The New Georgia Project is a nonpartisan effort tot register and civically engage Georgians. Georgia's population is growing and becoming increasingly diverse. Over the past decade, the population of Georgia increased 18%. The New American Majority – people of color, those 18 to 29 years of age, and unmarried women – is a significant part of that growth. The New American Majority makes up 62% of the voting age population in Georgia, but they are only 53% of registered voters.
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Is Politico's Gerrymandering Poll and Analysis Misleading?
Dec 03, 2025
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.
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Image generated by IVN staff.
Is Politico's Gerrymandering Poll and Analysis Misleading?
Dec 03, 2025
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.
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Photo by Ivan Aleksic on Unsplash
For the Sake of Democracy, We Need to Rethink How We Assess History in Schools
Dec 02, 2025
“Which of the following is a right guaranteed by the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution?"
- Right to public education
- Right to health care
- Right to trial by a jury
- Right to vote
The above question was labeled “medium” by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for the 2022 8th-grade U.S. history assessment.
A different question from that exam, labeled “hard,” provided an excerpt of the Declaration of Sentiments (1848) and asked: “What important historical document did the authors of this text use as their model?
In both of these examples, students are asked to identify something from United States history and government. In the second case, the identification is comparative, connecting the Declaration of Sentiments to the Declaration of Independence. Knowing this information is good and helpful context for the American story. But are these examples history assessments?
The examples above measure students’ discrete knowledge, or put more plainly, historical facts. Historical facts are important for understanding the past; in fact, they make up the past. But facts are not what make up history. History, unlike the past, is an interpretive discipline defined by a particular investigative methodology. Many may know the past, but that does not necessarily mean they can ‘do’ history.
Essentially, we are calling something “history” but only asking students to remember the past. As a result, we have built tools that measure student success based on their ability to retain concrete information, rather than on historical methodology. Investigation and interpretation, while foundational to the discipline, have been relegated to a luxury we hope to (but often don’t) attain.
This is problematic. In an education culture where people champion “digital literacy, “media literacy,” or now, “AI literacy,” millions of dollars are spent to better prepare students for this continuously moving goalpost of literacy. As it often does, education is playing catch-up to a fast-moving culture. But what if the solution has been under our noses all along? What if preparing students to be engaged citizens, equipped to both sustain our democracy and thrive in this ever-changing world, lies in the discipline of history?
The methodology within the discipline of history is often summarized as “historical thinking.” The skills that embody historical thinking include, among others: contextualization, causation, change over time, and historical significance. These skills not only help us better understand the past, but they also help us navigate the present. They foster civic dispositions our society visibly lacks, and they cement the literacy skills students need to navigate it. While there are glowing examples of teachers and projects integrating these skills and dispositions, there is a glaring missing component: assessment.
In short, we may be measuring student progress, but around the wrong thing. Does content retention produce better citizens? Does content retention prepare students for a fast-moving social and economic landscape? Recent studies and frameworks like America Succeeds' Durable Skills or The History Co: Lab’s Teen-Centered Civics have shown that they don’t.
In the summer of 2023, I found myself at a math conference. I am still a bit unsure how I ended up there, but I tuned in to the keynote speaker, Dr. Peter Liljedahl, author of the book Building Thinking Classrooms. One of the points Dr. Liljedahl reinforces in his book is that “we evaluate what we value.” Or, another way, we tell students our values based on what we evaluate. But what does the discipline of history value? What about our civic society? How can we build assessments to track student progress in those components over time?
As an educational community, we have to rethink what we value in our students. As Sam Wineburg points out in Why Learn History (When it’s Already on Your Phone), “Instead of teaching the skills needed to navigate this digital free-for-all, our education system trudges along doing the same thing but expecting a different result.” Seven years after he wrote that book, the problem persists, perhaps even growing.
For the sake of our democracy, we need to rethink how we assess history. At Thinking Nation, the nonprofit I lead, we’ve created assessments that serve three purposes:
- Accurately representing the discipline of history
- Accurately reflecting the values of what we hope citizens can contribute
- Facilitating a common language of success for stronger vertical alignment in schools
Rather than making the content taught the end goal of any given lesson or unit, we’ve made it a means to an end. Our lessons and assessments are content-rich, but use that content to support the assessment of student thinking and writing practices. We’ve developed formative assessments that isolate individual historical thinking skills, sending a message to students that we value their ability to think historically. Our summative assessments provide students with an open-ended historical question, in which they use contextual information and historical sources to construct evidence-based arguments. These incorporate many historical thinking skills and align with literacy standards.
Students who engage with these assessments walk away from their history classrooms with a fuller understanding of the discipline of history. They can better contextualize information and evaluate evidence. They seek multiple perspectives and evaluate arguments. They exhibit intellectual empathy for diverse experiences. They are stronger readers and writers, but they are also more impactful citizens. We are evaluating what we value.
In history and social studies, investments continue to focus on the dissemination of information rather than on the methodology that defines our discipline. Students gain greater access to content knowledge, leading to their empowerment as engaged and critical thinkers. Assessment can change this. By providing a new language for success and metrics to measure it, students can walk away from our classrooms not as walking encyclopedias of the past, but as active and engaged citizens equipped to sustain our democracy. It’s a worthy shift.
Zachary Cote is the executive director of Thinking Nation, a social studies education nonprofit based in Los Angeles. Prior to this role, he taught middle school history at a public charter school in South Los Angeles.
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The rise of book bans and erasure of Black history from classrooms emotionally and systematically harms Black children. It's critical that we urge educators to represent Black experiences and stories in class.
Getty Images, Klaus Vedfelt
White Books and Curriculum Damage Black Children
Dec 02, 2025
When my son, Jonathan, was born, one of the first children’s books I bought was "So Much" by Trish Cooke. I was captivated by its joyful depiction of a Black family loving their baby boy. I read it to him often, wanting him to know that he was deeply loved, seen, and valued. In an era when politicians are banning books, sanitizing curricula, and policing the teaching of Black history, the idea of affirming Black children’s identities is miscast as divisive and wrong. Forty-two states have proposed or passed legislation restricting how race and history can be taught, including Black history. PEN America reported that nearly 16,000 books (many featuring Black stories) were banned from schools within the last three years across 43 states. These prohibitive policies and bans are presented as protecting the ‘feelings’ of White children, while at the same time ignoring and invalidating the feelings of Black children who live daily with the pain of erasure, distortion, and disregard in schools.
When I hear and see the ongoing devaluation of Black children in schools and public life, I, and other Black parents, recognize this pain firsthand. For instance, recently, my teenage granddaughter, Jaliyah, texted me, asking to visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., because she had heard that the President planned to close it. For what felt like the millionth time, my heart broke with the understanding that too many people fail to rally on behalf of Black children. Jaliyah’s question revealed what so many Black children intuitively understand—that their histories, their feelings, and their futures are often treated as expendable.
To be clear, White children have endless opportunities to make them feel, not only good, but great in school. More than 80 percent of U.S. public school teachers are White. Curricula in K-12 schools center White experiences, and most children’s books still feature White primary characters or “white-facing” animals as proxies for whiteness. Combined, this imbalance sends a powerful message about whose lives matter and whose do not.
While I unequivocally do not advocate book banning and prefer to teach students criticality instead, if anything needs to be banned, it is the endemic whitified curriculum, which teaches White children that they are superior and worthy of protection while other children are not, as noted by Louise Derman-Sparks and Patricia Ramsey in their book, "What If All the Kids are White?" Following the current protocols, White children learn inaccurate, incomplete, and distorted information about people of the global majority as well as the power codes and benefits of racism early on—without even trying. At the same time, children of color are also socialized to devalue Blackness since they see few accurate, affirming portrayals of Black people in classrooms, textbooks, or media.
I often ask educators how they would feel if every teacher they ever had in K-12 schools were Black; if most texts they read centered Black life; and if nearly every image in schoolbooks reflected only Black families. Most respond with disbelief, asking, “You mean for all 12 years?” Yet this is precisely what Black children experience every day in reverse.
Advocates of curriculum restrictions and book bans conveniently overlook how schools socialize all children’s understandings of Black people. As poignantly observed nearly a century ago by Carter G. Woodson, father of Black History Month, “There would be no lynching if it did not start in the schoolroom.” Indeed, schools remain powerful socializers of what children come to believe about Black people’s humanity and place in societal hierarchy.
In schools, students inadvertently learn that it is okay to treat Black children violently. Research by my colleagues and I has demonstrated that Black children encounter multiple forms of violence in schools, such as physical, symbolic, linguistic, curricula and pedagogical, and systemic. While the world is obsessing about White children feeling guilty in schools, Black children’s bodies are being disrespected and mishandled. Their cultural dress, names, hairstyles, and language are being attacked. They are subjected to invisibility in the curriculum and/or inaccurate, distorted, diluted, incomplete, and sanitized versions of Black history. To add insult to injury, Black children are disproportionally represented in Special Education, gifted education, suspensions, and expulsions—and subjected to unfair testing practices. As explained by Bettina Love, these endemic violent acts destroy Black children’s spirits.
Notably, in contrast to unenforced and unfunded mandates to teach Black history (e.g., the 1984 Education Improvement Act in South Carolina), the movement to prohibit Black history and literature has moved at lightning speed, even though banning Black history is not necessary since so little is taught in schools anyway.
Moving forward, it is essential that educators advocate for the teaching of Black history and understand that silence is complicity. To remain silent as school boards and lawmakers erase Black history is to become part of the harm—the violence. While the current political landscape leads many educators to conclude that they have no agency, concrete steps can be taken.
·Incorporate accurate, age-appropriate lessons about Black history year-round—not just in February.
·Audit classroom book collections, libraries, and curricula to ensure they reflect Black history and culture.
·Network with other educators and request professional development, resources, and protection from administrators and policymakers to teach Black history.
Black families will continue to teach Black history to our Jonathan’s and Jaliyah’s at home and in our communities. Since our children spend much of their time in schools, we insist that educators do too.
Gloria Swindler Boutte, PhD, is a Distinguished Professor at the University of South Carolina, and a Public Voices Fellow of the OpEd Project in Partnership with the National Black Child Development Institute.
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