What lessons can we draw from the study of 2011 state legislative redistricting? We find that, on the one hand, predicting partisan gerrymandering is relatively simple: gerrymandering occurs when one party can monopolize redistricting and has an incentive to draw biased maps. One the other hand, our investigations of racial segregation and political geography reveal the intimate links between racial gerrymandering and political gerrymandering and suggest that the Republican Party in 2011 was willing to use racial vote dilution in many states in order to achieve extreme bias. We conclude with an assessment of redistricting reforms in Virginia and “best practices” in preventing partisan gerrymandering.