Newly Revised Districts Will Matter for Control of US House

Control-of-Congress math is new this fall after five states revised House district lines, either because a court said they must or judges said they could.

Redistricting litigation left both parties claiming wins. Democrats are favored to net a seat in New York and capture new Black-majority districts in Alabama and Louisiana, gains that could easily be offset by pro-Republican alterations in North Carolina, neutralizing any new advantage.

“When you add everything up, I think there’s one more Trump seat in the country than there was in 2022,” Adam Kincaid, executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, said in an interview.

“The map is like a slight tick to the right from where it was in 2022, but it’s not a significantly different map on net,” he said.

John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, called the 2024 congressional map “as fair as it has been in 40 years,” and “more representative of the American people than it was even two years ago.”

Though one seat is a fraction of a percent of the full House of Representatives, there’s no such thing as a small advantage when a net difference of four could put the Democrats in charge, creating either a firewall against, or allies for, the next president’s agenda.

Here’s a look at what’s different for the 2024 elections and how state delegations are on track to change after re-redistricting, based on race ratings by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report with Amy Walter:

Alabama is likely to elect two Black members of Congress for the first time, and Democrats are favored to gain a seat.

New lines reflect a federal court’s mandate to add a second district where Black voters can sway election outcomes. Alabama is almost 30% Black but Rep. Terri Sewell (D) of the Birmingham-area 7th District is the state’s only Black representative out of seven House members.

Positioned to join her in the 119th Congress is Shomari Figures (D), a lawyer from a prominent political family who previously worked for Attorney General Merrick Garland and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio).

“This is an opportunity to pick up a seat that would not have been on everyone’s radars had you asked them about this two years ago,” Figures said in an interview earlier this year. “The eyes of the nation will be on Alabama, and for a good reason” given the seat’s role in determining the majority, he added.

Figures has a decided advantage over Republican lawyer Caroleene Dobson in the 2nd District, which includes Mobile and Montgomery and would have favored Joe Biden over Donald Trump by 12 percentage points. The 2nd’s population is 50.9% Black and its voting-age population is 48.7% Black.

Republican legislators in Georgia, commanded by a federal judge to add an additional Black-majority district, did so without jeopardizing their 9-5 edge in House seats.

Republicans set that new district (numbered the 6th) in the west Atlanta suburbs, where Rep. Lucy McBath (D) decided to seek re-election. She now represents the racially and ethnically diverse (though not Black-majority) 7th District east of Atlanta. That district was dismantled and in effect replaced with a district that’s a Republican stronghold.

Democrats are appealing the judge’s approval of that map.

Like Alabama, Louisiana added a second Black-majority district under court order that’s setting up a one-seat gain for Democrats.

The next House member from the reconfigured 6th District, which snakes from Shreveport to Baton Rouge, probably will be state Sen. Cleo Fields (D), who served in the chamber in the mid-1990s.

Meet the Shoo-Ins on Track for the 119th Congress

The Republican-majority legislature decided to draw its own remedial map rather than cede line-drawing authority to the courts. The odd man out was Rep. Garret Graves (R), who decided to retire rather than wage an uphill bid for the new 6th or against neighboring 5th District Rep. Julia Letlow (R). In the 2023 governor’s election, Graves backed a rival to Gov. Jeff Landry (R), who signed the new map into law.

Fields is the best-known of the five 6th District candidates — four Democrats and one Republican — who are running in the all-party, single-ballot primary on Nov. 5. If no one wins a majority of all votes, the top two vote-getters will compete in a Dec. 7 runoff.

The Democratic-controlled legislature in New York made modest changes to the 2022 election’s court-approved map as lawmakers tried to both help their party and comply without running afoul of a state constitutional ban against partisan gerrymandering.

Democrats’ only obvious target was Rep. Brandon Williams (R), whose Syracuse-area district was revised to favor Biden by 11 points compared with the president’s 7-point margin under the version used in 2022 and drawn by a court-appointed special master. Williams won by less than 1 percentage point in 2022 and faces state Sen. John Mannion (D) on Nov. 5.

They made little to no change to the districts of first-term Republicans Anthony D’Esposito, Mike Lawler, and Marc Molinaro, who won upset victories in a 2022 election year that was unexpectedly good for New York Republicans. All three districts favored Biden in 2020 and are rated as tossups.

The legislature’s map also boosted Democratic Reps. Tom Suozzi, who won a February special election following the expulsion of George Santos (R), and Pat Ryan, who won a pair of close elections in 2022 in the Hudson Valley.

First-term Republican Nick LaLota of eastern Long Island will be more difficult for Democrats to unseat after his 1st District was revised to be narrowly pro-Trump from barely pro-Biden. The Democratic nominee is John Avlon, a former CNN political analyst.

“New York will be the pivotal battleground for control of the House for the remainder of the decade because of how many competitive seats there are in New York relative to other places,” Kincaid said.

Republicans are projected to win at least 10 of 14 North Carolina seats under an aggressive map enacted after the state’s highest court ruled that partisan gerrymandering claims were outside the scope of state courts (reversing an earlier decision by the state Supreme Court when it had a Democratic majority).

Democratic voters are inefficiently clustered in the state and it wasn’t hard for GOP mapmakers to saturate them in three districts in metropolitan Charlotte and Raleigh — the only three in the state where Democrats have a clear edge.

An interim map used in the 2022 election produced a 7-7 split. Democratic Reps. Kathy Manning, Wiley Nickel, and Jeff Jackson chose to retire or seek other political office rather than run again under unfavorable lines.

Republicans also have a shot at wresting a fourth district from Democratic hands after the legislature’s map converted the eastern 1st District of first-term Rep. Don Davis from mildly Democratic to a toss-up. Davis, who was elected 52%-48% in 2022, faces Republican nominee Laurie Buckhout, a retired Army colonel.

“North Carolina brings obviously the greatest frustration and disappointment,” Bisognano said.

More to Come?

And while the lines are now set in those five states, the November election could lead to more changes, as Ohio will vote on a state constitutional amendment that would create an independent redistricting commission with a new line-drawing mandate.