Democrats are going to gain seats in November, the question is how many. A big part of it will come down to Pennsylvania's recently cracked gerrymandering wall, but dozens of other states have districts that give the the maximum possible advantage to keeping GOP seats safe and even with the double digit advantage that Democrats have in generic ballots, it may still not be enough for Team Blue to win back the House.
A report released Monday suggests Democrats might have to temper their enthusiasm about climbing back to power during this year’s midterm elections.
To win a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, Democrats would need a tremendous electoral wave not seen in more than 40 years to overcome Republican advantages from gerrymandered districts in key states, according to an analysis from the Brennan Center for Justice.
The report projects that Democrats would need to win the national popular vote for congressional districts by a nearly 11 percentage point margin over Republicans to gain more than the roughly two dozen seats they need to flip control of the Republican-led chamber.
That would take more than the typical Democratic wave that history suggests would occur for the party out of power during a midterm election.
“It would be the equivalent of a tsunami,” said Michael Li, a senior counsel who heads up redistricting work for the center, which is based at New York University School of Law. “Democrats would have to win larger than any sort of recent midterm wave — almost double what they got in 2006 — in order to win a narrow majority.”
The Brennan Center opposes what it calls “extreme gerrymandering” in which political parties draw legislative districts that virtually ensure they will hold on to power.
The center has filed a court brief in a case to be heard Wednesday by the U.S. Supreme Court supporting a lawsuit by Republicans alleging that Maryland’s former Democratic governor and legislature unconstitutionally gerrymandered a congressional district to their advantage.
It also has filed court briefs supporting Democratic lawsuits alleging unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering by Republicans in states such as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
The center’s analysis notes that Democrats gained 31 seats when they won the national congressional vote by 5.4 percentage points in 2006. Yet under the current districts, which were redrawn after the 2010 Census under GOP control of many state capitols, a similar national victory margin in the November election is projected to net Democrats only about a dozen new seats.
The report projects that a 10 percentage point national margin would gain 21 seats for Democrats — still shy of the 23 or 24 needed to claim a House majority. An 11-point margin is projected to gain 28 seats for Democrats, but they haven’t achieved such a large midterm victory since a nearly 14 point margin gained them 49 seats in 1974.
“Even a strong blue wave would crash against a wall of gerrymandered maps,” the Brennan Center report says.
We'll see where this stands. Again, the Brennan Center report doesn't take into account the changes in Pennsylvania, which would add three or four seats to this total if everything works out. But still, even with a double digit win and all 435 House seats up for re-election in November, Dems are still going to have at best a narrow majority, that's how bad Republican gerrymandering is, and never forget America gave them the keys to the kingdom in 2010 to do it when people decided they were disappointed in Obama.
Bet you wish you still had him, huh?
As LOLGOP points out at Eclectablog, the system is rigged...for Republicans and that's why we have to assume we have to fight for every seat, every inch, every race, every time.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a 2.1 percent while losing the Electoral College. That means Democrats would need to improve upon her margin by at least 3 times and as much as 5 times. This, of course, is all an inexact science as many districts won’t be contended at all and it’s almost impossible to properly poll 438 districts. But you get the idea: House Republicans could get millions fewer votes than their opponents and still end up with the majority and possibly even a larger Senate majority. Then, watch out.
The goal here isn’t to bum you out, but to be realistic.
We have to keep in mind all the advantages the GOP has when it comes to the maps, the cash and levers of government it controls. No matter what, Republicans start off with a 6 percent advantage, at least, considering that GOP House candidates took in 1.1 percent more votes than Democrats in 2016.
Why be realistic?
Because we learned three things 2016 we cannot ever forget:
1. Never trust good news and positive poll models.
2. Don’t count on Trump to self-destruct.
3. Assume that every mechanism that can be used against us — from hacks to Facebook to voter suppression to the FBI — will.
Bad news is your friend. Love it. Need it. And every time you see it, do everything you can to swing at least one district.
I know it's hard to stay motivated, to stay in the fight. Here in KY-4 it's not looking good to unseat national embarrassment Thomas Massie, but KY-6 is definitely in play, and across the river so is OH-1.
Put resources where they can do the most good.
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