Never too early to think about how 2020 redistricting could impact states’ congressional maps. Most of this discussion will probably occur after the midterms, where there will be a ton of governor’s races, but since Virginia has already decided on who their governor will be during redistricting, we can go ahead and speculate what the new map will look like. Given the current map is a partisan gerrymander by Republicans (Republican Bob McDonnell was elected in 2009), the new boundaries will likely look much different.
District 3 was determined to be a racial gerrymander and was struck down in 2014. The court then drew a new map for the 2016 elections.
Given that Virginia has taken a pretty swift turn to the left, we can reasonably expect a fair map to deliver another district or two to the Dems after next redistricting, even with a nonpartisan map. What might that look like? Here’s a couple of ideas.
This gives Democrats a much more friendly district in the north, with Loudoun County having a district pretty much to itself and Frederick County being attached to the Goodlatte district instead.
This one keeps the Comstock district mostly intact, but corrects the gerrymandering by smoothing out the edges in Northern Virginia. Districts 7 and 11 slightly favor Republicans, but Democrats can easily compete there. Personally, I like the first one better. But I’d be happy with this one too.
Republicans currently have a one seat majority in both the House of Delegates and the State Senate, so assuming no drastic changes in the 2019 off year elections, Dems should have plenty of leverage to get a decent map passed.
Thoughts?
EDIT: I apologize for the small images.