Maryland's New Congressional Districts
After the previous map was thrown out due to partisan gerrymandering, the state finally has districts that don't snake across the state.
Topline Takeaways
Maryland’s previously passed map was tossed out for political gerrymandering after a judge ruled that the map violated the state’s constitution.
Democratic legislators quickly whipped up a new map that was promptly signed by the state’s Republican governor.
The state’s new districts comprise what is easily Maryland’s fairest House map in decades. (Previous maps snaked across the state and severed communities for the sake of propping up incumbents.)
New District Breakdown
These new districts are demonstrably more fair than both the struck-down, gerrymandered map and Maryland’s old congressional districts enacted back in 2010. The biggest change is that the state’s districts no longer snake between Washington DC and Baltimore and instead opt for much more compact geometries. This allows for neighboring communities to vote together.
First things first, MD-1 once again only includes Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The gerrymandered map passed late last year made the odd choice of allowing MD-1 to cross the Chesapeake to pickup voters in Annapolis. This was a clear move to eat away at the Republican advantage on the Eastern Shore by offsetting their votes with reliable Democratic voters in and around Anappolis. The new map instead practically guarantees Maryland Republicans at least one seat in the US House rather than shutting them out altogether.
Moving south, the Baltimore districts now reflect how communities think about the city on the ground. Baltimore is an independent city and is distinctly different in character than the surrounding suburbs in Baltimore county. While the previous map sliced and diced the city across three different congressional districts, the new map packs almost all of Baltimore City into MD-7. This configuration also produces a more heavily nonwhite constituency in the state’s seventh district, even though the previous setup used this same goal as a justification for its convoluted shape. MD-2 then picks up most Baltimore county voters as well as those lying further north in Carroll county.
The new MD-3 now mostly holds Howard and Anne Arundel counties: two suburban counties that hold a substantial population of white, high-income voters. Anne Arundel county is also a bit of a swing county for Maryland as it holds a high number of registered Republicans relative to most other counties in the state. To put this in perspective: Hillary Clinton was the first presidential candidate to win Anne Arundel county since 1964. Howard county’s committed Democratic coalition helps keep the new MD-3 in the safely Democratic column but the district’s new configuration still shifts it 14 points toward the right.
Zooming in on the Washington DC suburbs: the new map reduces the number of congressional districts in the area from an absurd five congressional districts to only two. Once again, this new map does a fantastic job of reflecting how voters think about their communities in their everyday lives as the Maryland suburbs of Washington DC are split into two counties: Montgomery county and Prince George’s County.
The new districts lean on county geometries for their boundaries. The new MD-4 no longer stretches toward the Chesapeake Bay and primarily holds PG County’s “inside the Beltway” neighborhoods. The new MD-8 does the same for Montgomery County’s inner suburbs and no longer stretches up to the Maryland-Pennsylvania border.
This all works against Democrat’s attempt in shoring up MD-6 for their party. Maryland’s sixth congressional district has long been the subject of controversy. Republicans were already (rightfully) challenging the district’s old 2010 geometry for political gerrymandering as it blunted Republican voters in the state’s western panhandle. Grouping rural voters from the state’s panhandle into the same district as Democratic suburban voters outside of DC made little sense as they lived more than 100 miles apart in entirely different regions of the state. The newer, gerrymandered map made this much worse, by expanding the district even further south into Montgomery county. The final enacted map above corrects this injustice by creating a new swing district out of MD-6. Instead of reaching south all the way to the Washington DC border, the new MD-6 stretches east, capturing much of rural Frederick county.
Taken together, these changes make Maryland’s House seats considerably less safe for the Democratic party, primarily because their previous safety was artificially created via gerrymandering.