What Redistricting Looks Like In Every State

The U.S. Supreme Court has denied an injunction as requested by Pennsylvania Republicans who filed a lawsuit challenging the new map for the commonwealth’s congressional districts. The plaintiffs disputed the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s right to set the districts, calling it “unconstitutional.” However, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case; instead it will be sent to a federal three-judge panel. However, this is unlikely to happen before the 2022 elections, meaning the new maps will likely remain in place for the midterms.

Pennsylvania’s Democratic-majority Supreme Court stepped in to finalize the maps after Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf vetoed the map chosen by the Republican-controlled state legislature, causing a stalemate. The court selected a final map that was submitted by a group of citizens who wanted to hew as closely as possible to the status quo while redrawing the district lines from 18 districts down to 17 as a result of the census. Their map was drawn by Jonathan Rodden, a political science professor at Stanford University and director of the university's Spatial Social Science Lab. The new map drops one Republican-leaning seat to leave eight Republican-leaning seats, six Democratic-leaning seats and three highly competitive seats. It has a median seat bias of R+1.3 but an efficiency gap of D+3.0, indicating a relatively fair map.