What Redistricting Looks Like In Every State

On Dec. 26, California’s independent citizen redistricting commission unanimously voted to certify the state’s new congressional map.

Overall, the map creates 43 Democratic-leaning seats, seven Republican-leaning seats and two highly competitive seats. That’s essentially the same mix as the current map, although California did lose one seat through reapportionment, and that seat was ultimately Democratic-leaning. Notably, too, despite being drawn by an independent commission, the new map is moderately biased toward Democrats, according to our fairness metrics.

Democrats actually lost a seat from the old map given California lost a seat in the reapportionment process, but the new map mostly offers incumbents a lifeline. For instance, in central California, Democratic Rep. Josh Harder’s district was made much redder, going from highly competitive (R+1) to solidly Republican-leaning (R+17) so he’ll now be likely to run in the neighboring 13th District instead. Democratic Rep. Katie Porter also will be running in a new district, which makes sense given her current district went from a partisan lean of D+6 to R+4. (The 47th where Porter is now running has a partisan lean of D+6.)

And yes, two Democratic representatives, Lucille Roybal-Allard and Alan Lowenthal, were drawn into the same district given California lost a district, but given the deep blue hue of that seat it will almost certainly be filled by a Democrat. (Both Lowenthal and Roybal-Allard are retiring.)

Republicans, on the other hand, face a number of districts that got a lot less friendly to them. For instance, Republican Rep. Devin Nunes’s 21st District is much bluer now, going from R+11 in the current map to D+16 in the new map, although Nunes recently announced he’s resigning from Congress at the end of the year, so that change is no longer an issue for him. Republican Rep. Tom McClintock’s district also became bluer, shifting from solidly Republican (R+15) to Republican-leaning (R+8). It’s also required Republican Reps. Michelle Steel and Young Kim to reassess where they’ll run. (Kim will run in the more Republican-leaning 40th District while Steel will run in the bluer 45th District.)

One other big takeaway from the new map is that about one-third of the new districts are majority-Hispanic — an increase of at least three districts — which makes sense because much of California’s growth over the past decade happened in Hispanic communities. That may lead to an increase in Latino representatives, and overall represents greater political power for Latino voters. According to the Los Angeles Times, advocates for Black and Asian American voters were also pleased with the results, saying that gains for Hispanic voters did not come at other minority voters’ expense.