It has been suggested by many commentators that, absent a wave, Republicans should have a slim majority in the U.S. House of Representatives until the next round of redistricting. I tend to agree with this analysis, although the current margin could shrink considerably over the next six years. Still, partisan gerrymandering hit the Democrats quite badly in 2010, due to the unique combination of being a mid-term election (which, in the current partisan alignment, means lowered Democratic turnout) and missteps that Obama made in the first two years in office.
The fundamentals favor us more in 2020 for several reasons. One, it will be a presidential year, which means higher voter turnout. Two, the electorate will continue to drift in ways which are inimical to Republicans (less white, more secular, etc), and there’s no signs yet that the Republicans are going to change their appeal beyond window dressing in the near future. Perhaps the only negative is presuming the Democrats have a lock on the presidency with Hillary in 2016, her administration would be battling historic precedent in keeping the presidency with the Democrats for 16 years. Still, that’s a relatively small concern this far out, and even if the Republicans find their “white knight” in the next eight years, it may be be a Christie-like figure which doesn’t have coattails down ticket. The bottom line is under current voting patterns, 2020 should be a banner year for Democrats.
Still, control of the presidency in 2020 isn’t important to redistricting (except insofar as the DOJ might still be reviewing some maps). Instead control of the states matter – and his is what we’ll look at in this series.
Originally, I had planned to do this in one mega post, as really there’s only a handful of states which are key. However, as I got into the process, I realized that even explaining why many states wouldn’t matter in terms of control for 2020 took up too much time. In the end I decided to split it up regionally, which will allow for four posts of moderate size.
Given the introduction took so long, I should start with the easiest region to cover – the Northeast. And away we go...
Vermont & Delaware:
Both of these states are “at large,” and thus cannot be gerrymandered. Nuff said.
Rhode Island:
Almost certainly dropping from two reps to one in 2022, becoming an at-large state like the above two. This means that RI-2 is essentially the only surefire loss for the Democrats (assuming scandal doesn’t cause us to lose one of the seats) due to the next redistricting.
Maine:
In 2010 Republicans briefly gained total control of Maine’s government. However, they did not attempt to gerrymander the state on the federal level to any real extent. They did float a plan which would have altered lines somewhat substantially; moving ME-2 to the right by a few tenths of a percent, but in the end backed down and supported a “least change” plan.
In addition, it should be noted a ballot initiative has since gone into effect which requires a 2/3rds supermajority in both houses of the state legislature for 2020. This makes it highly likely any future map will be least-change – both because neither party will have the strength to undertake a gerrymander, and because if thrown to the courts, they’ll almost certainly not muck with the process much. The bottom line is it’s very unlikely we’ll see anything but a least change map.
New Hampshire:
Republicans briefly had super-majorities in the State House and State Senate following the 2010 election, which would have allowed them to override a veto of a federal map by the Democratic governor. That said, they also won control of both U.S. House seats at that time, and so favored a least change map. This was unfortunate on their part, because NH-01 could have been made far redder than NH-02. Indeed, a fairly compact district could have been drawn, sticking mostly to right-wing suburbs in Hillsborough and Rockingham Counties, which McCain came within two tenths of a percent of winning, and Romney would have won by significant margin.
If NH-01 is reclaimed by the Republicans again and held this decade, and if Republicans maintain some level of control in state government (they’re currently back down to a narrow majority in the State Senate), it’s possible we’ll see a “bipartisan,” incumbent-protecting gerrymander. However, NH-02 is steadily drifting left, and it’s unlikely Democrats will have any need or desire to “shore it up.” Most likely once again we’ll see a least-change map.
Massachusetts:
Republicans have an uphill battle to wage if they ever wanted to erase the accomplished Democratic gerrymander of the state. This is because not only would they have to elect a governor (which isn’t impossible – they had a 16-year run after all in the 1990s and 2000s) but also break the (gerrymandered) Democratic super-majority in the state legislature. This is a huge hill to climb – currently Democrats control 81% of the State House, and 90% of the State Senate. Absent a wave, this supermajority seems secure.
With a neutral map, Republicans would probably have at least two competitive seats in the state. But the chances of getting said seats through the regular electoral process is nil. Their only shot would be if the state passed a “fair districts” law through initiative. Massachusetts is the only northeastern state with a fairly broad initiative process, allowing for citizen-initiated statutes, but not constitutional amendments. Still, absent this possibility, there will probably be little change in 2020, as the state will not lose a seat in the next round of redistricting, and Democrats will again draw the lines.
Connecticut:
In 2010, Democrats won total control of the state government after recapturing the governor’s mansion, but were not quite at super-majority levels in the state legislature. This was a big deal, because state law required a super-majority to pass a congressional map. Neither party could agree to a map. The end result was a court-drawn map, which kept to existing lines quite closely, except for allowances for population variance.
Connecticut will not lose a seat in 2020, which means once again a “least change” map is favored. Although the current districts are not as geographically compact as they could be, swapping around towns to have more “natural” boundaries would barely move the needle in terms of PVI. The bottom line is Republicans won’t be able to gerrymander the state, and a “fair” map would mostly look similar to the current one. So no change is likely.
New York:
The 2010 wave in New York gave the historic Republican majority in the State Senate a zombie-like rise from the dead. It lasted long enough for them to draw an (ultimately ineffective) map for the State Senate. In turn, the Democrats gerrymandered the State House. While a bipartisan deal on the U.S. House map could have been struck (the state was losing two seats, meaning both parties could have lost one) Andrew Cuomo announced he would veto any congressional map. The result was an actually rather fair court-drawn map which looked very different from the old U.S. House map in places, and resulted in one of the most competitive maps in the country.
2020 will almost certainly be a different story. The Republican “majority” in the State Senate relies upon turncoat Democrats as it is. It’s almost inconceivable to imagine it eking out until 2020. Andrew Cuomo, however, might run for a third term (thanks David Jarman) and veto a serious Democratic gerrymander. On the other hand, if his national ambitions are spent, as is the institutional power of the Republicans in the state, he may behave as more of a team player by then. Or he may simply choose not to run again. Time will tell.
New York will likely lose at least one seat in 2022. Given the population dynamics of the state, the seat must come from upstate (or it will result in at least one downstate district “migrating” upstate). Even in a neutral map, this is likely to result in -1R. But an aggressive Democratic gerrymander could nearly wipe out Republicans in the federal delegation. Local turf concerns, however, mean that at most Democrats will probably try and only pick off a few more seats. Call it +2D, -3R.
New Jersey:
Although New Jersey has a process which uses a bipartisan commission, in practice it had a Republican gerrymander last cycle. Basically the state had to eliminate one seat due to reapportionment, and the two parties mainly disagreed on which seat to cut. Christie is seen to have leaned on the “neutral” in the process, in part because the Democrats got favorable lines in the state legislature’s map.
There is nothing we can do electorally on the state level here to improve the process. Obviously having a Democratic governor would be great, but given the state will not lose (or gain) a seat in 2022, incumbent-protection will be the name of the game. Probably the best thing that could be done is to win the (already competitive) south Jersey seats of NJ-02 and NJ-03, as the Republicans may agree to take out the red turf in these districts in exchange for shoring up their other seats further. But unless something weird happens, the process itself won’t flip any seats.
Pennsylvania:
Republicans probably enacted one of the worst gerrymanders of Pennsylvania following assuming total control of the state in 2010. While Democrats won a bare majority of congressional votes in 2012 in Pennsylvania (50% versus 49%) they only held onto five out of 18 seats. Many counties and regions which historically were in one district were divided). Moderate districts in the Philly suburbs had tentacles reaching into dark-red South-Central PA to shore up incumbents. And a basically entirely new PA-11 was drawn to allow the odious Lou Barletta (who won a Wyoming Valley based seat in 2010 due to a hated incumbent) to have a safe seat.
On a neutral map, it’s clear that Democrats would won back at least two seats lost in the 2010 debacle – and probably would have had two Democratic incumbents hold on. A Democratic-drawn map could have in theory returned a 13D-5R split, although the parochial concerns of incumbents would almost certainly result in smaller gains. Still, a map favoring the Democrats could easily have been drawn.
It seems unlikely at this time that Republicans will have total control of state government in 2020. Tom Corbett is the single most endangered Republican governor going into the 2014 midterms. Historically most Pennsylvania governors have been two-termers, so unless they are as politically maladroit as Corbett, a Democrat who replaces him will likely still be in office for the next round of redistricting. Due to various reasons (commission process, requirements for minimally split municipalities, and the first map getting thrown out in court), the state legislature maps are not heavily gerrymandered, and Republican majorities are narrow. Indeed, Republicans have a fairly good chance of losing the State Senate this year, with the State House even possible, making PA one of the few states where mid-decade redistricting looks plausible. And, of course, 2020 will be a presidential election year, and Democrats always have high turnout in Pennsylvania in presidential election years.
Even in the worst-case scenario, with Republicans drawing the map again, they will sacrifice one of their own, given Democrats are at rock-bottom if Republicans want reasonably safe seats, and the state is likely to go down to 17 representatives. So there’s nowhere to go here but up for Democrats – and chances are we’ll go much higher still.
Maryland:
Maryland is similar to Massachusetts, insofar as it’s a state now heavily gerrymandered by the Democrats, where they have control of both the governorship and super-majorities in the State House and State Senate. In order to undo the gerrymander, therefore, Republicans would need to both regain the governorship (which looks unlikely) and hold Democratic majorities low enough to allow said governor to veto Democratic-drawn maps and throw it to the courts – all in the hope of gaining back one seat at most. The only question for 2022 is if the Democrats feel confident enough to eliminate the last Republican seat – something which was technically possible for 2012, and given the climbing minority population in the state, should be even easier in 2022.
The Bottom Line:
The Northeast is rather simple to discuss, considering the current domination of the region by Democrats, along with the large number of low-population states which are either at large or difficult to gerrymander. Basically the only goals we have here are to win and hold at least one branch of Pennsylvania government (all three if possible), and to finally defeat the “zombie” New York Republican State Senate. Things would really need to go pear-shaped in the other states for Republicans to be in a position to enact bad maps, or even to undo Democratic gerrymanders.
Coming Soon:
The South...