I feel comfortable enough with the state of the races to put up the 2018 Midterm hex map of party power in the House. I know...as soon as I post some GOPer will go to prison and I’ll have to amend it, ha. (And let me know if I missed anything, eagle-eyed Kossacks. I triple-checked, but something about the hex map always makes me miss things. I did CO wrong twice, and MN/WI are a pain on this map for me.)
The hex map offers a look at districts without giving them sizing owing to geography. It’s really what we should be using over the traditional map, because this much better portrays where the House and nation are in a partisan regard.
For those interested, at the bottom is a side by side of today’s map and where the House was over the summer when I last updated it before the midterms.
Notes:
1. The American West now almost entirely counterbalances the South. The GOP gets +55 seats more than Democrats from the South, but Dems get +48 more seats than the GOP from the West.
I cut the South off with North Carolina, and did not include VA or WV (which doesn’t matter...they cancel each other out.) The West includes the Rocky Mountain states — MT, WY, etc.
There are 137 House seats in the South, with the GOP controlling 96 to our 41, for a +55 margin. But the significantly smaller West, with 102 seats (about three quarters as many seats), offers Dems 75 seats to their 27, for a +48 margin.
That seems notable when you consider the other regions to bring into the equation are the northeast and midwest. This is a really good illustration of the longterm effects of a Southern-only strategy.
2. There is no ‘red sea’ anymore. What I mean is that when you look at this map, there is no giant, unobstructed patch of red, no long stretch of nothing but GOP districts throughout any state or region. There are very red areas, but they are patchworked with blue districts. On the other hand, I think we can all see some blocks of blue on this map, ha.
What is causing this? Well...I think it’s clear that the patchwork quality of GOP areas on this map is owing to minority communities. They can’t have a true geographic red wall because their voting blocs don’t enjoy dominance in even their base areas.
This helps to explain their need to tilt the playing field and cheat. Without gerrymandering, voter suppression, etc, they’re screwed. Consider this...imagine that we redraw lines in the South, and, you know, let minorities vote. Could we flip ten more of the 137 districts? I think we could. This would drop their Southern margin to a measly 35 seats — California on its own would counterbalance the entire South in this scenario.
Maybe it’s just because I’m such a poly-sci nerd, but I think this new map does a lot to illustrate what keeps McConnell and McCarthy up at night. (Not Trump...I’m not even sure he knows that states get a certain number of House seats based on population.) It shows a Democratic Party that is encroaching on every GOP stronghold, while building massive blue walls on the coasts, with demographic shifts pushing things increasingly in that direction.
Comparison maps: