SUPREME COURT/VOTING: “The Pennsylvania Supreme Court imposed a new congressional map for the state that appeared to give Democrats a big boost in their effort to retake the U.S. House of Representatives in November’s midterm elections.
The new map could flip at least four Republican-held seats in those contests, according to an analysis from the Cook Political report, an assessment echoed by other political experts.
The state high court imposed the map as a remedy after it ruled last month that Republicans had unlawfully redrawn the state’s districts to maximize GOP gains. The new map laid out fresh district boundaries for the state’s 18 congressional seats that were based on criteria like geographical compactness instead of partisan advantage.
Pennsylvanians often split closely between Democrats and Republicans in the voting booth, but that hasn’t been reflected in the state’s congressional delegation, which has tilted 13-to-5 in favor of Republicans under the district lines the GOP drew in 2011 after the party swept the 2010 elections…
The new map makes seven competitive GOP-held districts more Democratic and two GOP-held districts more Republican, according to an analysis by David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report. Democrats now have a chance of winning as many as four to six GOP-held seats in November, Mr. Wasserman and other analysts say…
The U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month refused to block the state court decision nullifying the original map.”
-Brent Kendall and Reid J. Epstein, “Pennsylvania Gets a New District Map,” The Wall Street Journal online, Feb. 20, 2018 11:21am