Elena Schneider at Politico:
Democrats’ hopes of winning the House this fall got a boost Monday with the release of a new congressional-district map in Pennsylvania that could help the party pick up several seats in the battleground state.
Under the previous map, drawn by a Republican Legislature in 2011 and approved by the then-Republican governor, Republicans won 13 of the state's 18 congressional districts in 2016, when President Donald Trump carried 12 of the 18 districts.
But early estimates of the new, court-drawn map suggest there are now 10 Trump seats — opening the door for Democrats to inch closer to the House majority when voters go to the polls this November. The extra Democratic-leaning seats are primarily in the Philadelphia suburbs.
“This is pretty close to a Democratic wet dream,” Christopher Nicholas, a Republican consultant based in Pennsylvania, said of the new map.Christopher Ingraham at WP:
Michael McDonald, an elections expert at the University of Florida, wrote that the new Pennsylvania mapshares characteristics with a court-drawn map in Florida. “We've now had two state Supreme Courts — FL and PA — order the creation of fairer congressional redistricting plans for their states that obviously are more compact and respect more political boundaries than the Republican gerrymanders they replace,” he wrote.
Dave Wasserman, House editor for the Cook Political Report, wrote that “the PA Supreme Court's map doesn't just undo the GOP's gerrymander. It goes further, actively helping Dems compensate for their natural geographic disadvantage in PA.”
Rick Hasen, an elections expert at the University of California at Irvine, wrote that “the early indications are that this is a much more competitive map which will help the Democrats compared to the gerrymandered maps drawn by the Republican legislature.”
Hope Republicans in the Great State of Pennsylvania challenge the new “pushed” Congressional Map, all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary. Your Original was correct! Don’t let the Dems take elections away from you so that they can raise taxes & waste money!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 20, 2018
