Will the new District Map In Pennsylvania help the Dems take Back The House

On Monday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court released the state’s new congressional map, which replaces the GOP’s now-invalid gerrymander and will be used for the rest of the decade. Political scientist Brian Amos has calculated preliminary 2016 presidential results for the new districts, though comparing them to the old districts isn’t necessarily straightforward.

That’s because the court’s new lines not only juggled the state’s congressional districts, it renumbered them as well. In the coming days, we’ll learn more about where incumbents who were planning to seek re-election will in fact run this fall, but for now, we’ve linked each new district with the old district that makes up a plurality of each new district. You can find that data, along with presidential numbers for both the old and new seats, right here.

Let’s start with the big number: Donald Trump won 10 seats under the new lines, compared to eight for Hillary Clinton. Given that Trump only carried the Keystone State by a 48.2 to 47.5 margin in 2016, that’s a much more equitable distribution than the 12 Trump and six Clinton seats under the old map.

And based on our best guesses as to which incumbents will run where, Democratic chances would likely improve against Republicans in PA-01 (Mike Fitzpatrick, old PA-08), PA-05 (OPEN/Pat Meehan, old PA-07), PA-06 (Ryan Costello, old PA-06), PA-07 (OPEN/Charlie Dent, old PA-15), PA-10(Scott Perry, old PA-04), PA-17 (Keith Rothfus, old PA-12). However, PA-11 (Lloyd Smucker, old PA-16) has gone from light red to implacably Republican.

There’s a lot to keep straight, though! For starters, you’ll want to keep our brand-new interactive map handy. We've also put together a table showing what portions of Pennsylvania's 2012-2016 congressional districts make up each new seat. (Click here for an explainer on how to interpret this spreadsheet.) This data forms the basis for which old district forms a plurality of each new district in the table above.

Note, though, that two old districts are not represented in that chart. One of them, PA-11, belongs to Republican Rep. Lou Barletta’s and was pretty much dismantled. A plurality (31 percent) of the old PA-11 is in the new PA-10, but because 59 percent of the new PA-10 is made up of Republican Rep. Scott Perry’s old PA-04, we list that seat next to the new PA-10. Barletta is running for the Senate, though, and won’t care, but other incumbents will face serious disruption.

That’s because no matter what district they now choose to call home, they’ll face electorates that are largely new to them. For instance, only half of Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle’s old PA-13 is in the new PA-02, while about 40 percent of retiring Democratic Rep. Bob Brady’s old PA-01 wound up there. (Incidentally, Brady’s old PA-01 is the other old district that doesn’t appear in the table above.)

The devil, though, is often in the county-level details, and to get a sense for how that will play, we’ve put together an updated list of how much of each county makes up each new seat, and how much of each county is contained in each new seat. For instance, Boyle’s Philadelphia made up just about half of the old PA-13, while it makes up all of the new 2nd District, so it makes sense for him to run there.

So, what happens now? The most immediate item on the calendar is the state’s March 20 filing deadline for House candidates (candidates for every other office in Pennsylvania must file by March 6), though they’ll need to start collecting ballot petitions well before then. Consequently, anyone who wants to run for the House this year needs to decide pretty quickly where they’ll run. The primary will be held on May 15 for all offices.

We should note that that Republicans in the legislature are once again going to federal court to try to block the new map, even though the U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene on their behalf earlier this month. As election law expert Rick Hasen notes, their odds of prevailing are very long, so this map in all likelihood is here to stay.

And on a note that is both highly symbolic and deeply important, this new map means that there are now 25 Republican-held House seats nationally that Hillary Clinton carried, up from 23. That’s one more than the number of Republican seats Democrats would need to flip in order to regain control over the House in November.

Source DailyKos.com   electionsdigest@dailykos.com

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