Monday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued an order (with attached maps) redrawing the Congressional Districts for Pennsylvania  This order follows on last month’s decision finding that the 2011 map violate the Pennsylvania Constitution as a partisan gerrymander.  The United States Supreme Court is currently considering two cases — one argued last fall and one scheduled to be argued next month — on whether the U.S. Constitution also bars partisan gerrymanders.

I will leave it to our local experts to follow up on exactly how the new lines should impact November’s election.  The key points to make for now are:  1) this map will govern this year’s elections as filing with the Supreme Court’s including a time table for implementation of the order and candidate filing that will allow the primary to take place as scheduled; 2) the old maps were gerrymandered in such a way that the Republicans have carried 13 of the 18 districts (and the same 13) in each of the three elections so far under the old map (even though the Democrats won state-wide by 5% in 2012 and 9% in 2014 and barely lost in 2016);  and 3) in the three elections under the old map, 37 of the 39 Republican wins were by double digits (the other two involved margins of 9% and 4%).   The early numbers that I have seen from national prognosticators is that Democrats should pick up at least two seats in a 50-50 cycle and, in a cycle in which Democrats get 55% or more nationally, the Democrats would pick up an additional 2 to 3 seats (a 9-9 split or 10-8 in favor of the Democrats).  That compares to 2012 in which the Democrats got 53% nationally but still only won 5 seats in Pennsylvania.

One thing that is significantly different about the new map is that there are less weird shapes, and most of the weirder shapes in the new map comes from not splitting counties or municipalities unless such splits are absolutely necessary to maintain equality.  There is also some changes in the numbering.  As a result, some incumbents (including whomever wins the upcoming special election in Western Pennsylvania) will have to decide what district they will run in this year.  Some incumbent may be looking at a situation in which either: 1) their base is split between multiple districts; 2) they live in one district while the heart of their old district is in another district; 3) their new district contains a substantial portion of the old district of another incumbent.  As such, sitting members may have to decide between retiring, challenging another incumbent from their party, or running in a district in which they will have a difficult time running.  We may not know until filing closes on March 20 (one week after the special election) how the incumbents will reshuffle from the old seats to the new seats and whether we will have any incumbent vs. incumbent primaries or general elections.