“Gerrymandering” state and Congressional elections in favor of partisans can be hard to judge. The AP used a formula called the "efficiency gap" to measure the degree of partisan advantage across states in the 2022 election, after all states were required to reconfigure districts to account for population changes over the previous decade. Republicans won a slim 222-213 majority over Democrats in the U.S. House and also won control of a majority of state legislative chambers. AP found those net results more accurately reflected the preferences of voters than during the previous decade, when the GOP had a stronger advantage.

The efficiency gap measures partisan advantage on a statewide basis. In a perfectly balanced election, the efficiency gap would be zero. The further a gap score moves from zero, the greater the partisan advantage.

“Gerrymandering” is a tactic to draw district boundaries to pack a large number of voters for an opposing party into a few districts, or to spread them across multiple districts to dilute the strength of their votes.

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