2020 Redistricting Hub
Follow along and track the evolution of our nation's congressional battlegrounds.
*cue the Pokémon evolution theme music*
Welcome Back to Battleground! With Thanksgiving and the 2021 elections behind us, it’s time to turn our attention to the 2020 Redistricting Cycle. A quick bulleted TL;DR is below and tomorrow we’ll start the new series with Oregon!
TL;DR
Congress has completed the decennial reapportionment process and now every state must redraw congressional district boundaries to account for population changes and ensure equal representation.
As of Jan 1, 31 states have approved new congressional maps and outstanding state-by-state deadlines stretch throughout the first half of 2022.
Battleground will track the process, state-by-state, with posts every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, along with the return of extra weekly posts for paid subscribers.
Redistricting Explained
Once every ten years, Congress is required to reapportion seats in the US House according to population figures from the most recent decennial United States Census. Since 1913, the US House of Representatives has consisted of 435 members by statute. Since this number is fixed, reapportionment results in some states losing seats while others may gain seats. Once reapportionment is complete the process moves to the state level where each state is required to redraw its congressional districts to ensure all districts across the country have (roughly) equal populations.
For the next couple of months, I’ll be tracking this complex process of redrawing congressional districts for all 50 states. Each post will provide a map of the state’s new districts, a recap of how the state has changed since the last census was conducted in 2010, and an assessment of political party control moving forward. States with a large amount of districts will be split out across multiple posts while single-district states (think Wyoming or Delaware) will be grouped up for efficiency. I’ll be sticking to my normal posting schedule: expect posts to hit your inbox every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. I’ll also be returning to producing extra content every week for paid subscribers that will dive into different facets of the national redistricting process.
As of November 29th 2021, 24 states have approved proposed maps for new congressional districts.* Another five states have legal deadlines ordering maps to be completed by the end of 2021. The remaining 21 states have deadlines stretching in to 2022, with 13 falling in Q1 and 8 landing in Q2. *These numbers do not reflect ongoing court challenges to maps and only describes the number of states that have completed their initial approval process.
So buckle up and get ready for a wild ride through the wonderful world of redistricting!