Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Reapportionment and the House

One of the big problems in predicting how the House races will turn out in 2012 is that all of the states except Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming must reapportion their House districts to allow for changes in where the people in their state now live according to the 2010 Census. Those seven states have such a small population that they only have one Congressional District that is the entire state so there is nothing to adjust. Making matters even tougher is that many states have either lost or gained House seats and must then change every district to allow for that.

The other pertinent fact is that this reapportionment process will be gerrymandered to benefit one political party if that political party controls the state legislature and the governorship. To see how all of this will effect the partisan balance in the House in 2013, we need to know several things. Which states are controlled by which party or is it split? What is the present partisan breakout of a state's congressional delegation. Is there a change in the number of seats that the state has? What was the margin in 2010 of all the House seats added together in favor of one party or the other. All of that information is set forth in the following table:

State 2010 Margin Legis Control
Governor
House Dems
House Reps
Change Net Gain
Vermont 32.54% Dem Dem 1 0 0
Massachusetts 27.70% Dem Dem 10 0 -1 0
Maryland 26.93% Dem Dem 6 2 0
Hawaii 24.57% Dem Dem 2 0
0
New York 21.20% Split Dem 21 8 -2 DR-1
Connecticut 18.97% Dem Dem 5 0 0
Rhode Island 18.46% Dem Dem 2 0
0
Delaware 15.74% Dem Dem 1 0
0
Maine 12.07% Rep Rep 2 0
0
California 10.81% Dem Dem 34 19 0
Illinois 7.14% Dem Dem 8 11 -1 R-1
Washington 6.75% Dem Dem 5 4 +1 D+1
Oregon 3.99% Split Dem 4 1
0
New Mexico 3.32% Dem Rep 2 1
0
Minnesota 2.04% Rep Dem 4 4
0
Pennsylvania 0.53% Rep Rep 7 12 -1 D-1
New Jersey 0.64% Dem Rep 7 6 -1 R-1
South Dakota 2.23% Rep Rep 0 1 0
Colorado 5.27% Split Dem 3 4 0
New Hampshire 6.88% Rep Dem 0 2
0
Nevada 6.90% Dem Rep 1 2 +1 D+1
Michigan 7.68% Rep Rep 6 9 -1 D-1
North Dakota 9.81% Rep Rep 0 1 0
Mississippi 10.02% Rep Rep 1 3 0
Ohio 11.75% Rep Rep 5 13 -2 DR-1
North Carolina 11.78% Rep Dem 7 6 0
Wisconsin 11.90% Rep Rep 3 5 R+1
Arizona 12.46% Rep Rep 3 5 +1 R+1
Virginia 12.57% Split Rep 3 8 0
Iowa 13.12% Split Rep 3 2 -1 D-1
West Virginia 13.21% Dem Dem 1 2 R-1
South Carolina 16.14% Rep Rep 1 5 +1 R+1
Arkansas 17.28% Dem Dem 1 3 0
Indiana 18.78% Rep Rep 3 6 R+1
Missouri 19.71% Rep Dem 3 6 -1 R-1
Florida 20.70% Rep Rep 6 19 +2 DR+1
Montana 26.57% Rep Dem 0 1
0
Idaho 27.82% Rep Rep 0 2 0
Kentucky 28.41% Split Dem 2 4 0
Tennessee 28.75% Rep Rep 2 7 0
Georgia 31.29% Rep Rep 5 8 +1 R+1
Utah 31.29% Rep Rep 1 2 +1 R+1
Kansas 31.45% Rep Rep 0 4 0
Louisiana 33.79% Split Rep 1 6 -1 R-1
Texas 34.72% Rep Rep 9 23 +4 R+3
Oklahoma 35.27% Rep Rep 1 4 0
Alaska 38.44% Split Rep 0 1 0
Nebraska 40.02% Rep Rep 0 3 0
Alabama 43.03% Rep Rep 1 6 0
Wyoming 45.94% Rep Rep 0 1
0

So what does all this information tell us? If you see two Dems in the party columns, then the Democrats can gerrymander the reapportionment process to benefit their party and hurt the Republicans. Likewise if you see two Reps in those columns, the opposite is true. There are 12 states controlled by the Democrats, but in 7 of them, the Republicans do not have any seats to be taken away from them. There are 22 states controlled by the Republicans but 6 of them do not have any Democrat seats to damage. The rest are split and the reapportionment process most likely will wind up in court if a compromise cannot be hammered out in the state legislature that also gets the governor to sign the bill.

It is the states that are gaining or losing more than one seat where gerrymandering can have the biggest effect. Texas is gaining 4 seats and is controlled by the Republicans but since the Democrats only have nine seats, it is hard to see how the Republicans can pick up any of the Democrat seats especially when they need to shore up districts 23 and 27 where the winning margin was under 5%. On the contrary, if they try to get greedy and make all four new seats Republican, they endanger holding ones they already have. The wisest course is to go for three to be Republican and let the Democrats have the fourth one. Thus the best the Republicans can hope for is a gain of 3 seats.

Florida is gaining two seats and it is controlled by the Republicans. Since the Democrats only have six seats it is hard to see how the Republicans can do any better than to split the two new seats with the Democrats. The same thing is true in Ohio only each party will have to lose a seat. If the Republicans controlled New York both seats that must be lost would come out of the Democrat majority. Since control is split, the most likely result will be a compromise in which each party loses a seat. Our best guess is that reapportionment will give the Republicans four new seats on top of whatever other gains or loses they might otherwise get.