Another Map Bites the Dust

Well, that didn’t take long.  Just one week after a panel of judges struck down the map of Michigan’s Congressional districts, another panel of judges struck down the map of Ohio’s Congressional districts.  Both of these exercises in judicial activism could have significant impact on next year’s House elections.

Republicans need a net gain of 18 seats to retake the House of Representatives.  Their path to a House majority requires flipping at least two-thirds of the 31 districts with Democratic representatives that President Trump won in 2016.  The aforementioned decisions by the judicial branch will likely make Republicans’ job harder, not easier. 

Only one silver lining may come out of all of this mid-decade redistricting lawsuits.  Republicans may end up netting one seat in Maryland.  The Supreme Court will decide on the Constitutionality of maps in Maryland and North Carolina and their decision will have big implications for the legal battles surrounding the maps in Michigan and Ohio.

Republicans have arguably lost at least four seats thanks to mid-decade redistricting in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.  That number will likely increase if the Democrats have their way.  When it comes to the Ohio map, the new map will almost certainly put Cincinnati all into one district.  The current map splits up Cincinnati into two districts and both of the Cincinnati-based districts have enough rural and/or suburban areas to dilute the vote of the Democratic-leaning city of Cincinnati. 

The current Ohio map gives Republicans a 12-4 advantage. President Trump won ten of the seats by double digits in the 2016 Presidential Election while winning the other two by smaller margins.  Crooked Hillary won three of the four Democratic-held districts by double digits while narrowly prevailing with a bare majority of the vote in the 13^th District; which swung hard to President Trump in 2016.

At this point, it remains too early to tell what the new maps will look like and how they will impact the 2020 election.  However, Five Thirty-Eight has put together an “atlas of redistricting,” which creates several possible Congressional maps for each of the states with more than one Congressional district.  For example, one of the maps gerrymanders districts to favor Republicans, another gerrymanders districts to favor Democrats.  The other maps take into account other goals, such as matching the partisan breakdown of seats to the voting pattern of the electorate statewide; in other words, making them proportional; promoting highly competitive elections; maximizing the number of majority-minority districts; and making the districts more compact, either by using an algorithm or respecting county borders. Using data dating all the way back to 2006, the atlas puts all of the current and hypothetical Congressional districts into three categories: “usually Democratic,” “highly competitive,” and “usually Republican.”  Unfortunately, the atlas does not explicitly state which presidential candidate carried each of the real and hypothetical districts in 2016 nor does it indicate the party of each of the district’s current representatives in Congress. It merely indicates the chance that each party would have to win a particular seat over the long term, with districts where each party has a one in six chance of winning classified as “highly competitive.” As of right now, some of the “usually Republican” districts have Democratic representatives. At the same time, Hillary Clinton won some of the “highly competitive” districts where Republicans have a higher chance of winning; especially in California.  I have assembled the table below illustrating how each of the maps for Michigan and Ohio would affect the electoral landscape. I have highlighted in red all of the “highly competitive” districts that President Trump carried (or at least where Republicans have a higher chance of winning), regardless of whether or not a Republican currently represents them and I have done the same thing for the “highly competitive” districts that Hillary Clinton carried by highlighting them in blue.  I bolded the scenarios that I think would most likely come into fruition if both states end up having to draw new maps.

Map	Usually Democratic	Highly Competitive	Usually Republican
Michigan/Current	5, 12, 13, 14	6, 8, 9, 11	1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 10
Michigan/GOP	5, 12, 13, 14		1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
Michigan/Dem	3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14		1, 2, 4, 6, 10
Michigan/Proportional	6, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14	5	1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 10
Michigan/Highly Competitive	13, 14	3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12	1, 2, 10
Michigan/Majority Minority	5, 12, 13, 14	6, 8, 9, 11	1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 10
Michigan/Compact (algorithm)	7, 9, 12, 13	5, 6, 8, 11, 14	1, 2, 3, 4, 10
Michigan/Compact (county borders)	11, 12, 13, 14	4, 5, 6, 9	1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 10
Ohio/Current	3, 9, 11, 13	1, 10	2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 12, 14, 15, 16
Ohio/GOP	3, 11		1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16
Ohio/Dem	1, 3, 7, 9, 11, 12, 13	10, 14, 16	2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 15
Ohio/Proportional	1, 3, 7, 9, 11, 12, 13	10, 14, 16	2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 15
Ohio/Competitive	11	1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16	2, 5, 8, 12
Ohio/Majority Minority	1, 3, 11	4, 9, 13, 14, 16	2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 15
Ohio/Compact (algorithm)	3, 11, 16	5, 13, 14	1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15
Ohio/Compact (county borders)	3, 11	1, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 16	2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 15

In Michigan, the GOP legislature would probably like to implement the compact map that follows county borders; as it would leave the number of districts in each of the three categories untouched while making the districts more compact, hopefully erasing the argument that the map represented a gerrymander of “epic proportions.”  Democrats will probably like the fact that unlike in the current map, where three four of the “highly competitive” districts lean towards the Republicans, the alternative map has two “highly competitive” districts that lean towards the Democrats and two that lean towards the Republicans. However, Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer has veto power over whatever the legislature comes up with and the legislature likely will not have the votes to override her veto.  Whitmer would probably prefer the “proportional” map, which has six “usually Democratic” and seven “usually Republican” districts with one “highly competitive” district.

Because Republicans still control the entire state government of Ohio, they could probably put together a new map that respects county borders and present it as an alternative to the current map designed purely to maximize Republicans’ electoral prospects and creating oddly shaped districts in the process.  Under this map, the number of “usually Republican” districts would shrink from ten to six, giving Democrats an opportunity to compete in four additional Republican-held districts and a slight edge in two of them.  On the other hand, the map would make the Democratic-held 9^th and 13^th districts more competitive. 

No matter how it turns out, any redistricting in Michigan and/or Ohio will more likely than not decrease the number of Trump-won Democrat-held seats and likely put some incumbents not necessarily anticipating a competitive election on the defensive.  All of the mid-decade redistricting that has happened to date in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Virginia has done just that. 

The mid-decade redistricting in Florida altered all but five of Florida’s 27 Congressional Districts.  Florida’s 2^nd Congressional District, a Republican-leaning district with a Democrat representing it in Congress at the time became dramatically more Republican while Florida’s 10^th Congressional District, a Republican district, became dramatically more Democratic.  Florida’s 7^th and 13^th Congressional Districts became more Democratic following the redistricting and the Republican incumbents in those districts lost re-election in 2016.  A Republican pickup in Florida’s 18^th Congressional District ultimately cancelled out those losses.  A pickup there would have happened even without the redistricting because the 18^th Congressional District did not change under the new map. 

In Virginia, the court-ordered redistricting only affected five of the state’s 11 Congressional Districts.  Republicans got little out of the redistricting.  The Republican-leaning 4^th District became overwhelmingly Democratic while the reliably Republican 7^th District became more competitive.  Knowing that he would lose in his redrawn district, the incumbent in Virginia’s 4^th Congressional District tried unsuccessfully to run for an open seat in Virginia’s 2^nd Congressional District.  The 7^th district flipped following the 2018 election; incumbent Dave Brat probably could have survived if he had run under the old lines.

The North Carolina redistricting did little to alter the partisan make-up of the state’s 13 Congressional Districts but it did make the districts more compact. The makeup of the state’s Congressional delegation also changed slightly; as the homes of both Republican Congressman George Holding and Renee Ellmers ended up in North Carolina’s 2^nd Congressional District. Prior to the redistricting, Holding had represented North Carolina’s 13^th Congressional District. The two ended up facing off in a primary, where Holding emerged victorious.

No mid-decade redistricting had a bigger impact on the 2018 elections than the one that unfolded in Pennsylvania.  The Pennsylvania redistricting gave every single district a new number, whereas the numbers of most districts remained the same in most other instances of redistricting.  In the Pennsylvania redistricting, two Philadelphia-area seats that narrowly went for Hillary Clinton became overwhelmingly Democratic while an Allentown-based seat went from narrowly Republican to narrowly Democratic, as did a third Philadelphia-area seat.  The safely Republican 12^th District became the much more competitive 17^th District.  The redistricting led to a face-off between Republican Keith Rothfus of the old 12^th District and Conor Lamb of the old 18^th District; which Lamb won by double digits. The only bright spots for Republicans came in the old 18^th District, which Lamb flipped in a special election, becoming more Republican; and the Republican-leaning 16^th District becoming the solidly Republican 11^th District. All told, Democrats ended up netting four seats in Pennsylvania on Election Night 2018.

In addition to their obvious desire to maintain control of the House of Representatives, the Democrats hope that forcing the creation of new maps in all of the nation’s largest swing states, they will give themselves a leg-up in the event of an Electoral College deadlock.  Should no candidate reach the magic number of 270 electoral votes in the 2020 election, the House of Representatives will get to decide the election. As of right now, Republicans hold a majority of House seats in 26 states, the Democrats hold a majority in 21, while the remaining three have an equal number of Democrats and Republicans in their Congressional delegations.  The Democrats hope to obtain a majority in the Congressional delegations of more states; therefore, they would have the ability to win the presidency in the unlikely event of an Electoral College deadlock.

In conclusion, the Republicans will likely have to re-assess the “yellow brick road” I have laid out, which I just updated today, if redistricting goes through in Michigan and/or Ohio.  The Supreme Court decision on redistricting, which will come down next month, will have quite an effect on the 2020 election.  Stay tuned.