One day, two swing-state congressional maps, and two big pieces of good news for House Democrats.
On Tuesday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court chose a map supported by Democrats that gives them a fighting chance to win a majority of the state’s congressional seats. Soon after that, a North Carolina panel of three judges rejected a GOP-drawn gerrymander and instead released a map that would give Democrats a chance at winning half of the state’s 14 House seats.
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Both developments are good news for Democrats—and big improvements for overall fairness over gerrymanders that were proposed by Republicans who control those states’ legislatures.
The North Carolina map has six seats that Republicans should win, six that Democrats should carry and two swing districts, according to a FiveThirtyEight analysis. That’s one more Democratic-leaning seat, two fewer Republican-leaning seats, and two more competitive seats than exists under the current map (North Carolina will gain a House seat this year because of population growth).
Pennsylvania is losing a House seat, and the new map eliminates a GOP seat, while giving all of the state’s Democrats a fighting chance at reelection if the political environment isn’t too brutal—though three will likely have tough reelection fights. The current Pennsylvania House delegation has nine Democrats and nine Republicans; the new one could give Democrats a nine-to-eight edge in a good election year. President Trump would have won nine of the state’s 17 seats under the new map in both of his elections, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Democrats celebrated the decisions. Democratic voting rights attorney Marc Elias, whose group’s map was chosen in Pennsylvania and was involved in North Carolina litigation, declared the results “big congressional redistricting victories in two key states,” while Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf said his state’s ruling would yield a “fair map that will result in a congressional delegation mirroring the citizenry of Pennsylvania.”
These results are the latest good news for Democrats, who began last year expecting that gerrymandering could cost them up to a dozen House seats on balance and give Republicans a big advantage in the fight for Congress for the next decade. But some big GOP gerrymanders like North Carolina and Ohio have been tossed out, and Democrats have drawn effective gerrymanders in states they control like Illinois to maximize their own chances in those states. This means that redistricting nationwide is likely going to be close to a wash after this election.
The North Carolina map isn’t a done deal. State Republicans said they’ll appeal the panel’s decision to toss their map in favor of one drawn by four nonpartisan experts. But Democrats have a one-seat majority on North Carolina’s Supreme Court, so the new map is likely to be upheld.
State courts have helped Democrats out in a major way in both states in recent years. The two states’ supreme courts redrew the states’ congressional maps before the 2018 elections, undoing GOP gerrymanders and giving Democrats a bevy of new House seats, which helped them win House control that year. If those GOP gerrymanders had still been in place during the 2020 elections, Democrats may well have lost control of the House last term.
Just because Democrats have a chance at winning competitive seats doesn’t mean they’ll actually win them, however. Given how bleak the national environment is for Democrats right now—President Biden’s approval rating has been stuck around 40 percent in most national polls—they could very well lose most competitive seats this election. Republicans could easily win 11 of Pennsylvania’s 17 House seats if everything goes their way in 2022, and the North Carolina House delegation could easily have ten Republicans and six Democrats after the next election.
But if these maps stand for the rest of the decade, Democrats will have a fighting chance to pick up more seats—and a better chance to retake the House later this decade if they lose it this fall.
