court, 28.8 percent said Democrats should draw maps to neutralize the impact, 19.3 percent said Democrats should draw maps to gain an advantage and 31.3 percent said they did not know.
In the reverse scenario, where Democrats acted first, 19.9 percent said Republicans should challenge in court, 30.5 percent said they should neutralize the impact, 16.0 percent said they should draw maps to gain an advantage, and 33.5 percent said they did not know.
Support for offensive, advantage-seeking gerrymandering was low in both cases, at 19.3% and 16.0%. In both questions, the most common response was “don’t know.” These numbers do not indicate that “most voters” favor using redistricting as a political weapon.
The poll also includes a breakdown of Republican respondents by whether they identify as “MAGA Republicans” or not. MAGA-identifying respondents were more supportive of partisan advantage in the Republican-only question than non-MAGA Republicans, but neither subgroup showed majority support for unchecked legislative control when all four map-drawing options were presented.
Both groups showed high levels of uncertainty in the neutral structural questions.
Politico’s article about its poll included a pro-gerrymandering quote from John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, who said there had been “an extraordinary public outcry in favor of fighting back against Donald Trump’s overreaches in basically every forum.”
The story did not mention that the largest share of respondents in the poll favored an independent, politically neutral process or that more than half of independent voters said they did not know how maps should be drawn.
The poll was conducted not by a U.S.-based election research organization, but by Public First, a London-based firm. The use of a foreign research company to measure Americans’ views on U.S. election rules is unusual, particularly for a story framed around the claim that “Americans” support gerrymandering.
Politico announced a new partnership with the firm on October 30, 2025. Neither the story nor the poll contains any information about who financed the Public First poll. Public First is owned by SHGH, Inc., known as Stonehaven Global Holdings. The Executive Chair of Stonehaven is Peter Lyburn, and Public First’s CEO is Rachel Wolf.
Wolf is a former UK political operative for the Conservative Party and Boris Johnson. She is the co-author of the Conservative Party’s 2019 manifesto, which called for leaving the EU and getting Brexit done.
The survey’s stated margin of sampling error is plus or minus two percentage points for the full sample. Politico did not publish full crosstabs publicly, although the complete dataset is available to subscribers of its Pro platform.
Is Politico's Gerrymandering Poll and Analysis Misleading? was first published by IVN and republished with permission.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.