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...
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