Hello, my name is Kiernan Park-Egan (aka Fuzzybigfoot on this forum, which you probably already deducted). I am a novice political hobbyist dedicated to the cartography of election maps, mainly historical congressional maps. Much of my work has been featured on sites such as Wikipedia’s respective U.S. Presidential and Congressional Election pages, the Harvard Political Review’s news blog, as well as Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections and it’s unofficial spin-off Facebook page “Election Maps Co.” (of which I was the founder). Today I am here to bring you my latest work: a map predicting which presidential candidate will win each congressional district in the United States.
The ratings shown in the map above are determined through current polling numbers (state and nationwide) as well as other variables such as demographics and past election results of current districts. For the most part, this blog is speculative.
According to my estimates, each candidate’s totals are*:
Hillary Clinton: 217 Congressional Districts
Donald Trump: 199 Congressional Districts
Too close to call: 19 Congressional Districts
*Both candidates totals include tilt and lean districts as well.
Although Hillary is just a hair under winning 50% of all of our congressional districts outright, Trump would need to sweep all the districts in yellow to win a majority, a feat which is highly improbable. I would like to stress that this map is just a screenshot in time, and that a lot of things could change in the next 6 months (etc. etc.), but due to Hillary's significant polling leads in recent weeks I believe that she is currently favored to win most of our nation's congressional districts.
The big question is: would a Hillary landslide have enough coattails to flip the house back to the Democrats? In my humble opinion, coattails are something of a myth. Looking at history, there have been several lopsided presidential elections (1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, and 1996) where the winning candidate was elected with a congress of the opposite party. In addition, many of the bigger electoral prizes in the Rustbelt such as Ohio and Pennsylvania were so brutally gerrymandered that Democrats will have a harder time winning house seats for years to come. Although I’m sure Trump’s baggage will likely squander Republican’s efforts to hold competitive Hispanic majority seats such as TX-23 and FL-26, I’m skeptical that Democrats will actually win back the house. Only time will tell.